It is probably impossible to read several of Muriel Spark's novels without realizing that her Roman Catholicism is much more than an item of biographical interest: it is a potent force which has profoundly affected the shape of her art. For Miss Spark does not stop short at simply bringing the question of Catholicism into her work; she has chosen to place the traditionally Christian outlook at the very heart of everything she writes.

This "outlook" is perhaps best illustrated by one of her short stories, "A Playhouse Called Remarkable". In this, a character called Moon Biglow recounts how he and five other men descended from the moon shortly after the Flood. At that time mankind was a bored and dying race, with no conception of higher pursuits. Moon and his compatriots introduced the concept of art by opening a playhouse in which they enacted the "Changing Drama of the Moon", a myth-sequence relating to the eternal realities of the heavenly bodies. Such was the enthusiastic response to this drama that the people of the earth were rejuvenated, rediscovering the will to live. But this enthusiasm did not last. An opponent of Moon and his friends managed to suppress the drama, to expel most of the moon men, and to lure the people back to "pure and primitive passions". Nonetheless, the memory of the playhouse was not altogether stamped out. Earth-born artists gradually appeared, "attempting to express the lost moon drama". From that time on, Moon insists, the artist's task has been to "rise up and proclaim the virtue of the remarkable things that are missing from the earth".

The main point of the story is clear enough: all that is fine and good and creative in life comes from another, higher realm…. Translated into religious terms (and the reference to the Flood and such paradoxical phrases as "the uprising of my downfall" prompt us to do so), this simple tale is proclaiming the most basic of Christian truths: that all man's blessings emanate from God; that, in the absence of God, man is nothing more than a savage. (p. 79)

Significantly, this point of view is clearly enunciated in the very first of Miss Spark's novels, The Comforters. One of the characters, a woman called Georgina Hogg, possesses no spiritual insight; despite her nominal Catholicism, she is incapable of looking beyond her own small, mean world. As a result, she is a beast, a Hogg, a creature devoid of soul; and also a nothing, a vacuum, someone who ceases to exist when she is alone or unnoticed by others…. She is a subtle reminder in the novel that man, once dissociated from an eternal, cosmic plan, is a meaningless and therefore horrific phenomenon.

Yet this belief does not lead Miss Spark into despair…. [She] sees the passing parade of ephemeral life as something potentially vital, which can be transfigured and even partially redeemed by an expression of freedom and energy….

But Muriel Spark's response to the expression of freedom and vitality, while it is sympathetic, is by no means uncritical. She is no admirer of mere libertarianism. And it is in this respect, above all, that she finds a place within the Christian tradition in literature. For her, as for Hopkins, the falcon, the Heraclitean fire, the energy inherent in man and in the rest of nature, is magnificent, but it is also tragically or foolishly wasted unless it is directed towards some higher end. (p. 80)

[The] Hopkins-like conflict between time and eternity, between the vital, ephemeral processes of nature and the unchanging sphere of God, is present in all of Miss Spark's work. However, it is not always resolved [neatly]…. On a number of occasions the conflict is evoked, but left intentionally unresolved; and it is in these instances, perhaps, that Miss Spark's work rises to its highest peak of perceptive and descriptive skill. (p. 81)

[For] Muriel Spark, as for all Christian thinkers, man is both contained by a stifling physical universe, and also possessed of a spirit which seeks to transcend that limited state; he is a creature of two conflicting worlds, a thing both of earth and of heaven. Which of these warring forces finally secures his soul, whether (in Biblical phrase) he is lost or found, is a question to which there is often no conclusive answer. And it is this question, together with the ambiguities and tensions arising from it, that dictates the form of what are probably Muriel Spark's two finest novels: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Ballad of Peckham Rye.

In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie we can draw a sharp distinction between story and structure. As the broken time sequence suggests, the story is not wholly significant in itself: its main function is to illustrate and develop one of the most ancient of all mythical patterns—the struggle for a human soul between the forces of darkness and light. There are, of course, no angels or devils in the novel; yet the opposing extremes to which the soul is drawn are as present in this twentieth-century fable as they are in Dr Faustus or Paradise Lost. The only thing which is missing—and it is this, perhaps, which makes the novel a distinctly modern work—is the quality of anguish. Faustus and Lucifer are torn by their conflict, whereas Jean Brodie is completely unconscious of the disparate elements embattled within her. It is not she, but those with whom she comes into contact, who act out the Faustian role of indecision and suffering. (p. 83)

[We] are left with an ambiguous impression. Does Jean Brodie lighten or darken her world? Is she a spirit of freedom or of oppression? Does she redeem herself or damn herself eternally? The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is specifically designed, not to answer, but simply to pose such questions…. Seen in her contradictory fulness, there is something almost archetypal about Jean Brodie. Neither wholly innocent nor completely guilty, trapped in a limited, physical environment yet forever seduced by a sense of something greater, she stands as a compelling representative of the Christian view of man. (p. 85)

When we turn to The Ballad of Peckham Rye the mood changes abruptly: tragi-comedy becomes farce; the grand commonplace of Edinburgh gives way to the down-at-heel, sinister, and comic commonplace of Peckham; and the dignified figure of Jean Brodie is replaced by the cavorting, irresponsible figure of the jester. Despite these changes, however, the challenge of the novel remains the same. Once again we are faced with the task of judging the central character. Who is he? Is he Dougal Douglas or Douglas Dougal? He answers to both names. What are we to make of his claim that he is growing horns? They may be a sign that he is the Devil incarnate; but it is just as likely, in context, that they are the horns of Moses, a proof of his superior knowledge…. At the heart of all such puzzling incidents and situations lies a single enigma—the way in which we are intended to interpret Douglas's devastating effect on the settled life of Peckham…. [Does] the disorder which follows in his wake emanate from him or from the people themselves, from their blind and frightened reaction to his exuberance? (p. 86)

[There are] two distinct ways of responding to Douglas. Ultimately, he is neither angel nor fiend, but rather a modern Proteus … in whom we may discern the complex interaction of conflicting attitudes. As with Jean Brodie, this fusion of opposing traits makes it impossible for us to pass a final judgment upon him. His is the vaunting humanist spirit which, following the example of Faustus, teeters perpetually between redemption and damnation.

Given Muriel Spark's religious beliefs there is only one possible way of escaping from this limbo—and that is for the Jean Brodies and Douglases of this world to dedicate their vitality and vision to the service of God. This solution (identical with Hopkins's "Golden Echo") is subtly referred to (though not developed) in both novels….

Muriel Spark expands on this traditionally Christian solution to humanity's problems in several other novels. But in only one does she give equal weight both to the conflict inherent in such humanist characters as Jean Brodie, and also to the Christian method of resolving that conflict. This novel, The Girls of Slender Means, is particularly interesting, because it reveals clearly not only the source, but also the possible limitations of her artistic vision. Here, the ambiguous, contradictory role of Jean Brodie is played largely by the girls themselves. To some extent they represent the purity and vigour of youth, a facet of their natures that fascinates Nicholas. Seen in this light, the "slender means" of the title carry strong suggestions of an almost holy poverty. But their means are slender in another sense: beneath the youthful ebullience, there lurks a spiritual poverty, an unthinking animal self-centredness. (p. 87)

[Like Jean Brodie, the girls in this novel] are two things at once, a single composite image of both redeemed and fallen man. (p. 88)

The Girls of Slender Means embodies a full statement of Muriel Spark's religious philosophy. Moreover …, it works this statement into a complex symbolic pattern, pleasing in itself. Even if we feel no sympathy for the philosophy, we can still respond to the work of art—to its perfect shape and symmetry. In this respect it is typical of most of her work. But this point in itself raises a problem. Muriel Spark is doing more than simply construct aesthetically pleasing artefacts: she is also writing predominantly Christian novels in an age which is largely, if not increasingly, non-Christian. What significance can such work have for the atheist or agnostic reader? To appreciate it, must he tolerate the dogmatic viewpoint (for essentially her views are dogmatic) and respond to the perfection of form, admire the manipulation of ideas whilst ignoring the ideas themselves? (p. 90)

Muriel Spark does not, strictly speaking, belong to the past; she writes in a contemporary idiom about contemporary people. Even more to the point, she uses the medium of the novel; and it can be argued that our response to the novel differs in kind from, say, our response to lyric or narrative poetry. Because of its length, its ability to give us both detailed observation and breadth of view, it approaches more closely than any other genre to the processes of everyday life; it raises our expectations, prepares us for a direct critical re-enactment of the lives we lead. For this reason we cannot overlook the dogmatic content of a twentieth-century novel as easily as we might overlook the limited theology of Paradise Lost.

In The Girls of Slender Means, for example, post-war London is vividly evoked. The receding sounds of war, the shortages, the rationing, the comparative poverty, the possibility of an unexploded bomb buried in the heart of London, all these elements do more than symbolize the notion of man trapped in a temporal universe, besieged by uncertainty. They also revitalize our sense of a concrete situation, they create a recognizable image of the mid-twentieth century. Yet, disturbingly, the alternatives which the novel discusses do not altogether accord with that image…. [The central male character Nicholas] has to choose between order, which takes the form of the traditional, established truth of Christ, and the vigorous anarchy of animal life. But surely there are other choices open to him. As an inhabitant of post-war London, he should at least show some cognizance of current alternatives, of those modern attitudes of mind which could conceivably release him from the necessity of that choice…. (pp. 90-1)

In other words, there is a disturbing anomaly in The Girls of Slender Means. It purports to present us with a picture of modern life; yet when we look critically at the details of the picture, we discover not the restless, searching, often confused world of the present, nor even the quiet assurance of the eighteenth century, but rather the limiting, defensive Christianity of the middle- and late-nineteenth century. Like Hopkins, but in a less acceptable form, Miss Spark is constricting the universe, implying that man's choice is limited to order or anarchy, to the church or the cave. (p. 91)

[It] is both strange and disturbing that a novel which has all the trappings of modernity should fail to reflect the richness and challenge of its background. Yet the same point can be made about virtually all the other novels. In The Public Image, where we are faced with a dichotomy between the public and the private selves, it is as if Freud has never existed, as if we have been thrust back a hundred years, to an age which has not had to meet the challenge of levels of identity, facets of the self. Yet this simplified, traditional conception of the self is placed in the context of a modern movie set!

Unfortunately, there is no indication, even in her more recent work, that Muriel Spark intends coming to terms with this anomaly. In The Driver's Seat, Not to Disturb, and The Hothouse by the East River, she continues to narrow rather than to broaden her canvas: not just because she deals with such traditional problems as freedom of the will, predestination, and the illusory nature of reality; but because she succeeds in giving life and vitality to these problems only by impoverishing their apparently modern setting…. [In The Hothouse by the East River the] implication is that the twentieth century is bereft of ideas, of workable alternatives; and it is on the basis of this omission that the thesis of the novel is advanced—namely, the view that the lives we lead, the realms of history and fact, are mere insubstantial dreams compared with the cloud of unknowing, the one mystical reality that transcends time.

In itself, there is nothing inherently absurd in such a claim; Blake and Carlyle, it will be recalled, made similar assertions. They did so, however, not through a process of omission, but by the vigour of their opposition to the social, political, and intellectual realities of their time—realities which they faced squarely. One can only hope that in future novels Muriel Spark will follow their example, that she will add to her already considerable achievement, not by departing from her Catholic standpoint, but by showing us what happens to the Christian consciousness when it is genuinely pitched into the maelstrom of modern experience. (pp. 91-2)