Love Beyond Sin And Redemption:A Religlous Ethical Study Of The Bell

Iris Murdoch(1919–1999) is one of the most outstanding English novelists of the 20 th century. She is also noted as a philosopher and an academic. Being referred to as unsurpassed by her later works, The Bell is her fourth novel, also her master piece. The story is about a lay community who leads a half reclusive life, seeking for inner peace, but the spiritual quest fails due to the members’ sinfulness.This dissertation has no intention of commenting on Murdoch’s entire oeuvre. With her fictional work The Bell as the major concern, the author aims to examine the work’s religious dimension. This article maintains that although Murdoch herself is not a strict follower of Christian faith, she has a Christian touch in writing The Bell. The core spirit of The Bell is consistent with the ethical teachings of Christianity. When the actions of characters and the outcomes of their individual life stories are examined, it turns out that whatever sin and suffering they have are originally derived from their failures in love, and the only way of achieving salvation lies in the regaining of love.This dissertation has seven parts. The Introduction is concerned with Murdoch and her novel The Bell; the second part is a literature review about this novel and the research method involved in this thesis; the third part goes through Christian ethical theories on sin and redemption; the fourth part takes the main characters as the objects, observing the reason of their sins; the fifth part analyzes the four sermons given by the four main characters concerning sin and redemption, pointing out that the first three sermons are unreliable, and only the Abbess’ s sermon gives the perfect answer concerning how to achieve salvation; the sixth part focuses on the saving power and the sinners’ atonement, highlighting the theme that only through the regaining of love can people achieve redemption.By adopting the method of close reading, the dissertation goes through the personal lives of the main characters of The Bell, analyzes the theme of sin and redemption, aiming to elaborate Murdoch’s view on ethical issues and how she thinks religion affects people in modern ages. The author tries to trace the religious ethical ideas of Murdoch from the aspect of sin and redemption in order to find another possible way of reading The Bell.