There are two types of sermon: religious (like James’s and Michael’s) and non-religious (like Nick’s). A sermon is a speech in which someone advises other people how they should behave in order to be better it is a moral lecture which tries to edify the listener. These are the three sermons, which are directly presented to the reader: James’s, Michael’s, and Nick’s. Having said that, which passages or characters should be the starting point of our moral analysis? The Bell has three important passages from which the moral analysis of the novel could start. The planning should start with certain passages or characters whose analysis would guide the overall moral analysis of the whole novel. For these reasons, an analysis of its morality requires careful planning – an unplanned analysis of the morality of The Bell is doomed to be biased.
However, The Bell is a lengthy novel with a wide range of characters and a highly complex plot. It is not asserted that this is the only possible reading of the novel, but that it is one among those which are possible. In this paper The Bell will be read as a moral study which gathers together the different moral proposals that various characters uphold and live in accordance with. The plot of The Bell focuses on the religious lay community that lives at Imber Court. This setting is inhabited by two independent communities: on the one hand, a religious lay community lives at Imber Court, while the Abbey is inhabited by a closed order of nuns presided over by the Abbess. Within the complex of Imber, the market garden, the three rivers, the immense lake, the large house of Imber Court, and the Abbey are important features. The setting is the isolated complex of Imber, which is in a rural woodland area in England.
The Bell is Iris Murdoch’s fourth novel, first published in 1958.
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