Hannah, the Incarnation of the Unicorn
—Analysis of Hannah’s Character
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MA Zhuo1, MA Hong-jing2
(1. Foreign Languages Department, Beijing Wuzi University, Beijing 101149, China;
2. School of Foreign Languages, Shandong Jianzhu University, Jinan250101, China)
Abstract: Hannah, the young fragile-looking woman who was trapped in her own hou for ven years by her husband Peter, was meek, tolerant and gentle on the surface. She has long been considered as the incarnation of the unicorn by the critics. This essay, redefining Hannah from the view of her motive, character and sub-unconscious, testifies that she is not the unicorn but the betrayer of the image of the unicorn, a frantic and egocentric woman.
Key words: incarnation; frantic and egocentric; sub-unconscious
1. Introduction
The Unicorn, one of Iris Murdoch’s masterpieces, tells a tragic love story which happened in “haunting ttings and emotionally charged atmospheres” (Kuehl, 1982: 381).Reading this novel is like watching an expert needle-woman embroider, with fine silk thread and a dazzling array of stitches, intending to weave a large, intricate, multicolored piece of fancywork. The structural complexity, the intricate content, the thin line between art and reality, changeable relationships between characters and problems turned up continuously often leave readers puzzled and perplexed like walking in a heavy fog. And throughout the whole book the character Hannah draws our curious attention all the time.
On the face of it, the novel gives us an impression that the heroine Hannah is the incarnation of kindness, innocence, victim, obedience and purity, as it were, the unicorn, as the title suggests and as some critics comment. Is it indeed the ca? On reflection, it is just the opposite. In nature, Hannah is a frantic woman, an egoist, and an abnormal daydreamer. That is to say, she is exactly the betrayer of the lily-white image of the unicorn.
2. Analysis of Hannah’s Character
In mythology, the unicorn is depicted as a glorious white hor with a goat’s beard and a long twisted
horn that is white at the ba, black in the center, and red on the tip, projecting out of its forehead. The unicorn is ud to reprent chastity, fierceness, virginity, and meekness, but also has religious significance in connection with the Virgin Mary and Jesus. In a word, the unicorn stands for purity and innocence.
However, throughout the book, we can find there are no relevance between Hannah and the image of the unicorn. Furthermore, she is practically the opposite of what the unicorn generally symbolizes.
2.1 Hannah, a frantic and egocentric woman
MA Zhuo (1978- ), female, M.A., lecturer of Foreign Languages Department, Beijing Wuzi University; rearch field: British literature.
MA Hong-jing (1978- ), female, M.A., lecturer of School of Foreign Languages, Shandong Jianzhu University; rearch field: contemporary British and American literature.
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Hannah’s conduct fully demonstrates that she is a frantic woman, not meek at all, although this is easily overlooked by the characters in the novel and the readers. In Chapter 8, Nolan reveals to Mari
an that ven years ago, when Peter, Hannah’s husband discovers that she and Pip have an love affair when he is in New York, Hannah, this vulnerable woman, unexpectedly, in despair attempts to murder Peter by pushing him out of the steep cliff. Morally speaking, ordinary people, women in particular, ldom resort to extreme violence such as murder to revenge and to solve problems in ca she is nearly manic or has the gene of violence in her underlying personality, needless to say in the feudal society in the 18th England when practicing rigid and stringent discipline about woman’s behavior and obedience. Hannah’s violent tendency of killing her husband is the initial reflection of her frantic nature. At the end of the story, when cornered Hannah like a cat on a hot brick shoots Gerald to death and drowns herlf helplessly, which shows the outburst and conquence of her ven-year accumulating of hatred, rentment and fierceness as a frantic woman.
Hannah’s egocentric motivation is flexibly concealed by her image of being a weak victim and her strategies to tempt her spiritual slaves. As the story progress, Murdoch gradually reveals Hannah’s psychology and emingly attractive actions to us: her enjoying playing everybody on her hand in her castle, “I think he would let me kill him slowly” (43); “Hannah had complained playfully that Gerald was neglecting her, and Marian had had the thought that Gerald was avoiding her” (50); her liking to e everybody develop a strong and helpless passion for her and being successfully lur
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职称外语考试ed by her, in Effie’s mind, Hannah “was the only one, the great phoenix, his truth, his home, his mythology. He felt a thrilling humble gratitude to her for being the cau of so great a love.” Later Hannah tempts Effie “Kiss me, Effie” (88). And not least of all, her delirious harboring the thought that everybody takes her as a suffering victim, a saint, a fragile-looking beautiful woman and the legendary figure in local supernatural story.
2.2 Hannah’s motivation and purpo of disguising as the unicorn
Hannah behaves so just becau she wants to keep her throne, her territory, and her mysterious image of being others’ God, which can be achieved only under the circumstance that she could freely manipulate everybody’s will, takes up their entire thought and penetrates into the core of their life. Hannah’s devotion and love to others, and her eming hopelessness are the protective cover of her tricks to get well towards her t objective. For this, she even sacrifices herlf as a great whore who has already spoilt her precious virginity: if Pip can be partially excluded, then Effie and Gerald are the sharp target of dallying with, of exploiting and taking advantage of. In this point, Hannah is mad, wicked and cruel beyond forgiving and condoning.
She, like a treacherous witch, makes the most of her magic to control everyone in or within touch wit
h her in order to fulfill her unspeakable purpo. As she confess to Marian herlf, “A dream. Do you know what part I have been playing? That of God. And you know what I have been really? Nothing, a legend” (218); “I have lived on my audience, on my worshipper. I have lived by their thoughts, by your thoughts—just as you have lived by what you thoughts were mine. And we have deceived each other” (219); “I have even battered upon you like a cret vampire” (219). Hannah’s confession is the answer to all the scattered riddles in the novel, just like the lighthou on the dark a. She succeeds in accomplishing this: finally all the people who love her and concern her gradually succumb to her power and spell compulsively. Everybody bows to and obss with her, regarding her as an elegant goddess and los the power to judge and e through her. If Effie is an egoist only mentally becau he just takes something for granted (for example, his illusion that the maid Mary has a passion for him), then Hannah is an utter egoist both in spirit and in action. All what she does is completely for herlf, for an abnormal dream, for a lost cau of casting the role of “that a legend” (218).
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3.3 Collective unconscious, invisible poison killing Hannah
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Then what caus her tragedy? To a large extent, it can be attributed to her illusive daydream of being others’ God. If a person, clinging on a compulsive and too-far-to-be-reached daydream, like a problem gambler, too deep to pull himlf out, is bound to fall off to the ground to a wretched death. Hannah is indeed the demonstration of the ca. As Carl Jung indicates, man’s consciousness can be generally divided into two parts: individual unconscious and collective unconscious (HU, 1985: 147). Collective unconscious is compod of various archetypes, diver accumulations of human civilizations dated back to the age when civilizations begin to spout, which influence and determine man’s thoughts and behaviors subtly and treacherously. What is rooted in Hannah’s mind is the archetype of God, like sun, a wonderful target of too much permanent worship and admiration in people’s minds. The archetype of God to Hannah is like the oil on a fire. As this downtrodden spark of idea, being God or any idea which is abnormal, little by little takes posssion of her mind, gradually burning into a flaming fire in one’s sub-consciousness, nobody can put it out, and the person who ts the fire is inevitably to be scorched to death poignantly. After the strengthening and intensifying of this grotesque conspiracy of being God for ven years, Hannah has no way to retreat, to withdraw, and to prerve her entire soul, for she has already compelled herlf to stand on the steep cliff, teetering on the verge. Due to her subconscious intention which has already overwhelmed her, and her indecision of keeping aloof, she is doomed to have a lf-destruction soo
ner or later. She has no way out except death. Her daydream is bound to be shattered to fragments.
3. Conclusion
Therefore, according to the analysis above, we can apparently e Hannah is absolutely far qualified to act as the role of the unicorn but a sharp contrast of the image of unicorn, which is only an imaginary veil or ring of light decorated by her followers on her head. The people are ignorantly and totally deceived, spelled and lured by her charming, fragile appearance and shining disguis in daily life.
The unicorn, a beckoning non-existing beast, as the title indicates, is the key to make a deep comprehension of the novel, and the implicit condensation of the theme testified through the tragedy of Hannah. That is, human beings are “not isolated free choors, monarchs of all we survey, but benighted creatures sunk in a reality who nature we are constantly and overwhelmingly tempted to deform by fantasy” (Magill, 1927).
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British critic Frank Kermode divides the meaning of a novel into two categories: manifest ns and latent n. And the latter, the “crets” lying in every novel is the key to get the ultimate significance of the story, but is usually disregarded by the readers (YIN, 2003: 237), who only compr
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ehend the surface meaning. Murdoch, the novelist and the philosopher, unexceptionally ts floods of barriers and riddles for the novel which deepens the theme and ns of the story and gains in difficulty for the readers to comprehend deeply.
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References:
Kuehl, Linda & Iris Murdoch. 1982. Contemporary Literary Criticism[J]. V ol. 15. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Rearch Company. Magill, Frank N. & Iris Murdoch. 1983. Critical Survey of Long Fiction[J]. V ol. 5. New Jery: Salem Press.
Murdoch, Iris. 1963. The Unicorn[M]. Middlex: Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth.
胡经之. 1985. 西方文艺理论名著教程（下册）[M]. 北京：北京大学出版社.
殷企平. 2003. 英国小说批评史[M]. 上海：上海外语教育出版社.爱丽丝芒罗
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