It is situated next to Imber Abbey, site between the 12th-century and the dissolution of the monasteries of a convent, and since new buildings were added around nineteen hundred to the remaining medieval bell tower, gateway and refectory belonging to an enclosed community of Benedictine nuns.

On the same train are Toby Gashe, an 18-year-old boy who has just finished school and is going to spend a few weeks as a guest at Imber Court before starting university, and James Tayper Pace, a community member who formerly ran a settlement house and led youth groups in the East End of London.

Nick is a troubled and troublesome character, often drunk, who has been invited to Imber Court at the request of his sister in the hope that the spiritual surroundings will be of benefit to him.

After a few days Michael takes Toby with him to a nearby town to pick up a mechanical cultivator which the community has purchased for use in the market garden.

Toby, a keen swimmer and diver, discovers a large object submerged in the lake and concludes that it is a bell, although he has not heard the legend.

She persuades Toby to go along with the plan, and he uses a tractor to pull the bell from the lake and hide it in an outbuilding in preparation for making the switch the night before the ceremony.

The following day Catherine is taken to a clinic in London, James confronts Michael with the news of Toby's confession, and Nick commits suicide.

A major theme is the yearning for a spiritual life in a materialistic age, which the Imber Court community tries to achieve by partially separating itself from the secular world.

[4]: 146  On the other hand, the unreligious outsider Dora, who is looked down upon by the community members, is the only character whose real and nonjudgemental interest in other people allows her to glimpse Catherine Fawley's inner turmoil.

James insists that people should strive for perfection by unquestioning observance of a strict moral code, a view which has the attraction of simplicity.

[5]: 77 The Bell, Iris Murdoch's fourth novel, was published in 1958 by Chatto & Windus in Great Britain and Viking Press in the United States.

The Times, while remarking that Murdoch tended to "explain exhaustively rather than to indicate imaginatively", described The Bell as "a story which is running over with purpose and intelligence" and "a joy to read".

He noted changes in her style over the course of her four published books, and an increased interest in placing her stories "in some large pattern of related meanings".

[16] Peter Conradi notes that The Bell is "her first novel to be fuelled by Platonism, in which Good substitutes for God, and any authentic spiritual tradition, including appreciation of the visual arts ... provides a means of ascent".

Conradi sees them both as "toy(ing) with the sublime", which "has at its heart the disharmony between mind and world", while for Byatt the novels are related to each other by their treatment of religious themes.