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

[Duskiestsunset]

I’m just reading this and I know Charles Arrowby is awful but does anyone also feel frustrated and angry about Hartley?

In many ways, she seems equally terrible to me. She leaves him when she’s young with no explanation and then decades later says she can’t remember. She agrees to meet him and tells him things but then acts inane and without any agency. I just found her hugely annoying by the end but can see very little written about her.

is it just me?

I guess we have to trust the letters he quotes. But when it comes to the words people have spoken, we all know that people hear what they want to hear.

I just asked Gemini, and it says that Murdoch 100% intended Charles to be an unreliable narrator. It adds that he was/is a theatre director, so he is used to manipulating people. In the theatre, he moved people around according to his whims ("stand there, not there" "don't cry like that, make it more dramatic" etc). He tries to do the same to real people. It also says Murdoch left clues to suggest that the other characters do not see things the way Charles does.

what do we think of james? ive just remembered that its very ambiguous as to why he left the army...what does everyone make of that?

i borrowed the book from the libraray to read and i think i shall have to re borrow it as im curious to flip back through it.

i felt very disappointed by hartley. i thought one of the saddest things about it was titus' recollection of growing up as a small boy and hartley's own confessions of how he sat small and alone and scared. i did judge her for that.

I grew to quite like James. He has poise. And he doesn’t allow Charles to bully or dominate him. But, again, we only see him through Charles’ eyes.