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.