The Sandcastle

The last novel by Iris Murdoch which I reviewed for this site, "An Unofficial Rose", has a particularly complex plot, detailing a complicated web of emotional entanglements among a large group of characters. "The Sandcastle", published a few years earlier, is also a psychological study of love and desire, but with a much simpler plot and a much smaller cast of characters. The central figure is William Mor, a middle-aged schoolmaster at a public school in Surrey, who is considering standing as the Labour candidate for the neighbouring constituency at the next election. (It is described as a safe Labour seat, although in reality Surrey is, and was even in the fifties, a stronghold of the Conservative Party). He is married with two teenage children, but the marriage is not a happy one; Mor's wife Nan is a cold, domineering personality who is fiercely opposed to her husband's political ambitions. Mor meets, and falls in love with, Rain Carter, a young painter who has come to the school to paint a portrait of Demoyte, the school's former Headmaster, and discovers that his feelings for her are returned. He therefore needs to decide whether to leave his wife for Rain, knowing that if he does so this is likely to spell the end of his career at the school and of his ambitions to enter Parliament. The significance of the book's title becomes clear in a scene where Rain is telling Mor about her childhood. She grew up in the South of France, where she attempted to build a sandcastle on the beach, as she had seen children doing in pictures of England. The Mediterranean sand, however, proved too dry, and her sandcastle collapsed in a heap. This image can be seen as symbolic of the relationship between Mor and Rain, whose dreams of future happiness together might prove to be built out of equally unpromising materials. There may also be an intended reference to the passage in St Matthew's Gospel about the "foolish man, which built his house upon the sand". Images of moisture and dryness are important in the novel. Rain's Christian name has obvious symbolic connotations; she is like rain falling into the parched desert of Mor's life. Water plays a part in a number of key scenes. In one early chapter Mor manages to drive Rain's car into a river, and the scene, about halfway through, in which they realise their love for one another takes place against the background of a thunderstorm. This storm marks the end of a long, dry summer heatwave which has dominated the first half of the book; again the symbolism is quite clear. Besides Rain and Mor there are several others who play an important part in the story. Nan's marriage may not be a very happy one, but she is implacable and determined to use every weapon at her disposal to try and save it. The children Donald and Felicity have both, in different ways, been marked by the marital discord between their parents. Donald is a headstrong, rebellious young man; it is an act of reckless bravado on his part which pr