Daniel Deronda (post 4) by George Eliot (post 7): Deronda is benevolent, but never understands Gwendolen or the relation of the theme to multiple personality.

Benevolence is necessary, but insufficient.

When Deronda first meets Gwendolen, he redeems her pawned necklace, even though, for all he knows, he could be enabling a compulsive gambler. Luckily, she is not a compulsive gambler, but his later mistakes are dangerous.

Near the end of the novel, after Gwendolen’s husband drowns, Deronda is, as usual, very emotionally supportive, but he fails to assess her suicidality or realize her diagnosis. For he knows two salient facts: 1. She jumped into the water when her husband was drowning, and 2. She doesn’t remember doing so. What issues do these facts raise? Her jumping into the water raises the possibility that she had attempted suicide. Her memory gap for jumping into the water suggests multiple personality (see past post). Suicidality and multiple personality are a dangerous combination.

The novel’s main theme, epitomized by Deronda’s belated discovery that he is a Jew, is that people have hidden identities which must be revealed and acknowledged. But the relation of this theme to multiple personality was not understood by the author, as indicated by the fact that Gwendolen’s hidden identities (multiple personalities) are never revealed and acknowledged.

Gwendolen’s multiple personality is what I call, in novels, “gratuitous multiple personality” (search it in this blog): It is multiple personality that is not an intentional part of character development or the plot, and whose only reason for being in the novel is that it reflects the author’s own psychology.