“Miri, Who Charms,” fourteenth novel by Joanne Greenberg, author of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”: Is there any residual multiple personality?

Miri, Who Charms is a story of the friendship between Rachel and Miri (Miriam). It has nothing to do with either schizophrenia or multiple personality, the latter of which was my diagnosis for the main character of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, an autobiographical novel (see past posts).

Miri has always dominated the friendship. Why has she? What is the nature of Miri’s charm? What is Rachel’s psychology? And is there anything to suggest that the multiple personality found in the 1964 novel is still present in 2009, in Rachel, the first-person narrator?

The following paragraph comes early in the novel, but it is a flash-forward to the end of the novel, when the friendship is on the rocks and they are angry with each other.

Rachel’s Multiple-Mindedness,

Miri’s Single-Mindedness

“We’re still angry. My arm is throbbing [from their fight with each other] and she hasn’t spoken a civil word since we left Boulder. My own anger is mixed with sadness, exhaustion, anxiety, and hope, a whole bouquet of emotions, many of them contradictory. It comes to me that part of Miri’s charm is the purity of her feeling. Ambivalence makes us strain, work too hard or give up too easily. Uncertainty clouds our eyes, makes our gestures graceless, our smiles waver. We strike people as being inauthentic, phony. Miri is sure. Her lines are clear and straight as the part in her hair. This charm of hers isn’t only her beauty” (1, p. 53) (boldface added).

Self-Contradiction

Rachel appears to think that the words “contradictory,” “ambivalence,” and “uncertainty” are synonyms, but they are not. Contradictory thoughts or feelings cannot be present simultaneously in the same personality; whereas, ambivalence and uncertainty imply a mixture of things that are different, but can coexist in the same personality. Thus, if it were true that Rachel had simultaneous thoughts and feelings that were truly contradictory, she would have multiple personality.

“We strike people as being inauthentic, phony” is true of people with multiple personality when they have more than one personality expressing itself at the same time, since people misinterpret the self-contradiction as a sign of lying.

Plural Pronouns

When the above statement is made, Rachel and Miri had just had a violent physical fight with each other, and were now in a police car, on their way to rescue Miri’s daughter, who was lost in a cave. One interpretation would be that Rachel was using plural pronouns to make a philosophical statement about people in general, but under the circumstances, I doubt that she was feeling philosophical. Another interpretation would be that under the stress of circumstances, she revealed her sense of being multiple.

Conclusion

The author may still have multiple personality, but if so, it is what most novelists have: a normal version.

1. Joanne Greenberg. Miri, Who Charms. Millburn NJ, Montemayor Press, 2009.