Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” (post 3, postscript): Do any of the three—hotel worker, Doreen, protagonist—realize that the protagonist has multiple personality?

The protagonist (one of her personalities) has said that the hotel worker and Doreen have addressed her as though she had multiple personality. But, at least as yet, there is no indication that any of the three women actually thinks that she has multiple personality.

I’m not sure what Doreen and the hotel worker think at this point, but they probably think that the erratic behavior of the protagonist is due to alcohol/drugs and/or lying and/or some nonspecific craziness. Most people do not think in terms of multiple personality, per se.

As to the protagonist, since she has amnesia for the erratic behavior that Doreen and the hotel worker remember, she thinks that they have misunderstood her. And since, unknown to herself, she has had multiple personality since childhood (that’s when it starts), she has had other people “misunderstand” her since she was a child. It is nothing new. It has happened from time to time, and she has learned to ignore it.

But, even if the characters don’t realize that the protagonist has multiple personality, doesn’t the author realize it? After all, hasn’t Plath given her protagonist the symptoms of multiple personality, and hasn’t she had the character explicitly raise the issue by using the informal term for it, “split personality”?

Well, most novelists are not puppeteers. They don’t create their characters as much as they experience their characters arrive, come alive, and speak for themselves (subject to rewrite and revision). And if none of the characters (including the first-person narrator) knows that the protagonist has multiple personality, the author probably didn’t either.