The "Immoral" Psychology of Murdoch’s A Severed Head

        This paper deals with the portrait of female characters in Iris Murdoch’s famous novel, A Severed Head, to reveal the immoral behavior of most of its characters.   This is ashocking critique, since Murdoch always talked about moral psychology and her great interest in ethics.  As it seems, this novel could discredit many of her ideas and views.  The narrator is a wine trader called Martin lynch-Gibbon, married to the adulterous and hypocrite Antonia who has an affair with her psychiatrist, Palmer, and before that and after, with her brother-in-law. Martin is also having an affair with a Georgie, who ends up traveling with Palmer to America.  Palmer, on the other hand, used to have anincestuous relationship with his half-sister; Dr. Honor Klein.  All the twisted and shifting relationships reveal ethical corruption, culminating with everyone getting what he/she wanted, with no remorse or guilty conscience.