Excerpt from Book, All Rights Reserved, Credit to Iris Murdoch, Author

One of Iris Murdoch’s more successful novels, A Fairly Honourable Defeat combines elements of realism and allegory to create a commentary on the moral shortcomings of the individual and society. The book opens as Hilda and Rupert Foster, an ostensibly happily-married couple, anticipate their forthcoming twentieth anniversary party. Murdoch sets the scene and introduces the main characters in the first chapter of this novel as Hilda and Rupert talk about Morgan Browne, Hilda’s sister, who has devised a new linguistic theory called Glossematics. Morgan has just returned to England from South Carolina, where she had a two-year extra-marital relationship with Julius King, one of the “power figures” in Murdoch’s fiction. Tallis Browne, Morgan’s estranged husband, is not aware of her return to Britain. Hilda and Rupert also discuss their rebellious and somewhat disturbed son, Peter. Finally, they also have a conversation about Rupert’s brother, Simon Foster, and his relationship with Axel Nilsson, who is Rupert’s colleague in the civil service at Whitehall.
When Hilda goes to visit Peter, who is living with Tallis and Leonard, Tallis’s terminally-ill father, she is shocked by the squalid, chaotic condition of the flat and tries to persuade her son to return to his studies at Cambridge. Unknown to her husband, Hilda is financing Peter. She implores him: “For heaven’s sake don’t tell anyone, not even Tallis, that I’m giving you that extra money, because I haven’t told your father! He wouldn’t stand for it, and I daresay quite rightly” (58). Murdoch’s representation of lying and secrecy is integral to the moral themes at the centre of this novel, and Hildas deception of Rupert emerges as only one example of the lies that pervade the so-called loving relationships in this book. The lying and secrecy continue as Julius joins Simon and Axel for a meal at their home. Upon saying their farewells for the evening, Julius arranges for Simon and himself to meet clandestinely without Axel’s knowledge. Echoing Hilda’s deception, Rupert then loans Morgan four hundred pounds without Hilda’s knowledge.
In addition to portraying the impulses of low Eros that lead individuals to deceive one another, Murdoch depicts especially well in her charaterisation of Morgan the manner in which human beings succumb to self-centred illusions in matters of love. We learn that “Morgan had loved Julius with her whole nature and in the first shock of that love she had found it impossible not to believe that Julius loved her. Such is the natural illusion of a lover” (132). Having a firm belief in gender equality, Murdoch shows that both men and women fall prey to self-deception, particularly when in love. Further, the author makes an oblique commentary on gender roles and women’s reproductive health concerns in this novel. As Morgan and Julius ha