There are two reasons why I chose to teach Iris Murdoch’s The Bell at A-level. First, the film Iris was about to be released and I hoped this would encourage students to immerse themselves in the world of Murdoch, and second, because I simply love it.

I first read the book when I was at university, where I became fascinated with Murdoch’s writing style. However, when I read it again in preparation for teaching, I didn’t enjoy it. In fact, I panicked that I was going to be stuck with trying to enthuse students over a book I no longer cared for.

It was discussing this with some of my group that made me think it would be worth starting again. Perhaps I had been reading too many novels where plot was the soul and world of the content. Ithink it made reading this book frustrating since I kept thinking: “But what about the bell, Iris? When are these conflicts going to be resolved?”

Reading The Bell again made me appreciate the importance of experimenting with form and style. I was reminded that my original love of Murdoch had been because of her complexity of structure and characterisation. She refuses to give into convention, while using conventional aspects to parody our expectations. Although this certainly takes some getting used to, it is well worth it and leaves you with plenty to discuss. I wish I had taped some of our conversations. They were such that I spent the rest of the day thinking about the book and I am still thinking about it months after completing coursework on it. One of my students quoted Oscar Wilde in her essay: “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” Why then should we expect resolution?

The Bell was published in 1958 and is about a lay community set in a country house. Doesn’t sound too interesting, does it? The bell is used as a motif throughout the novel. There is the legend of the bell at the bottom of Imber’s lake to be rediscovered later in the book among rather farcical circumstances.

Indeed the plot surrounding the bell is an irritant as you read. It appears symbolic of hidden conflicts - it brings the community together yet highlights the transience of their community.

Once time reappears through the aftermath of the bell being restored, the community collapses with indecent speed. Characters that have been so carefully crafted and developed disappear. Community leader Michael Meade, a fascinatingly complex character, simply leaves. Troubled community member Dora seems mended and moves on to pursue a new life. Ironically, at the point when order is created and normality restored the reader is left empty, bereft.

Murdoch’s skill lies in this feeling of frustration. She has the ability to adapt the genre to suit her needs and uses what we expect from fiction, a tale, to her advantage. We are given a story in this book but one that effectively teaches us what we really want - to get into the minds of characters, to feel that we know them in the privacy of this world. Michael Meade is cheapened at the end because he is forced to become conventional. We lose the colour and intoxication of the community and its hidden secrets. Everything is exposed to the bright light of day, found wanting and so discarded. Nothing is resolved. The secrecy remains. The “black glass” of the lake that symbolised dark conflict is useless now.

How ironic that it is Michael Meade we miss. Throughout the novel he frustrates the reader. Murdoch in Michael has created a character we want to meet but do not understand. He is a homosexual priest, troubled by conflicts he is aware of but too self-conscious to face. There is a naivety in him that makes us want to see him protected and not exposed to the judgment he receives when Nick Fawley, his pupil, through fear of reprisal, confesses more than what happened to the headteacher of the school they both attended and Meade is dismissed.

Although Meade wants to sleep with Nick, their relationship is more of a spiritual meeting than motivated by lust. Meade declares his love for God and his feelings for Nick “arose deeply from the same source”. He is drawn to purity and innocence, with the tragedy that he doesn’t realise how such a relationship will be judged. What complicates the beauty of the description used to create their relationship is the fact that Meade is a man of God. A conflict is created here between sex and religion. This is what Meade personifies and fails to resolve. He may kneel at the side of Nick’s body, paralleling the way Nick used to kneel in front of him as a boy with his head on his knee, but he is no nearer to resolving why he has tried to hide himself from his community.

Nick arrives at Imber, the community set up by Meade many years after being dismissed from his teaching job. You wait for the eruption of regret, anger and recrimination but it never comes. Nick seems petulant, moody, morose, only really seeming to come alive when he parodies a preacher to Toby (a boy Michael takes under his wing) aggressively sermonising in a way perhaps that he would like to think Michael would do if he were able to unchain himself.

Michael is subject to impressionable momentary glimpses of perfection. He sees Toby in the headlights of his car and is spellbound for a moment. It isn’t a sexual contact between the two but, nevertheless, it changes everything. Toby becomes rebellious after that. He had been known for his hard work and time keeping. Now, he does what he wishes - including having sex with the older Dora in the rescued bell. It unfortunately clangs to announce their nocturnal activities to the community.

Chaos ensues. Toby awakens to a world that he didn’t know existed where rules can be broken. Surprisingly, when he leaves he goes to university as intended and is not scarred by his experiences at Imber but seems rather jovial, looking forward to his new life with no regrets.

I will leave you with the thought-provoking conclusion of a student:

“Towards the end, Michael gives in to the attempts of the Abbess to get him to confess, which he had previously resisted, feeling that he has passed a test by remaining silent, like the bell at the bottom of the lake, a suppressed identity. Although he later tells her everything, she cannot help him and has told him ‘the way was always forward’. This gives a sense that influences will continue to conflict within human beings, and that life will always be a struggle between desires and what is permitted.

“The continuity of these ideas throughout Murdoch’s novel, in its portrayal of conflicting actions and thoughts and in the symbolism behind the lake and the bell suggest that identity is made up of parallel influences, which no ego can triumph over, and that the conflicts within humans between reality and fantasy, mysticism and existentialism, sex and religion are as ongoing and inescapable as the presence of the deep, vast lake at Imber.”

Jane Christopher is deputy head at Droitwich Spa High School, Droitwich