Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places, like the author’s Gone Girl, has a protagonist who is unintentionally portrayed as probably having multiple personality

Libby Day, now in her thirties, had been only seven when her mother and two sisters were savagely murdered by an unknown intruder. However, before, perhaps even apart from, or only worse after, that trauma, she describes herself as mean, unlovable, feral, a liar, a thief, angry, hateful, and vicious:

“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ…I was never a good little girl, and I got worse after the murders…I was not a lovable child, and I’d grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs” (1, p. 1).

“I can feel a better version of me somewhere in there…But the meanness usually wins out” (1, p. 2).

“ ‘Baby Day’ I said aloud. It’s what I call myself when I’m feeling hateful” (1, p. 5).

“I’d been a sleepwalker since I could toddle” (1, p. 41).

“I am a liar and a thief” (1, p. 51).

“Over the next ten years, I totaled [Aunt Diane’s] car twice, broke her nose twice, stole and sold her credit cards, and killed her dog” (1, p. 113).

“I had angry, defensive conversations in my head, got mad at things that hadn’t happened yet” (1, p. 152).

“…a box with more than a hundred small bottles of lotion I’ve swiped” (1, p. 153). Throughout the book, she steals things for no obvious reason.

As a girl, she gave another girl a black eye, and explained to her sister that the Devil made her do it. (1, p. 155).

“I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way” (1, p. 191).

“Back in grade school, my shrinks tried to channel my viciousness into a constructive outlet, so I cut things with scissors…I sliced through them with old metal shears going up and down: hateyouhateyouhateyou” (1, p. 208).

“I woke up feeling like I dreamt about my Mom. I was craving her weird hamburgers…Which was strange since I don’t eat meat. But I wanted one of those burgers” (1, p. 290).

Much of the above, especially its inconsistencies, is suggestive of a dissociative disorder like multiple personality. Not all sleepwalking and kleptomania is explained by alternate personalities, but some cases are. She has another name, “Baby Day,” for her hateful self, as an alternate personality would. She sometimes has conversations in her head, which is suggestive of alternate personalities arguing among themselves. But, really, most of the negative behavior described above is out-of-character—suggestive of alternate personalities—since Libby does not seem to be a nasty, vicious person according to most of what the reader sees of her.

So why is Libby described throughout the book with out-of-character inconsistencies? Why is she portrayed with dissociative symptoms and as possibly suffering from a dissociative disorder like multiple personality?

Is it to make her one of the suspects as to who killed her mother and sisters? (The plot is about Libby’s investigation to find the real murderer.) But the nature of the murders and Libby’s age at that time disqualify her as a suspect. 

So there is really no literary justification in regard to plot or character development for many of the things we are told about her. It is what I call gratuitous multiple personality.

In short, as in Gone Girl (2012) (see my past post), Dark Places features a protagonist with unintentional, unacknowledged, and generally unrecognized multiple personality.

1. Gillian Flynn. Dark Places. New York, Broadway Books, 2009.