Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child (Post 3): Round characters? No. Character-driven? Maybe. Multiple personality makes it a literary novel.

Once you know Bride’s and Booker’s childhood traumas, their behavior is predictable. They are not very “round” characters. They are two-dimensional representatives of the lasting effects of childhood trauma. So if this is a literary novel—and it is—what makes it so?

In the first post, I noted two manifestations of Bride’s multiple personality: her amnesia episodes and her body metamorphoses (see Kafka posts). Another indication of multiple personality is at the beginning of the novel when Booker says to Bride, “You not the woman I want.” And she puzzlingly replies, “Neither am I.” Her reply is never explained. His remark is eventually explained on the basis of his childhood trauma, but I have a different explanation.

When Booker says, “You not the woman I want,” he is reacting to her not being the same personality he had fallen in love with. Her reply, “Neither am I”—about which Bride says to the reader, “I still don’t know why I said that. It just popped out of my mouth”—is a reply from yet another of her alternate personalities.

Other examples of multiple personality in this novel involve Booker and Sofia. Booker is described as being inhabited by his deceased brother’s personality. And Sofia’s sudden change from meek to savage is a realistic portrayal of a personality switch in multiple personality disorder (as opposed to normal multiple personality).

Thus, multiple personality pervades this novel, as it does a number of Morrison’s novels (see past posts). And she is not alone. Other writers discussed in this blog have unrecognized, unacknowledged multiple personality in their novels, too. Is it just coincidence that all these literary novels have multiple personality, or are they considered literary novels, because they do have multiple personality?

When a text has unacknowledged multiple personality, the characters and story appear to have—in a way, they do have—profound, mysterious, depth. And the author seems to be—in a way, is—some kind of oracle. Perhaps this is part of what is meant by literary novel.