Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (post 8): Anna asked “Where am I?” for the same reason she hadn't remembered doing her hair or recognized herself in the mirror.

Just before killing herself, Anna wondered, “Where am I? What am I doing? Why?” (see post 7). I have been trying to imagine how generations of readers have misinterpreted what she said, and not recognized it as a complete non sequitur, indicative of a switch to another personality, who was not aware of the thoughts and actions that the text had just described.

Perhaps some readers have thought that Anna’s brain was impaired, that she had never fully recovered from the delirium of puerperal fever. But no, since then, Anna has been described as amazing Vronsky with “her knowledge, her memory” to such an extent that he “wanted corroboration,” which she then provided by showing him where she had gotten her facts in the many books she had read (p. 643).

More likely, I think, readers have attributed Anna’s confusion to some sort of madness; what, in past posts, I have called “literary madness,” which usually confuses multiple personality with schizophrenia. Two distinctions are that multiple personality has peculiar problems with memory and mirrors; whereas, schizophrenia does not.

“ ‘…did I do my hair or not?’ [Anna] asked herself. And she could not remember. She felt her head with her hand. ‘Yes, my hair’s been done, but I certainly don’t remember when.’ She did not even believe her hand and went to the pier-glass to see whether her hair had indeed been done or not. It had been, but she could not remember when she had done it. ‘Who is that?’ she thought, looking in the mirror at the inflamed face with strangely shining eyes fearfully looking at her. ‘Ah, it’s me,’ she realized…” (p. 755).

As discussed in past posts (e.g., search Mark Twain), people with multiple personality may have both amazingly good memory (like Anna, see above) and peculiar lapses of memory, the latter due to one personality’s having amnesia for what another personality thinks and does. Also, people with multiple personality sometimes have peculiar problems with recognizing themselves in the mirror (search “mirror” and “mirrors” in this blog).

Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, Penguin Books, 2000/2002.