| Iris Murdoch's characters in A Severed Head and in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine struggle to exercise power within their relationships. Both her male and female characters turn their lives into fictional constructs to escape the ennui of their realities. However, their dramas, instead of liberating them, reinforce patriarchal stereotypes. The women of A Severed Head create roles for themselves that are just as subversive and destructive as the ones that an egoistic male narrator assigns them. While one woman escapes the brutal selfishness of her husband through accidental death, the other placidly condones his behavior in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine. The surviving adults abdicate their parental responsibilities, leaving one child institutionalized and the other to fend for himself. These novels emphasize that the fictions created by men and women reflect the inequality and destructiveness of relationships based on patriarchal mandates. |
