Charles
Arrowby has been in the theatre. His life has been lived in and through the
arts. He has rubbed shoulders with actors, even film stars. If he has a
weakness, it is not for name dropping. Quite soon after meeting him, one feels
that such a character would have a tendency to relive his experiences, to list
his successes and deny his failures. But Charles refers only rarely to anything
professional, and when he does, it is shot through with merely personal
relevance. Eventually we realise that perhaps Charles Arrowby is something of a
martyr to his past and that the unfulfilled aspects of his personal life have
come to dominate his mind, his present and indeed his future.
He
has certainly had many relationships with women, but he has never married. He
displays no non-heterosexual inclinations. He claims, however, to have lived a
fast lane life, but at the same time there is little evidence of excess in Iris
Murdoch’s character. At one stage, admitting he needs a drink, he pours a dry
sherry, albeit a large one.
People
from the past appear in his life. A neighbour turns out to be an old
flame. Relatives, some long lost, decide
to visit. It is almost as if by visiting these people via the pages of his
journal Charles Arrowby is conjuring spirits from his memory. Chief among these
unexpected encounters, however, is the reappearance of a former lover he
suddenly decides has always been his most likely means of achieving happiness.
Always he has called her Hartley. Her current husband of decades has always
preferred to call her Mary, but Charles persists in using the name he knew her
by when they were young and less than innocent, but never consummated.
And
it is through this developing fixation on Harley that we begin to appreciate
just how unrelenting and unforgiving is the selfishness of Charles Arrowby. He
is self-obsessed to the extent that he believes unquestioningly in myths he
himself creates, irrespective of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He is
dependent on the drug of himself, and seems to need ever-increasing doses to
satisfy his obsession. He sees monsters and believes his perception. He is told
what is surely true and refuses to accept it.
What
becomes so enigmatic about his new life is the fact that people from his past
keep reappearing. Some of them try to kill him. Some throw stones at him. Some
sleep on his floor and refuse to leave. Some enter his service, and some of
those out of spite. Some recall affairs and provoke the stirring of sexual
memories. Some demand their pound of flesh for the wrongs he has committed.
All
the time, through thick and thin, through contradiction and conflict, however,
Charles Arrowby maintains this single-minded devotion to himself and his
self-generated need for affirmation. It is almost as if he is captive within
his own limitations, unable to break out even when others identify the path or
lead the way. And this happens repeatedly simply because he cannot imagine any
opinion that might differ from his own conviction.
Perhaps
Charles Arrowby’s eventually mundane existence is mirrored in all of us. We
believe implicitly in our own sophistication, a quality that others on the
outside might not even recognise. We assume our own complexity to the extent
that we cannot begin to appreciate another view. But what also arises from this
analysis of the self is that when we try to recall the past, we inevitably have
to reinvent it. Memory thus becomes imagination and reconstructed reality
becomes fiction, but constructed wholly in our own image.
