BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

— Share site with friends.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (opening, post 2): Jane is puzzlingly inconsistent and has a memory gap, the two cardinal clues to multiple personality.

The text does not give any common sense explanation for why, in the opening pages of this novel, Jane suddenly changes from being habitually obedient to intimidatingly assertive.

The narrative could have made the change plausible. It could have said she was getting older; she had read a story in which a character was assertive; an urge to fight back and speak up had been building up in her for some time; and it now finally came out with the latest provocation. But the narrative does not say anything to make Jane’s sudden personality change plausible. The change just happens, suddenly and inexplicably. It defies common sense. It is puzzling.

Then there is the episode of Jane’s disturbed behavior in the red room. The narrator, Jane, can’t tell us what she had been thinking or how she had behaved during this episode, because she has amnesia for it, a memory gap. All we know is that the person who evaluated her mental state after the episode thought it necessary to ask her if she knew who she was.

Thus, the novel opens with a description of the main character as having puzzling inconsistency and a memory gap, which, as discussed previously in this blog, are the two cardinal clues that a person has multiple personality. If the author was not intending to portray Jane as having multiple personality, and if multiple personality, per se, plays no part in the novel’s plot or character development, then this would be what I call “gratuitous multiple personality,” a reflection of the author’s own psychology.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment (whether you agree or disagree) and ask questions (simple or expert). I appreciate your contribution.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)