Scan barcode
blueyorkie's review
4.0
The title comes from Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, a notoriously ambiguous painting about which of the clothed or naked women depicts which type of love. In the novel, Murdoch also repeatedly unsettles the reader whether Harriet and Blaise Gavander’s 19-year marriage or Blaise’s nine-year clandestine affair with Emily is a sacred relationship. Before the novel opens, their neighbour, crime writer Monty Small, who has conspired with Blaise, has already loved, hated and been widowed by his possibly adulterous actress wife, Sophie. Was his love sacred or profane?
mrpatperkins's review against another edition
5.0
In college I read a book by [a:Iris Murdoch|7287|Iris Murdoch|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1238673382p2/7287.jpg] called [b:Under the Net|11324|Under the Net|Iris Murdoch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388423609l/11324._SY75_.jpg|3257831]. Many years later, after I had long forgotten the title and author of the book, I recalled that I liked this book about a writer in London and this dog that he kidnapped. I didn’t even remember the plot; I only remembered that I liked the book and the story the author told. I also remembered that the book started with a “U.” For years I searched bookstores trying to find a book that triggered my memory of the “U” book, but all with no luck.
Finally, as I browsed in a bookstore through the M’s, there it was. Under the Net, by Iris Murdoch. I picked it up, took it home, and gave up after a few pages. At that point in my life, I wasn’t ready to return to Murdoch’s pensive, character-driven style. Her writing required me to get into the book, and I didn’t have the time or energy to do so.
A couple of months ago I saw Murdoch’s The Sacred and Profane Love Machine on the shelf of a local bookstore. The title itself intrigued me—how often does a good title draw in a potential reader?—but the author convinced me. And my life is in enough order to handle Murdoch at her best.
What Murdoch does best is give her characters an interior voice, often before pages of dialogue that build upon those inner thoughts. Her story centers on Blaise, a psychotherapist who lives a double life. He has a wife, Harriet, and a son David in suburban London, but a long-term mistress and another son on the other side of town. Caught in the middle is their neighbor, Monty, still grieving from the recent death of his wife. The reader watches these worlds collide with increased interest, and the flaws of each character wrap around the other characters in interesting ways. Each character has a unique philosophy of love—unrequited is a favorite—but the book never delves into the erotic, only teasing what happens behind closed doors.
Be prepared for surprises. Murdoch doesn’t shirk her literary responsibilities, and while the ending leaves much resolved, it satisfies at the same time. All may be fair in war, but nothing is fair in love.
Finally, as I browsed in a bookstore through the M’s, there it was. Under the Net, by Iris Murdoch. I picked it up, took it home, and gave up after a few pages. At that point in my life, I wasn’t ready to return to Murdoch’s pensive, character-driven style. Her writing required me to get into the book, and I didn’t have the time or energy to do so.
A couple of months ago I saw Murdoch’s The Sacred and Profane Love Machine on the shelf of a local bookstore. The title itself intrigued me—how often does a good title draw in a potential reader?—but the author convinced me. And my life is in enough order to handle Murdoch at her best.
What Murdoch does best is give her characters an interior voice, often before pages of dialogue that build upon those inner thoughts. Her story centers on Blaise, a psychotherapist who lives a double life. He has a wife, Harriet, and a son David in suburban London, but a long-term mistress and another son on the other side of town. Caught in the middle is their neighbor, Monty, still grieving from the recent death of his wife. The reader watches these worlds collide with increased interest, and the flaws of each character wrap around the other characters in interesting ways. Each character has a unique philosophy of love—unrequited is a favorite—but the book never delves into the erotic, only teasing what happens behind closed doors.
Be prepared for surprises. Murdoch doesn’t shirk her literary responsibilities, and while the ending leaves much resolved, it satisfies at the same time. All may be fair in war, but nothing is fair in love.
ken_bookhermit's review against another edition
4.0
The second book in my quest to read Iris Murdoch's oeuvre to completion, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (whose first edition cover absolutely fucking rips, compared to the edition I have) lured me in with its evocative title. And just when I thought I am going to read IM's bibliography in order (barring my introduction to her via [b:The Sea, the Sea|11229|The Sea, the Sea|Iris Murdoch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1302898449l/11229._SY75_.jpg|1410491]), which meant starting with [b:Under the Net|11324|Under the Net|Iris Murdoch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388423609l/11324._SY75_.jpg|3257831] (1954). The Sacred and Profane Love Machine Was published in 1974, which means 20 years of literary growth has occurred from here to the first. That's assuming she wrote her novels in a linear way, of course.
I like embarking on books knowing what to look for, and knowing the dual nature of the sacred and the profane, I figured this would be a prominent factor in the narrative. Sure enough, it has something to do with adultery. Blaise is in a relationship with two women: Harriette (the sacred) and Emily (the profane). And beyond that is further sources of said duality: the two sons (Luca and David) and Monty's "split" selves presented through Milo and Magnus. But the primary idea of the double forms of love as assigned to the two women is too easy (as Martin Amis put it). One can have both the sacred and the profane in either love.
The "egoism and moral failing" of Blaise is indeed prominent throughout the story. To the point where I felt cheated by the turn of events at the end of the novel. Though I'm trying not to gauge this in terms of what occurs in plot and instead considering it in a stance of the symbolic, I can surmise that the novel's outcome is largely for Emily's character, not Blaise.
What interests me in an overarching sense is the function of the "machine" which IM frequently speaks of, and is present in the novel's title. In the novel, there are many allusions to a non-specific "machine": once during Blaise and Emily's conflict: about ceasing to be human to be a machine; Monty's mother (Leonie) and her "great machine of maternal love"; of dreams as deep cause, "of machinery"; Monty's internal monologue regarding the "machine" that will allow him to avoid reality (as a mental operation?); and Blaise in his monologue about the "machinery of [Harriet's] forgiveness".
This is an overarching concern because the "machine" is also mentioned in my all time favourite quote of IM from [b:The Sea, the Sea|11229|The Sea, the Sea|Iris Murdoch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1302898449l/11229._SY75_.jpg|1410491] as "the great useless machine of my love".
On a vapid note, I kept flipping and flopping on whether to rate this as three or four stars (3 because Blaise is a jackoff, 4 because IM's philosophy and literally everything else). I settled on 4 thanks to the ending. Edgar is my favourite character from this lot.
I like embarking on books knowing what to look for, and knowing the dual nature of the sacred and the profane, I figured this would be a prominent factor in the narrative. Sure enough, it has something to do with adultery. Blaise is in a relationship with two women: Harriette (the sacred) and Emily (the profane). And beyond that is further sources of said duality: the two sons (Luca and David) and Monty's "split" selves presented through Milo and Magnus. But the primary idea of the double forms of love as assigned to the two women is too easy (as Martin Amis put it). One can have both the sacred and the profane in either love.
The "egoism and moral failing" of Blaise is indeed prominent throughout the story. To the point where I felt cheated by the turn of events at the end of the novel. Though I'm trying not to gauge this in terms of what occurs in plot and instead considering it in a stance of the symbolic, I can surmise that the novel's outcome is largely for Emily's character, not Blaise.
What interests me in an overarching sense is the function of the "machine" which IM frequently speaks of, and is present in the novel's title. In the novel, there are many allusions to a non-specific "machine": once during Blaise and Emily's conflict: about ceasing to be human to be a machine; Monty's mother (Leonie) and her "great machine of maternal love"; of dreams as deep cause, "of machinery"; Monty's internal monologue regarding the "machine" that will allow him to avoid reality (as a mental operation?); and Blaise in his monologue about the "machinery of [Harriet's] forgiveness".
This is an overarching concern because the "machine" is also mentioned in my all time favourite quote of IM from [b:The Sea, the Sea|11229|The Sea, the Sea|Iris Murdoch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1302898449l/11229._SY75_.jpg|1410491] as "the great useless machine of my love".
On a vapid note, I kept flipping and flopping on whether to rate this as three or four stars (3 because Blaise is a jackoff, 4 because IM's philosophy and literally everything else). I settled on 4 thanks to the ending. Edgar is my favourite character from this lot.
kansass's review against another edition
4.0
"En estos momentos no estás sino imponiendo una falsa idea de libertad y de poder a una emoción efervescente, un romántico sentimiento por mí, un débil y confuso deseo de ser ayudada. Despierta, vuelve a la realidad. Estás muy lejos, quizá a muchos años, de un profundo cambio en tu vida."
Me gusta esta cita que Iris Murdoch pone en boca de Monty, uno de los personajes centrales de esta novela, donde de alguna forma hay un breve momento de lucidez entre tantos amor desleal, tanto autoengaño para combatir la soledad, tanta obsesión por encajar en la familia perfecta... Monty se dirige a Harriet Gavender que a pesar de haber ejercido durante años de perfecta y plácida esposa, no ha podido evitar que su marido llevara una doble vida durante años, y por mucho que haya intentado “comprenderle”, al final se haya visto abandonada por él. Monty, un escritor de novelas de éxito y vecino de los Gavender, es el único que siempre ha sabido de este engaño y por tanto, es a su vez el observador más objetivo de una vida familiar de fingimientos. Los personajes de esta novela engañan, y se autoengañan continuamente, quizás sea la forma más cómoda de justificar ciertas carencias.
"¡Qué harta estoy del maldito Blaise! Sus necesidades, sus teorías, su desafios. ¿No ha obtenido ya bastante de nosotras destrozando nuestras vidas de arriba a abajo, para que encima le enviemos a estudiar Medicina mientras nosotras nos apretamos el cinturón ¿Qué hay de mis necesidades, para variar? Yo también tengo un cerebro."
Esta es la tercera novela que leo de Iris Murdoch y aquí vuelven a repetirse muchos de los temas que me llamaron la atención en "El Mar, El Mar", pero esencialmente aquí se centra en la búsqueda del amor, un amor que siempre parece fuera de tiempo o desincronizado, o quizás un amor que sirve como excusa para otras carencias. Blaise Gavender lleva años engañando a Harriet, su mujer, con la que vive en una acogedora casa en el campo con su hijo David y rodeado de perros, y por otra parte mantiene a otra familia en un piso bastante más humilde, con su amante Emily el hijo que tuvo con ella, Luca. Aquí hay una especie de dicotomía de un hombre que vive dos vidas paralelas, aparentemente atormentado por la culpa pero realmente está encantado con la situación... En este aspecto, Iris Murdoch hace un retrato fascinante sobre una forma de vida… personajes que no saben o no pueden estar solos y sin embargo se autoengañan continuamente usando la palabra amor.
"-Me parece que si Harriet llegara a saber lo de Emily, el mundo se acabaría en una gigantesca explosión.
-Para tu desgracia, no sucederá así. Todos seguiréis existiendo, durmiendo y comiendo y yendo al retrete."
Los personajes creados aquí por Iris Murdoch son una delicia: Blaise el psicoterapeuta embaucador obsesionado porque no tiene el título de medicina, Harriet, la esposa y ama de casa perfecta, su hijo David que con dieciséis años y con aspecto de dios vikingo, parece permamentemente vivir fuera de la realidad, Emily la amante, que vive en el exilio social porque su perfil no se corresponde con lo politicamente correcto y finalmente, Luca, el niño de ocho de años, el único cuerdo en una familia de histéricos. Luca es una delicia de personaje, el punto neurálgico alrededor del cual Iris Murdoch construye su visión de lo que considera la humanidad en su estado esencial.
"Qué llena estaba de vanos arrepentimientos. -Ojalá, ojalá, ojalá -meditaba por enésima vez-, le hubiera obligado a dejar a la vaca de su mujer entonces, nueve años atrás, cuando le tenia completamente loco, cuando era mi esclavo."
Es una novela que parece a veces una obra de teatro, solo dos o tres escenarios, las dos casas, donde personajes entran, salen, se encuentran, se aman, entran en conflicto y porque no, también se odian a muerte. Aquí no hay tantos personajes como en "El Mar, El Mar" y sin embargo, todos y cada uno de ellos tiene su importancia, su clave en la historia. Iris Murdoch vuelve a contarnos muchos de los hechos a través de una cierta simbología, los sueños por ejemplo, donde algunos personajes los relatan con todo lujo de detalles o la mitología griega. En definitiva es una novela que he disfrutado muchísimo porque aunque Iris Murdoch está continuamente cuestionando los comportamientos humanos, al mismo tiempo hay escenas hermosísimas que se quedan grabadas.
La traducción es de Camilla Batlles.
"Las mujeres siempre queréis que los hombres se derrumben-dijo Monty-, para así volver a ponerlos en pie. Ya estoy lo bastante derrumbado, créeme, sin necesidad de hacer demostraciones. No me estoy comportando como un hombre. Si tuviera un trabajo corriente tendría que cumplirlo. Como estoy autoempleado, puedo pasarme el día meditando con amargura. El desconsuelo no es raro. Uno debe tratarlo como si fuera la gripe. Hasta Niobe dejó por fin de llorar y quiso comer algo."
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022/06/la-maquina-del-amor-sagrado-y-profano.html
Me gusta esta cita que Iris Murdoch pone en boca de Monty, uno de los personajes centrales de esta novela, donde de alguna forma hay un breve momento de lucidez entre tantos amor desleal, tanto autoengaño para combatir la soledad, tanta obsesión por encajar en la familia perfecta... Monty se dirige a Harriet Gavender que a pesar de haber ejercido durante años de perfecta y plácida esposa, no ha podido evitar que su marido llevara una doble vida durante años, y por mucho que haya intentado “comprenderle”, al final se haya visto abandonada por él. Monty, un escritor de novelas de éxito y vecino de los Gavender, es el único que siempre ha sabido de este engaño y por tanto, es a su vez el observador más objetivo de una vida familiar de fingimientos. Los personajes de esta novela engañan, y se autoengañan continuamente, quizás sea la forma más cómoda de justificar ciertas carencias.
"¡Qué harta estoy del maldito Blaise! Sus necesidades, sus teorías, su desafios. ¿No ha obtenido ya bastante de nosotras destrozando nuestras vidas de arriba a abajo, para que encima le enviemos a estudiar Medicina mientras nosotras nos apretamos el cinturón ¿Qué hay de mis necesidades, para variar? Yo también tengo un cerebro."
Esta es la tercera novela que leo de Iris Murdoch y aquí vuelven a repetirse muchos de los temas que me llamaron la atención en "El Mar, El Mar", pero esencialmente aquí se centra en la búsqueda del amor, un amor que siempre parece fuera de tiempo o desincronizado, o quizás un amor que sirve como excusa para otras carencias. Blaise Gavender lleva años engañando a Harriet, su mujer, con la que vive en una acogedora casa en el campo con su hijo David y rodeado de perros, y por otra parte mantiene a otra familia en un piso bastante más humilde, con su amante Emily el hijo que tuvo con ella, Luca. Aquí hay una especie de dicotomía de un hombre que vive dos vidas paralelas, aparentemente atormentado por la culpa pero realmente está encantado con la situación... En este aspecto, Iris Murdoch hace un retrato fascinante sobre una forma de vida… personajes que no saben o no pueden estar solos y sin embargo se autoengañan continuamente usando la palabra amor.
"-Me parece que si Harriet llegara a saber lo de Emily, el mundo se acabaría en una gigantesca explosión.
-Para tu desgracia, no sucederá así. Todos seguiréis existiendo, durmiendo y comiendo y yendo al retrete."
Los personajes creados aquí por Iris Murdoch son una delicia: Blaise el psicoterapeuta embaucador obsesionado porque no tiene el título de medicina, Harriet, la esposa y ama de casa perfecta, su hijo David que con dieciséis años y con aspecto de dios vikingo, parece permamentemente vivir fuera de la realidad, Emily la amante, que vive en el exilio social porque su perfil no se corresponde con lo politicamente correcto y finalmente, Luca, el niño de ocho de años, el único cuerdo en una familia de histéricos. Luca es una delicia de personaje, el punto neurálgico alrededor del cual Iris Murdoch construye su visión de lo que considera la humanidad en su estado esencial.
"Qué llena estaba de vanos arrepentimientos. -Ojalá, ojalá, ojalá -meditaba por enésima vez-, le hubiera obligado a dejar a la vaca de su mujer entonces, nueve años atrás, cuando le tenia completamente loco, cuando era mi esclavo."
Es una novela que parece a veces una obra de teatro, solo dos o tres escenarios, las dos casas, donde personajes entran, salen, se encuentran, se aman, entran en conflicto y porque no, también se odian a muerte. Aquí no hay tantos personajes como en "El Mar, El Mar" y sin embargo, todos y cada uno de ellos tiene su importancia, su clave en la historia. Iris Murdoch vuelve a contarnos muchos de los hechos a través de una cierta simbología, los sueños por ejemplo, donde algunos personajes los relatan con todo lujo de detalles o la mitología griega. En definitiva es una novela que he disfrutado muchísimo porque aunque Iris Murdoch está continuamente cuestionando los comportamientos humanos, al mismo tiempo hay escenas hermosísimas que se quedan grabadas.
La traducción es de Camilla Batlles.
"Las mujeres siempre queréis que los hombres se derrumben-dijo Monty-, para así volver a ponerlos en pie. Ya estoy lo bastante derrumbado, créeme, sin necesidad de hacer demostraciones. No me estoy comportando como un hombre. Si tuviera un trabajo corriente tendría que cumplirlo. Como estoy autoempleado, puedo pasarme el día meditando con amargura. El desconsuelo no es raro. Uno debe tratarlo como si fuera la gripe. Hasta Niobe dejó por fin de llorar y quiso comer algo."
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022/06/la-maquina-del-amor-sagrado-y-profano.html
cais's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 stars
“Extreme continuing unhappiness often consoles itself with images of death which may in a sense be idle, but which can play a vital part in consolation and also in the continuance of illusion. If that happens, I am dead, consoles, and also dulls the edge of speculation and even of conscience. It is another way of saying, to me that cannot happen.”
My initial thought when finishing this was it is the bleakest & most cynical of all the Murdoch books I’ve read so far. Or, to put it another way, it’s an accurate portrayal of human behavior. Murdoch’s humor is not lost here, but it certainly does not drive this story. This is a brilliant book, intelligent & entertaining. There are glorious descriptions of settings, of nature (including a motley pack of dogs) which delighted me. But this book is also distressing. I was nearly done with it but put off reading the last 20 pages until the following day because I needed a moment to accept what had just happened in the story.
Marriages & love affairs & domesticity, as per usual with Iris, are the vehicles through which this story is told & through which morality is examined. Relationships are turned upside down, concessions are made, concessions are retracted, people get what they want, but then miss what they had & scheme destructively (both intentionally & not). I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are winners & losers and who is which is perhaps not as obvious as it first seems. Which love is the sacred & which is the profane?
Most of the loves portrayed here are distorted by egoism & fantasy. Some of the characters encompass Murdoch’s concept of the void (inspired by Simone Weil), one of her ethical modes of being, which is despair or affliction in opposition to transcendence, which is necessary for goodness (morality). Some people try to fill the void with lies & fantasy rather than experiencing the reality of pain. Fantasizing makes the world & other people more & more abstract, meaning we can’t really see them. If we can’t really see them, we can’t treat them with moral consideration & they become a means to an end, the end being the fulfilling of fantasy, the maintaining of lies. It’s all wrong, but people live entire lives this way. Entire relationships (like ones in this book), some lasting years & years, are lived this way. As Iris noted in one of her philosophy books, “being in love, the insanity of it.”
“It might be perfectly true that there was no deep sense in things, that nothing and no one had real dignity and real deserving, that ‘the world’ was just a jumble and a rubble and a dream, but was it not supreme cheating to make this senselessness seem to be the very essence of one’s being? He might be a very shoddy artist, but he had the artist’s capacity to cheat. Better surely to live as ordinary clever people live, by wit and pain and sex, finding these at last in the pinnacle of one’s spirit. Better to resort to the holiness of suffering and to consent to give some name (‘love’ for instance) to the ground of one’s being, rather than to attempt this radical undoing of natural essence.”
“Extreme continuing unhappiness often consoles itself with images of death which may in a sense be idle, but which can play a vital part in consolation and also in the continuance of illusion. If that happens, I am dead, consoles, and also dulls the edge of speculation and even of conscience. It is another way of saying, to me that cannot happen.”
My initial thought when finishing this was it is the bleakest & most cynical of all the Murdoch books I’ve read so far. Or, to put it another way, it’s an accurate portrayal of human behavior. Murdoch’s humor is not lost here, but it certainly does not drive this story. This is a brilliant book, intelligent & entertaining. There are glorious descriptions of settings, of nature (including a motley pack of dogs) which delighted me. But this book is also distressing. I was nearly done with it but put off reading the last 20 pages until the following day because I needed a moment to accept what had just happened in the story.
Marriages & love affairs & domesticity, as per usual with Iris, are the vehicles through which this story is told & through which morality is examined. Relationships are turned upside down, concessions are made, concessions are retracted, people get what they want, but then miss what they had & scheme destructively (both intentionally & not). I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are winners & losers and who is which is perhaps not as obvious as it first seems. Which love is the sacred & which is the profane?
Most of the loves portrayed here are distorted by egoism & fantasy. Some of the characters encompass Murdoch’s concept of the void (inspired by Simone Weil), one of her ethical modes of being, which is despair or affliction in opposition to transcendence, which is necessary for goodness (morality). Some people try to fill the void with lies & fantasy rather than experiencing the reality of pain. Fantasizing makes the world & other people more & more abstract, meaning we can’t really see them. If we can’t really see them, we can’t treat them with moral consideration & they become a means to an end, the end being the fulfilling of fantasy, the maintaining of lies. It’s all wrong, but people live entire lives this way. Entire relationships (like ones in this book), some lasting years & years, are lived this way. As Iris noted in one of her philosophy books, “being in love, the insanity of it.”
“It might be perfectly true that there was no deep sense in things, that nothing and no one had real dignity and real deserving, that ‘the world’ was just a jumble and a rubble and a dream, but was it not supreme cheating to make this senselessness seem to be the very essence of one’s being? He might be a very shoddy artist, but he had the artist’s capacity to cheat. Better surely to live as ordinary clever people live, by wit and pain and sex, finding these at last in the pinnacle of one’s spirit. Better to resort to the holiness of suffering and to consent to give some name (‘love’ for instance) to the ground of one’s being, rather than to attempt this radical undoing of natural essence.”
thediverswife's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
brookesbooks_and_dogs's review against another edition
3.0
I’m not sure how I feel about this one... is it 3 Stars or 4? Love or hate?
smcleish's review against another edition
3.0
Originally published on my blog here in November 2004.
A theme which runs through most, and possibly all, of Iris Murdoch's novels is that of love or affection which is misplaced or unequal. In The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, it is central to the novel, and it is a feature of all the relationships between the characters. So there is a mother whose teenage son is beginning to strain for independence; a man crippled by grief following the death of his wife; another man who is regretting the affair he has been carrying on for the last eight years, and so on.
The plot of the novel is basically the story of what happens when Blaise is driven to admit his affair - and small son - to his completely unsuspecting wife. This of course leads to dramatic changes in all the relationships depicted, which centre around the couple. There is little more to the novel than this; it is a study of character and relationships, and how they are transformed when this kind of cataclysm shatters their stable pattern. From a philosophical or psychological point of view, it is clear that Murdoch was interested in how character and relationships affect each other, and how circumstance affects them both. (This could also almost be suggested as the principal interest of the novel form itself.) It could be argued that the interplay between character and circumstance determines relationships, but Murdoch's view is a little more subtle, as characters are influenced and evolve through the action of the other components.
Unusually for an Iris Murdoch novel, there is not much discussion of religion in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, despite its title (which is not one of Murdoch's best, in my opinion). I am not sure why this is, though she may well have felt that adding more would detract from the various elements already present. The "Sacred and Profane" of the title would then refer to the different kinds of love in the novel and their varying degrees of what might be termed legitimacy. No relationship which is as one sided as those depicted in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine could be considered totally legitimate; this is a work about the shades of grey that determine our perception of this measure, and about how much this perception could differ from the black and white ideas of legitimacy which tend to be used by society generally.
Initially, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine does not seem to be one of Murdoch's better novels. This feeling is perhaps initially prompted by the sub-hippy culture title, but it also begins in rather a dull way. It becomes interesting immediately on the cataclysmic revelation of Blaise's infidelity. It is definitely worth persevering with, but even so it is not up there with [b:The Sea, the Sea|11229|The Sea, the Sea|Iris Murdoch|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1302898449s/11229.jpg|1410491], [b:The Bell|11230|The Bell |Iris Murdoch|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309376864s/11230.jpg|1169601] or [b:Under the Net|11324|Under the Net|Iris Murdoch|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348198051s/11324.jpg|3257831].
A theme which runs through most, and possibly all, of Iris Murdoch's novels is that of love or affection which is misplaced or unequal. In The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, it is central to the novel, and it is a feature of all the relationships between the characters. So there is a mother whose teenage son is beginning to strain for independence; a man crippled by grief following the death of his wife; another man who is regretting the affair he has been carrying on for the last eight years, and so on.
The plot of the novel is basically the story of what happens when Blaise is driven to admit his affair - and small son - to his completely unsuspecting wife. This of course leads to dramatic changes in all the relationships depicted, which centre around the couple. There is little more to the novel than this; it is a study of character and relationships, and how they are transformed when this kind of cataclysm shatters their stable pattern. From a philosophical or psychological point of view, it is clear that Murdoch was interested in how character and relationships affect each other, and how circumstance affects them both. (This could also almost be suggested as the principal interest of the novel form itself.) It could be argued that the interplay between character and circumstance determines relationships, but Murdoch's view is a little more subtle, as characters are influenced and evolve through the action of the other components.
Unusually for an Iris Murdoch novel, there is not much discussion of religion in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, despite its title (which is not one of Murdoch's best, in my opinion). I am not sure why this is, though she may well have felt that adding more would detract from the various elements already present. The "Sacred and Profane" of the title would then refer to the different kinds of love in the novel and their varying degrees of what might be termed legitimacy. No relationship which is as one sided as those depicted in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine could be considered totally legitimate; this is a work about the shades of grey that determine our perception of this measure, and about how much this perception could differ from the black and white ideas of legitimacy which tend to be used by society generally.
Initially, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine does not seem to be one of Murdoch's better novels. This feeling is perhaps initially prompted by the sub-hippy culture title, but it also begins in rather a dull way. It becomes interesting immediately on the cataclysmic revelation of Blaise's infidelity. It is definitely worth persevering with, but even so it is not up there with [b:The Sea, the Sea|11229|The Sea, the Sea|Iris Murdoch|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1302898449s/11229.jpg|1410491], [b:The Bell|11230|The Bell |Iris Murdoch|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309376864s/11230.jpg|1169601] or [b:Under the Net|11324|Under the Net|Iris Murdoch|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348198051s/11324.jpg|3257831].
charliemudd's review against another edition
4.0
Solid Murdoch with more plot than usual. She is the best of all time at fiction that studies human morals and behavior. An adulterous psychologist's secret love child comes to light, and the book highlights how each of the people in his (the psychologist’s) life handles the situation: his neighbor, a famous writer who has helped him through his deception; his son, who hates the new kid; his mistress, who loses her leverage; and his wife, who tries to handle it with goodness, yet control.