“The Blazing World” (post 2) by Siri Hustvedt (post 5): Mostly unacknowledged, further evidence of multiple personality in first half of the novel.

The protagonist, Harriet Burden, is nearly always referred to by the male nickname, Harry. No character questions this. It is taken for granted.

The only explicit reference to multiple personality, per se, is this comment by Harry’s daughter:

“I remember when I was fifteen, our family was in Lisbon, and she went over and kissed the statue of Pessoa. My mother told me to read him, and, of course, he was famous for what he called his heteronyms [the many pseudonyms under which his fiction was published]. She was also deeply influenced by Kierkegaard [a philosopher known for the same thing]. No doubt her urge to be other people went back to childhood…I don’t mean as in multiple personalities but as in protean artist selves, selves that popped out and needed bodies. I could never have said any of this even a year ago, but slowly I’ve come to see my mother in a different light, or maybe, I should say, several different lights” (1, pp. 23-24).

An old friend says that Harry’s “drawings and later her paintings and sculptures seemed to have been made by a person I didn’t know, but whom she didn’t know either. She needed the Beast with Five Fingers, a creative imp that broke through the restraints that bound her as surely as ropes or chains” (1, p. 47)…“Harry sometimes wished she were a boy…the book Harry loved best when we were in high school: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley…The person she loved was the monster, and she used to quote long passages from his chapters by heart…” (1, p. 51).

In one of Harry’s notebooks, she addresses herself as if she were someone else, a person who is fearful and is giving Harry advice: “…there is a fear in me, a sickening reticence. For as long as I can remember it has been there, lying in wait—a fat, leaden, hideous thing. I don’t want to wake it. If I wake it, the earth will rumble and the walls will crack and fall. Put your finger to your lips, Harry, put your finger to your lips and tiptoe around the thing. Make nice and fine, Harry, as nice and fine as you know how” (1, p. 61).

“Sometime around the second glass of wine, [Harry] lowered her voice…There had been a little boy, she said, who lived under her bed in her family’s apartment…‘He breathed fire.’ Her exact words…Harry did not say ‘imaginary boy’ or ‘imaginary friend.’…‘I wanted to fly, you see, and breathe fire. Those were my dearest wishes, but it was forbidden, or I felt it was forbidden. It has taken me a very long time, a very long time to give myself permission to fly and breath fire” (1, p. 78).

Writing in her journal as a widow in her early sixties, she says, “Stand beside me, Bodley. Here, there is room for you, too. I love you Bodley. You are my best friend. Breathe now, Bodley, breathe fire” (1, p. 145).

In one of her other journals, she writes: “Listen to this, Harry…I am Johannes” (1, p. 201), which is a name she adopted from her reading in Kierkegaard.

1. Siri Hustvedt. The Blazing World. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2014.