ABSTRACT
Between The Bell and Henry and Cato, Iris Murdoch wrote thirteen novels and two plays, not to mention extensive work in philosophy and dramatic versions of two of her novels, and there can be no doubt that significant development took place. By comparison, The Bell is thinner and its skeleton shows; every device in that novel contributes tightly to the end in view and speaks to its specific purpose, making the book feel more narrowly contained and obviously controlled than the later one. Dora in The Bell and Henry in Henry and Cato are artists manques, and are principally interested in art in a failed professional way, but they are not practitioners, and interest in art is for them a version of religious attention in a world in which the outward, lingering signs of Christianity hold no particular interest for them.
