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Boekverslag Iris Murdoch
The unicorn
Geschreven door: | anoniem [meer] |
Datum ingestuurd: | 13 oktober 2003 |
Taal: |  |
Woorden: | 1.200 |
Bekeken: | 1898 keer (8 deze maand) |
Waardering: | |
Deel op: |
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Iris Murdoch, The unicorn, 1963
Summary
Marian is 29. She is hired to work as a scholar at a house called Gaze Castle. It is a strange place in an empty country. She doesn’t feel very comfortable. The house is full with old-fashioned furniture. It’s a dark place. When Marian is to see the lady with whom she wrote with, Mrs. Crean-Smith, it turns out that she it to teach her. There are no kids in the house. A man called Gerald Scottow seems to be the land lord but Marian doesn’t know what his relation to Mrs. Crean-Smith is. There are more people in the house and she doesn’t know their relationships to each other either. They all drink Whiskey like water. Marian Writes letters with her boyfriend. Those letters doesn’t show very much love between them. She meets Alice. Alice lives in the only other house (it’s called Riders) near by. It appears to Marian that Hannah Crean-Smith is a little crazy in the head, ill, deranged...She doesn’t leave the house. Marian gets to know the people better, Denis Norton, a sort of Gardener, Mrs Violet Evercreech and Jamesie Evercreech, her younger brother. Then, Denis tells Marian what has happened. Hannah’s husband, Peter Crean-Smith, has fallen of the cliffs seven years ago. Nobody knows if Hannah pushed him over or if he jumped. But Peter survived the fall. He lives in New York. Then Hannah had a relationship with Alice’s brother, Pip Lejour. Peter caught them. And he trusted Hannah to Gerald and his crew. They keep her imprisoned.
Effingham Cooper is a friend of Alice’s father, Max Lejour. He visits Riders regularly. Effingham (called Effie) is in love with Hannah. He is “harmless”, he can see her alone. He doesn’t know if he want to “rescue” her by taking her away. Maybe he enjoys the fact that she will always be there, home. He is puzzled. Effie gets to know something else of the story by Pip, Peter was gay and had a relationship with Gerald. When Pip was with Hannah, Gerald told Peter. Peter has a male partner in New York. Marian and Effingham meet. Marian tells him about her plans to free Hannah. He doesn’t want to help her and says she is crazy.
But when there is a music night at Gaze and the people from Riders are there too, Hannah cries out (nobody knows why) and Effingham and Marian decide to take Hannah away. They are going to kidnap her. When the moment is there it’s going wrong. They don’t get away and Marian and Hannah are back in Gaze again. Effingham has a fight with Alice when they are in the car back home and Effingham gets out of the car and into the hills. He gets lost in the dark and sucked into the bog. Denis comes to rescue him right in time. After Alice has come to warn them (at Gaze) Effie hasn’t come home. Later, Gerald declares he is going to take Hannah away. When Denis objects Gerald pushes him down the stairs. Nobody lends a hand. Everybody is crying the whole time. Alice and Effie are running away. They kiss. Denis and Marian are going away too. They make love in the garden. The next day is weird. Is she going or not? And all the people in the house, will they stay or leave? Confusion in everybody and a lot off Whiskey is being drunk. Gerald says Peter is coming. Later someone says he isn’t. Pip comes. He wants to take Hannah away. Gerald tells him to leave. Hannah Kills Gerald with Pip’s shotgun. Total chaos. Violet told the police Gerald was cleaning his gun and this was a terrible accident. Violet and Jamesie are looking for Hannah’s will because they think she will leave the place to them. They have locked her up in her room. Marian is sleeping in the ante-room when Jamesie wakes her up. They see a quiet movement of the doorknob of Hannah’s room. They let her out. She disappears in the garden. She jumps of a cliff. Denis is picking up Peter from the nearest town and he kills him by driving the car into the ocean and keeping Peter inside, as he tells Marian when he arrives at Gaze and hears the news about Hannah. Max and Alice and Effingham are at Gaze, Violet tells them they have to go. Alice tells Violet Hannah left everything to Max. Nobody really likes this. Denis is going away. Marian understands. “He has become Hannah.” (By killing Peter???)
When Effingham leaves by train (Marian gets on too, but in another compartment) he reads a news paper which says: Pip Lejour killed himself in a terrible accident, he was cleaning his gun and shot himself.
Main Characters
HANNAH CREAN-SMITH She is not an old woman. She is beautiful. She seems to like being imprisoned. Like she wants to suffer from something or for somebody (but for whom I don’t know) She appears to be peaceful and innocent but when she shoot Gerald you start to think she might have killed Peter indeed. She is a big walking mystery. She is sensible though. She enjoys reading (French) poetry or listening to music. I don’t understand nothing of her.
MARIAN is the “normal girl” she knows the real world. Her situation is like being left alone in a country with people you think are a little crazy and a language you completely don’t understand and you don’t want to learn it but when you get very alone you start trying to make contact and become one of them. She gets involved in the whole situation around Hannah and isn’t able to “keep her head cool”. In the end she goes home to Geoffrey who is going to marry someone else. She is going to wake up. The most chapters are written from her point (Marian is thinking this and doing that)
EFFINGHAM is a middle aged man. The only reason I put him with the main characters is because there are chapters written from his point. Otherwise he is to me as important as Violet and Gerald, Denis and Jamesie. He is in love with Hannah, he thinks. But he is in love with a fairy-tale and not with the woman. Because when he thinks about taking her away he gets the creeps. He doesn’t want to see her in “real life”. He is smart for he knows Greek but I think he is not very developed in social life. I also think he is afraid of women and love.
Theme
-A strange woman kept imprisoned in a strange way.
-A house with people in different, difficult, strange relations.
-“The depths of human soul”
Opinion
This wasn’t too difficult in the way of: no hard words but the rest was tough. At start I liked the book but the further I got the less I understood. Especially the end: Is Pip dead? Is Pip the same person as Gerald? Where is Gerald if it was Pip who died and what happened the other way around? Does Peter exist? Is Pip Peter or is Gerald Peter or someone else? But why are there three corpses? Or was it all just one imagination under the influence of to much whiskey?
Dit verslag is bedoeld als naslagwerk, niet om plagiaat mee te plegen. Gebruik geschiedt op eigen risico. De verslagen op Scholieren.com zijn ingestuurd door middelbare scholieren (tenzij anders vermeld) en worden niet gecontroleerd op fouten. Heb je in dit verslag een fout gevonden of heb je een aanvulling? Laat het dan weten door een reactie te geven.
