Charles Dickens’s Miss Twinkleton, Another Character with Gratuitous Multiple Personality

The previous post reminded me of a character in Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood:

“As, in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal magnetism [hypnosis], there are two states of consciousness which never clash, but each of which pursues its separate course as though it were continuous instead of broken (thus, if I hide my watch when I am drunk, I must be drunk again before I can remember where), so Miss Twinkleton has two distinct and separate phases of being. Every night, the moment the young ladies [at the boarding school] have retired to rest, does Miss Twinkleton smarten up her curls a little, brighten up her eyes a little, and become sprightly Miss Twinkleton whom the young ladies have never seen. Every night, at the same hour, does Miss Twinkleton resume the topics of the previous night…whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her scholastic state of existence, is as ignorant as a granite pillar.”

Dickens’s description, which includes amnesia between the two personalities, is a more definitive description of multiple personality, but Grafton’s is quite sufficient.

In regard to the cases of alcohol and hypnosis, I would disagree with Dickens that those are different. Drugs and hypnosis can facilitate the switching among personalities in multiple personality.

However, my main point is that, as with Grafton’s character, Dickens’s giving multiple personality to Miss Twinkleton is gratuitous.

It is just that both Dickens and Grafton see multiple personality as common enough so that you really don’t need a special reason for a character to have it.