The Fragmentation of the Female Selfhood in The Flight From the Enchanter

Abstract

Iris Murdoch is a renowned female novelist and philosopher in the 20th century English literature. In her literary creation, she has a preference for male narration and holds a reserved attitude to women's movements with reluctance to be considered as a feminist writer, which permits her realistic depiction of female characters and dispassionate thought on women's problems. This paper, with the interpretation and redefinition of the concepts as consciousness, identity, and self in Murdoch's philosophy, analyzes the fragmented self of three female figures inThe Flight from the Enchanter (1956) respectively from the perspectives of self-consciousness, identity, and self and reveals that the fragmentation of female selfhood is mainly due to the overwhelming male dominance in the gender relationship.