Hallfway through The Bell by Iris Murdoch

I’m not sure if I read Iris Murdoch’s novel The Bell (‘58) before and I still haven’t read it being at the half way stage. I can project forward and feel my way towards possibilities only to have them confounded by the author. She will herself have been surprised by the lurch of the Jungian active imagination.. The recurring dream of Michael’s, the leader of the Anglican Community at Imber, is it clairvoyant? High, high, high, verily unto plain chant and incense Anglican. Smells and The Bell, quite. Will the period of very dry weather reveal the old bell in the lake? Will mythic history cast its doom on a suitable victim, the postulant Catherine. Why is homasegsshuall (Oxbridge) Michael putting Toby in the way of Nick his old love? Vicarious seduction or does he even see it? One’s own motives being opaque to one is the novel’s strength. Spontaneous goodness and overwrought goodness, which is the better would in a philosophical treatise run close to mere quibbling and deontic dancing on the head of a principal. We notice these things because that is what we do, yet they doesn’t impose and force acquaintance.

Tension is abuilding and the fine weather will be, should be, must be broken by a thunderstorm. Could I be wrong about this?