SUMMARY
Peter J. Conradi, a lifelong friend and biographer of Iris Murdoch,born in Dublin of Anglo-Irish parents, speaks of her attachment to/detachment from her country of origin as follows: “Her Irish connectionwas reflected in a lifetime’s intellectual and emotional engagement[that] – before her illness – transformed her from a romanticMarxist idealist to a hard-line Unionist and defender of the politicsof Ian Paisley” (Conradi 2001b). This article is an attempt to investigatepossible connections between Murdoch’s social, ethnic, andreligious background and her philosophy based on up-rooted androotedness and self-distancing (terms borrowed from Simone Weil)personified in the characters of her numerous novels. Her only worksset in Ireland, namely the short story “Something Special” (1958),and the novels The Unicorn (1963) and The Red and the Green (1965),will be analysed and compared with the novels of another womanwriterfrom the same background, Jennifer Johnston, the doyen ofIrish writers, who has inherited and modified the same tradition inthe light of contemporary Irish history.