A Severed Head | A Severed Head

At a glance:

Author: Iris Murdoch
First Published: 1961
Type of Work: Psychological realism
Time of Work: The early 1960’s
Setting: London, Cambridge, and Oxford
Principal Characters: Martin Lynch-Gibbon, Antonia, Georgie Hands, Alexander, Palmer Anderson, Honor Klein
Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Satire, Farce
Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, Self-discovery, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Marriage, Betrayal, Friendship, Incest, Obsession, England or English people, Reality, Alcohol, Adultery, London, Naivete, Fog
Locales: London, England, Cambridge, England, Oxford, England

Martin Lynch-Gibbon tells this story, he informs the reader, because it is about his loss of “great peace,” “the end of the old innocent world,” and about how he “was plunged into the nightmare” his life has become. An essential part of his peace is his relationship with Georgie Hands, his lover of two years. Even though she had become pregnant with his child and had had an abortion, this did nothing to disrupt his sense of peace and tranquillity, for—because she had dealt with the abortion alone, an illustration, he thinks, of her “toughness, and the...

A Severed Head | A Severed Head

At a glance:

The Novel

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