Anyone else frustrated by Hartley in Irish Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea?

Yes, being annoyed really does seem to be beside the point.

I loved The Sea, The Sea I think The Good Apprentice is my favourite Murdoch novel, followed by The Green Knight, but The Sea, The Sea comes in third.

As for Hartley, I see what you mean. To be honest, I found Arrowby's obsession kind of odd and not particularly convincing. I also found her a rather weakly drawn character. The whole relationship was weird, actually. For me, it was the other characters who brought the novel alive. That and the wonderful descriptions of the sea.

I have read a lot of Murdoch and absolutely adore her. My one criticism is that she overdose the romance. Her characters are always falling madly in love with one another, to the point where you want to laugh out loud. It's hard to believe that a rather selfish, arrogant man like Arrowby would pursue a childhood sweetheart so relentlessly – especially after so many years and so much success.

I thought that the point is how vacuous and unappealing Hartley seems to the reader, how little Charles ever understood her and how Charles eventually starts to feel as bullying as Ben.

I hated the Sea, the Sea so YANBU.

I found her just rather pathetic, but I also felt sorry for her. Arrowby was awful to her, so was her husband.

My favourite Iris Murdoch is The Philosopher's Pupil.

But I just didn't find his obsession with her convincing. It didn't fell authentic.I guess he was in love with the memory of her – with the past. In other words, it wasn't the physical Hartley, the woman in front of him, that he loved but what she symbolised (his lost youth and innocence).

That's how I understood it too. Charles loved an idea of Hartley which wasn't even much like the real Hartley at the time. Obsession can be like that, as with a stalker who believes a total stranger loves him.

I think Arrowby's obsession was really with a desire to recapture his youth, and Hartley was just a vessel for that.

I haven’t read it for some time but I thought that Hartley was the only woman who’d rejected him, before his ego became so inflated? The fact that he still calls her by her maiden name shows that he’s harking back to his memory of her years ago, rather than the actual person she is now - which he disregards anyway. He’s purely focussed on this weird notion that rescuing her will restore him to a time when he was happy.

That’s an interesting observation. I hadn’t thought of that. I mean about her being the only woman who rejected him. But then he seems such an arrogant loner. He is also, clearly, an attractive man. Many of the women in the novel seem to want him, including a teenage girl! Or is Arrowby an unreliable narrator?

Just a few more thoughts:

• Arrowby himself doesn’t seem much interested in sex. He says at one point that “the women I have loved never really satisfied me in bed.”
• He never consummated his relationship with Hartley. Is that why he has this obsession?
• Murdoch makes it clear that Hartley is no longer sexually attractive. Presumably she stresses the point for a reason - maybe that Arrowby isn’t actually interested in her as flesh and blood woman but as a symbol.
• I’m tired and hot and can’t think atm, but the book has a wonderfully Buddhisty ending. I guess the novel is about karma and letting go, etc. Maybe that’s the key to understanding the Hartley obsession? You know, if you crave and cling you suffer and you make others suffer.

Interesting about your mum being a bit similar in manner!
Hartley seemed so confused and cowed by Ben but never seemed to regreat leaving Charles and ending up with him. I don't think that Charles would have been physically violent to her, but he was starting to shout and boss her about after a while, and I think the reader is meant to see her as exasperating, as well as a totally innocent victim of Charles's obsession.
Yes, James is great. I quite like Peregrine as well, and Lizzie.

Hartley is fought over by two men, yet she doesn't have a single redeeming quality. We are told she is no longer attractive, plus she's boring, meek, passive, whiny and dim.

But she 'belongs' to each of them, and she only gets more desirable because of the competition. I think it's a masterpiece.