Namelessness in “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Why are title character and narrator nameless, and how did the author find the little prince?

“The Little Prince, first published in 1943, is the most famous work of French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The novella is one of the most-translated books in the world and has been voted the best book of the 20th century in France. Translated into 300 languages and dialects, selling nearly two million copies annually, and with year-to-date sales of over 140 million copies worldwide, it has become one of the best-selling books ever published.” —Wikipedia

The title character is nameless. The narrator never asks his name. The boy never volunteers it. He is referred to as “the little prince,” but that is only a description of his size, age, and sex, expressed in a term of endearment.

The narrator, too, is nameless. Since he was the pilot of a plane when most pilots were men, it is implied that the narrator is a man, but the boy never asks his name and the man never volunteers it.

Since it is only in dreams and multiple personality that people and personalities are often nameless, and since the narrator does not say he is telling the story of a dream (although at one point he wonders if he could be), it is probable that the story is a product of the author’s multiple personality.

This means that the little prince was not experienced by the author as being intentionally created by him, but as coming to him spontaneously. The author might have thought of this as coming from his “unconscious,” but that is a misnomer, since it would have been “unconscious” only from the point of view of the author’s regular personality, who might have been unaware of having other personalities, per se.

In multiple personality, which begins in childhood, the most common kind of alternate personality is the child-aged alternate personality.

In the entry on The Little Prince in Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince — the only reference cited as to how the title character came to the author, https://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/02/03/exupery-little-prince-morgan-drawings/, quotes photojournalist John Phillips as follows:

“When I asked Saint-Ex how the Little Prince had entered his life, he told me that one day he looked down on what he thought was a blank sheet and saw a small childlike figure. ‘I asked him who he was,’ Saint-Ex said. ‘I’m the Little Prince,’ was the reply.”

As I have discussed in past posts, people with multiple personality sometimes see one of their alternate personalities when they look in a mirror (search “mirror” and “mirrors”). A blank sheet of paper might be just as good.

Alternate personalities, once they have become aware of each other, can converse with each other. Most often this takes the form of the regular personality’s hearing the voice of an alternate personality speaking from behind-the-scenes. But more than one personality can be out at the same time (visualized and quoted by a spokesman or speaking for themselves alternately). It is not just a joke that a therapy session can be like group therapy.

The alternate personality introduced himself to the author as “the little prince,” a designation the author and narrator respected and adopted, because the character was experienced as a person who was found, not as something manufactured, which could be named as one pleased.

Why is the narrator nameless? It is not safe to assume that the narrator is the author (the regular, social, host personality). The narrator may be another alternate personality, which is what is implied when authors speak of finding the narrative “voice” for a novel.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “A Category-Defying Genius,” said most novelists see a connection between their writing process and multiple personality.

The acclaimed fiction writer died recently…

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/obituaries/ursula-k-le-guin-acclaimed-for-her-fantasy-fiction-is-dead-at-88.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opinion/ursula-le-guin.html

…but her obituaries don’t give her insight into the fiction writing process, which I quoted in a post of May 30, 2015:

Ursula K. Le Guin says: Most Novelists have “an uncomfortably acute sympathy for Multiple Personality” since that is how they experience their characters

“I think most novelists are aware at times of containing multitudes, of having an uncomfortably acute sympathy for Multiple Personality Disorder, of not entirely subscribing to the commonsense notion of what constitutes a self…

“Now, to trust the story, what does that mean? To me, it means being willing not to have full control over the story as you write it…Deliberate, conscious control…is invaluable in the planning stage—before writing—and in the revision stage—after the first draft. During the actual composition it seems to be best if conscious intellectual control is relaxed…Aesthetic decisions are not rational; they’re made on a level that doesn’t coincide with rational consciousness. Thus, in fact, many artists feel they’re in something like a trance state while working, and that in that state they don’t make the decisions…

“Whether they invent the people they write about or borrow them from people they know, fiction writers generally agree that once these people become  characters in a story they have a life of their own, sometimes to the extent of escaping from the writer’s control and doing and saying things quite unexpected…They take on their own reality, which is not my reality, and the more they do so, the less I can or wish to control what they do or say…While writing, I may yield to my characters, trust them wholly to do and say what is right for the story…

“…I had a story to write when I found in my mind and body an imaginary person whom I could embody myself in, with whom I could identify strongly, deeply, bodily. It was so much like falling in love that maybe that’s what it was…for it’s an active, intense delight, to be able to live in the character night and day, have the character living in me…

“When I am working on a story that isn’t going to work, I make up people. I could describe them the way how-to-write books say to do…They don’t inhabit me, I don’t inhabit them. I don’t have them. They are bodiless. So I don’t have a story. But as soon as I make this inward connection with a character, I know it body and soul, I have that person, I am that person. To have the person (and with the person, mysteriously, comes the name) is to have the story…These people come only when they’re ready, and they do not answer a call…I have called this waiting ‘listening for a voice’…and then the voice…would come and speak through me. But it’s more than voice. It’s a bodily knowledge. Body is story; voice tells it.”

Ursula K. Le Guin. The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. Boston, Shambhala, 2004.

“Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward (post 6): Absentmindedness may be the memory gaps, and ghosts the alternate personalities, of multiple personality.

In Jesmyn Ward’s “Acknowledgements” for this novel, she thanks her editor’s assistant, “who compensates for my absentmindedness and keeps me in order” (1, p. 287), which reminds me of my first post about her memoir, and the question of whether her alcohol-associated blackouts were really due to alcohol, or reflected some other kind of absentmindedness. 

Presumably she is not thanking her editor’s assistant for helping compensate for drunkenness, but for sober absentmindedness. And to be mentioned in her acknowledgments, even jokingly, her absentmindedness must have been notorious, or at least felt to be so by the author.

A similar question arises in this novel regarding Leonie’s visions of her deceased brother, and whether they were drug-induced or not. At the end of the novel, it turns out that she experiences his presence even when she is sober. So it is concluded that Leonie has been seeing, not a drug-induced fantasy, but a real ghost.

But when I think of ghosts, my prime example is Hamlet’s father, who knows who killed him, how he was killed, and wants vengeance, which makes sense, since ghosts are continuously aware, both before and after death. And since real ghosts obviously don’t need to be told how they died, whatever the character Richie was, he was not a ghost, no matter how much the author insists that he was, and no matter how many book reviews believe it.

As discussed in many past posts, “absentmindedness” is sometimes a euphemism for the memory gaps seen in multiple personality, and “ghost” is a common literary euphemism for alternate personalities. Please search “ghost,” “absent-mindedness,” “absentminded,” and “memory gaps” in this blog.

1. Jesmyn Ward. Sing, Unburied, Sing. New York, Scribner, 2017.

“Sing, Unburied, Sing” Jesmyn Ward (post 5): Almost everyone agrees that Richie is a ghost, but the text inadvertently reveals that Richie is not a ghost.

Book reviews, the front book flap, and author interviews agree that one or two characters in this novel see ghosts. Richie (a deceased boy who had been known by Jojo’s grandfather, Pop) is almost universally considered to be a ghost seen by Jojo. Given (Leonie’s deceased brother), although seen by Leonie (Jojo’s mother) only when she gets high, is often considered a ghost, too.

But Richie and Jojo inadvertently reveal that Richie is not a ghost:

“ ‘I guess I didn’t make it.’ Richie laughs, and it’s a dragging, limping chuckle. Then he turns serious, his face night in the bright sunlight. ‘But I don’t know how. I need to know how.’ He looks up at the roof of the car. ‘Riv [Pop, Jojo’s grandfather] will know.’

“I [Jojo] don’t want to hear no more of the story. I shake my head. I don’t want him talking to Pop, asking him about that time. Pop has never told me the story of what happened to Richie when he ran” (1, p. 181).

A ghost would know how he died. But if Richie were one of Jojo’s alternate personalities, one inspired by the stories that Pop has told Jojo about Richie, then Richie would not know how he died if Pop had not told Jojo.

1. Jesmyn Ward. Sing, Unburied, Sing. New York, Scribner, 2017.

“Sing, Unburied, Sing,” 2nd National Book Award novel by Jesmyn Ward (post 4): Leonie and JoJo are inadvertently introduced as having multiple personality

“Chemical Figment”?

“Last night, he [her deceased older brother named Given] smiled at me [Leonie], this Given-not-Given, this Given that’s been dead fifteen years now, this Given that came to me every time I snorted a line, every time I popped a pill. He sat in one of the two empty chairs at the table with us [Leonie and her female friend, Misty], he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. He was watching me, like always…

“Given rubbed the dome of his shaved head, and I saw other differences between the living and this chemical figment. Given-not-Given didn’t breathe right. He never breathed at all…

“I shrugged. Given-not-Given shrugs…

“ ‘Given,’ I said. More like a whisper than anything, and Given leaned forward to hear me. Slid his hand across the table, his big-knuckled, slim-boned hand, toward mine. Like he wanted to support me. Like he could be flesh and blood. Like he could grab my hand and lead me out of there. Like we could go home.

“Misty [said], ‘I ain’t a expert or nothing, but I’m pretty sure you ain’t supposed to be seeing nothing on this shit…Acid, yeah,’ she continued. ‘Maybe even meth. But this? No.’ 

“Given-not-Given frowned, mimicked her [Misty’s] girly hair lip, and mouthed: What the fuck does she know? His left hand was still on the table… 

“Given-not-Given stayed with me for the rest of the night at Misty’s. He even followed me out to the car and climbed into the passenger seat, right through the door” (1, pp. 34-44).

Pre-Drugs, Since Childhood

“When I was twelve [says Leonie], the midwife Marie-Therese” was “asking me what I thought each of the bundles of dried plants did. And I looked at them, and knew, so I told her: This one for helping the afterbirth come, this one for slowing the bleeding, this one for helping the pain, this one for bringing the milk down. It was like someone was humming in my ear, telling me they purpose. Right there, she told me I had the seed of a gift…

“Marie-Therese herself could hear…a multitude of voices…And when she explained it like that, I realized I had been hearing voices, too” (1, pp. 39-41).

Jojo’s Voices

Jojo (Joseph), Leonie’s thirteen-year-old son, seems to know what the barnyard animals are thinking: “I squatted in the grass, watching them, thinking I could almost hear them talk to me, that I could hear them communicate…[he gives examples]…But it scared me to understand them, to hear them…But it was impossible to not hear the animals, because I looked at them and understood, instantly…(1, pp. 14-15).

In the same way that Leonie, when she was twelve, knew what each bundle of dried plant did (because voices told her), Jojo evidently has an alternate personality who interprets what the animals are thinking and feeling, and then puts the result in Jojo’s mind as if the thought just came to him from nowhere. 

Comment

In these first two chapters, Jojo and Leonie have what the novel treats as amusing supernatural experiences. People say that Leonie may have a “gift” that runs in the family. But what the novel is describing are the kinds of voices, visions, and anonymous influences from behind-the-scenes that are seen in multiple personality.

1. Jesmyn Ward. Sing, Unburied, Sing. New York, Scribner, 2017.

“Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward (post 3): Split-Personality Metaphors, Cross-Gender Name, Plural Self-Reference, Subjective Sense of Multiplicity

This novel has three major metaphors of females with loving/savage, Jekyll/Hyde, split personalities: the female pit bull dog, the weather (benign becomes Hurricane Katrina), and Medea (of Greek mythology). The author had no choice regarding the female name given to the major hurricane she lived through, but she chose to make the bit bull female and to have her female protagonist, Esch, identify with Medea.

Incidentally, googling the name “Esch” suggests that it is rarely used as a first name, but that when it is, it is usually a boy’s name: http://www.gpeters.com/names/baby-names.php?name=Esch. So the protagonist’s name may be another split personality metaphor.

Esch identifies with Medea:

“I…imagine myself tall as Medea, wearing purple and green robes, bones and gold for jewelry” (1, p. 170). Is this her subjective image of one of her Medea-identified alternate personalities?

“ ‘I loved you!’ This is Medea wielding the knife. This is Medea cutting. I rake my fingernails across his face, leave pink scratches that turn red, fill with blood” (1, p. 204). Is this a switch to a Medea alternate personality?

Esch recalls the story of Medea in Greek mythology: “When Jason betrayed Medea to exile so he could marry another woman, she killed his bride, the bride’s father, and last her own children, and then flew away into the wind on dragons” (1, p. 205).

Plural Self-reference?

“After Mama died, Daddy said, What are you crying for? Stop crying, Crying ain’t going to change anything. We never stopped crying, We just did it quieter. We hid it. I learned how to cry so that almost no tears leaked from my eyes, so that I swallowed the hot salty water of them and felt them running down my throat. This was the only thing that we could do. I swallow and squint through the tears, and I run” (1, p. 206).

Comment: I can’t be absolutely certain that her plural self-reference here is not meant to include her siblings, but it is so intertwined with her singular self-reference that Esch seems to be making intermittent reference to her plurality, her multiple personalities.

Subjective Sense of Multiplicity

“My voice is so high it sounds like someone else is talking, like I could turn my face and see another girl there, lying on the floor between her brothers…” (1, p. 247).

Comment

This post should be read in the context of my previous two posts, one on this novel and the other on the author’s memoir.

Soon, I hope to read Ward’s second National Book Award-winning novel.

1. Jesmyn Ward. Salvage the Bones [2011]. New York, Bloomsbury, 2012.

“The Woman in the Window” by A. J. Finn (pseudonym for Daniel Mallory): Why, simultaneously, publish under pseudonym and publicize the author’s real name?

This new No. 1 bestseller is being publicized with articles that emphasize the author’s real name—for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/books/aj-finn-the-woman-in-the-window-daniel-mallory.html—and, yes, it is amusing to read how the author submitted his manuscript under a pseudonym to the publisher for whom he worked as an editor.

But since the author’s real name is being widely publicized, why is the book being published under the pseudonym? The book could have been published under the author’s real name, while publicity featured the same amusing story about how the manuscript had been submitted under a pseudonym.

My guess is that the book was mostly written by an alternate personality of Daniel Mallory, and that Daniel Mallory feels he would be lying to claim the credit.

Search “pseudonyms” for previous discussions of this recurring topic.

National Book Award novel “Salvage The Bones” by Jesmyn Ward (post 2): Author interview and first chapter have contradictions that suggest multiple personality.

Contradiction Re Pit Bull Dogs

After having read the author’s memoir, which tells how she was raised by her steadfast mother (and often abandoned by her father), I was shocked to find the first chapter of this novel revolving, lovingly, around a pit bull dog named China who was giving birth to highly-prized puppies, while the protagonist’s mother is mentioned only briefly as having previously died after giving birth.

Moreover, in an appendix to this novel, “Q&A with Jesmyn Ward,” the author is asked about pit bull dogs in her life and novel:

“…At the heart of your book is this incredible relationship between Skeetah [a brother of the first-person, narrating, female protagonist] and China [his female pit bull dog]. Where did China come from?

My father owned pit bulls when I was young. He sometimes fought them…My father’s favorite and sole pit bull was so dear to us that sometimes it was my babysitter; I remember sitting in our dirt driveway as a six-year-old crying because I was alone while that dog licked me” (1, p. 265).

In Ward’s memoir, Men We Reaped, she was attacked by her father’s pit bull, Chief, who gave her three deep puncture wounds on her back, a three-inch gash running from the top of her left ear, and the bottom of her left ear nearly ripped off (2, p. 59). Her father told her that “the dog had been trying to rip out my throat”…“My father found him and shot Chief in the head and buried him in a ditch” (2, p. 60).

How can one person have such contradictory memories? It is easy if you have the separate memory banks of different personalities.

“I” vs. “Me”

In the novel’s first chapter, the first-person narrator almost always refers to herself as “I.” But in three places, she refers to herself as “me” for no apparent reason. For example, on page 1, beginning with the first sentence: “China’s turned on herself. If I didn’t know, I would think she was trying to eat her paws. I would think that she was crazy. Which she is, in a way. Won’t let nobody touch her but Skeet…” However, at the bottom of page 1: “Me, the only girl and the youngest at eight, was of no help…”

Why would she say “Me…was of no help”? It makes me wonder whether “I” and “Me” are two different personalities.

“the other me”

Later in chapter 1, the protagonist has a romantic encounter with Manny:

“I glanced at his face, the sweat like glaze. My lips were open. Another me would’ve licked it off…But this girl wouldn’t lean forward…This girl waited…he wanted the other me…The girly heart that, before Manny, I’d let boys have because they wanted it…But with Manny, it was different…He wanted my girl heart; I gave him both of them” (1, pp. 15-16).

The reader can contrive to make sense of the above. After all, people have various feelings, and some feelings come out more with some people or under some circumstances. But, if you just take what is written, and just try to understand it with ordinary common sense, it is not clear why she is using phrases like “another me” and “the other me,” and why she is making a distinction between her “girly heart” and her “girl heart.”

The protagonist seems to be struggling to make distinctions between her different personalities (although she may not think of it in those terms). How would she know about her different personalities? As previously discussed, some alternate personalities are directly aware of each other. But an intelligent person can also make inferences from what other people have said about her behavior.

1. Jesmyn Ward. Salvage the Bones [2011]. New York, Bloomsbury, 2012.

2. Jesmyn Ward. Men We Reaped: A Memoir. New York, Bloomsbury, 2013.

“Men We Reaped: A Memoir” by Jesmyn Ward: Are her alcohol-associated blackouts caused by the toxic effect of alcohol on her brain or by multiple personality?

In between her two National Book Award-winning novels, Jesmyn Ward published a poignant memoir about her traumatic childhood. In it, she repeatedly mentions her drinking, and at three points says she had “blacked out” (1, pp. 179, 209) or was “blackout drunk” (1, p. 238).

“I was sixteen when I had my first drink…when the buzz hit me, I was euphoric. All the self-loathing, the weight of who I was and where I was in the world, fell away. I lay with [her best friend from high school] on the sofa, watching television, and said, ‘Mariah, I hope this feeling never ends.’

     “ ‘With as much as you drank, I don’t think it’s going to end anytime soon,’ [Mariah] said.

     “We ran upstairs when her parents returned home. My euphoria turned to nausea…I spent the night with my face on her cool toilet seat, blacked out” (1, p. 209).

That Ward uses the phrase “blacked out” to mean remaining conscious, but later having having amnesia for that period of time (and not just passing out) is indicated by her prior use of the phrase: “I drank more through the night, drank until I would not remember what I did the next day, blacked out, and peed in alleyways like the homeless people I saw in New York” (1, pp. 178-179).

So at sixteen, following her first drink, and drinking to excess, she had an alcohol-associated blackout. I say “alcohol-associated” rather than “alcohol-induced,” because it is controversial as to whether alcohol can induce a blackout in a person’s first episode of drinking.

It used to be thought that alcoholic blackouts occurred only after years of excessive drinking, in chronic alcoholics. But that belief came into question when surveys of college students found that a considerable number had memory gaps after episodes of drinking, raising the possibility that some brains are just more sensitive to the toxic effect of alcohol on the brain’s memory circuits.

However, another possible explanation for memory gaps when young people drink is that they may have multiple personality, and that the reason for having a memory gap with drinking is that the alcohol promotes a switch to a preexisting alternate personality (by sedating the regular personality), so when the person switches back to their regular personality, they don’t remember the period of time that the alternate personality had been in control.

To figure out whether a person’s amnesia during drinking was a toxic effect of the alcohol or a reflection of some psychological process such as multiple personality, it helps to know whether the person has a history of surprising memory lapses even when she was not drinking. Jesmyn Ward had such a history:

“But even as a young teen, I was absentminded, forgetful. In the summer, I often left my key inside and turned the lock on the knob and pulled the door shut behind us, locking us out of the house” (1, p. 147). She had been given the house key by her mother, because she was the eldest child, and was considered to be not only very responsible, but highly intelligent, meaning that her memory was usually excellent. So it is doubtful that her regular personality would repeatedly have such memory lapses. Getting her locked out seems like a prank that an alternate personality might like to play.

As I have discussed in past posts (search “absent-minded”), puzzling lapses of memory in a person who usually has exceptionally good memory is suggestive of the memory problems seen in multiple personality when alternate personalities intervene.

Ward also had migraine headaches “since I was fifteen” (1, p. 119). Of course, headaches are a rather nonspecific symptom and do not prove a person has multiple personality. Nevertheless, it is true that some people with multiple personality do get headaches at times when they switch personalities. Headaches are the most common physical symptom reported by people with multiple personality.

She says, “Even though my girlfriends were dating, I didn’t want to. I was still reading books and playing with dolls in private” (1, pp. 153-154). Younger-aged alternate personalities (the most common type of alternate personality) might play with dolls when the person is too old to be doing that.

Comment

I have read Ward’s memoir as preparation for reading her two National Book Award-winning novels. Her traumatic childhood, blackouts, absentmindedness, headaches, and overage doll-playing certainly do not, in and of themselves, prove multiple personality. But these kinds of things are seen in persons with multiple personality, and it is worth noting when a person has a bunch of them. Whether I will find anything related to multiple personality in her novels, I don’t know.

1. Jesmyn Ward. Men We Reaped: A Memoir. New York, Bloomsbury, 2013.

“The Life and Death of Émile Ajar” by Romain Gary (post 2): “The truth is that I was profoundly affected by the oldest protean temptation of man: that of multiplicity”

The literary world had been fooled into believing that Romain Gary’s second Prix Goncourt had been won by his cousin, writing under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar. The hoax was revealed posthumously by the publication of Gary’s essay “The Life and Death of Émile Ajar,” in which he confirmed that Romain Gary and Émile Ajar were one and the same person. As he explains:

“All my as it were official, labeled lives were doubled, tripled, by other, more secret ones, but the old adventure-seeker that I am has never found total satisfaction in any of them. The truth is that I was profoundly affected by the oldest protean temptation of man: that of multiplicity. A craving for life in all its forms and possibilities, which every flavor tasted merely deepened. My impulses, always simultaneous and contradictory, constantly urged me on in every direction, and the only things that enabled me to survive them with my mental stability intact were, I think, sexuality, and the novel—which is a prodigious means of ever-renewed incarnations. I have always been someone else” (1, p. 186).

However, Gary did not see Romain Gary and Émile Ajar as a pure “dual personality” in the sense of having nothing at all in common. Gary said that textual analysis would find certain phrases and ideas in the novels of both Gary and Ajar:

“Of course, no one has noticed the extent to which Ajar has been influenced by me…it would even be possible to talk of out-and-out plagiarism. But, well, he’s a young author. I’m not going to make a fuss about it. And in general, the influence my work exercises over young writers has not been sufficiently stressed” (1, p. 191).

Comment

Other than that Ajar might have read the works of Gary, my guess as to why their works had things in common would be that novels are not written by one personality, and that the Gary and Ajar personalities might have shared the same muse and other co-writing personalities.

And in general, as I’ve previously noted, the degree of mutual awareness or co-consciousness among alternate personalities varies from no awareness to rather extensive co-consciousness. People with multiple personality, when you know them well enough, usually have a sufficient number of personalities so that all these various degrees of co-consciousness are evident, depending on which two of the person’s personalities you are talking about.

I would disagree with Gary’s overgeneralization, when he implies that everyone is tempted to indulge in multiplicity. On the contrary, most people are so far from being tempted that they find it hard to believe that anyone could actually be multiple. It is usually only people who have used multiple personality to cope with traumatic experiences in childhood who can, or would want to, experience it.

But since imaginative children and childhood trauma are not rare, multiple personality is not rare, especially in certain occupations, such as fiction writing, for which multiple personality, usually the normal version, is a major asset.

1. Romain Gary. “The Life and Death of Émile Ajar” [1979], translated by Barbara Wright, pp. 175-194, in Hocus Bogus: Romain Gary Writing as Émile Ajar [1976], Translated by David Bellos. New Haven, Yale University Press/A Margellos World Republic of Letters Book, 2010.

“Late Essays: 2006-2017” by J. M. Coetzee: On Roxana incorrectly says “Roxana (a pseudonym: it is implied that she has a ‘real’ name but we never learn of it)”

The latest essays of the Nobel Prize-winning author are reviewed in today’s New York Times Book Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/books/review/jm-coetzee-late-essays.html?_r=0

Using Amazon to access most of Coetzee’s essay on Daniel Defoe’s novel Roxana, I find what I quoted above. Coetzee says the reader never learns the protagonist’s real name. But that is not true. The reader eventually learns that her name is “Susan.” I discussed Roxana in six posts in January 2016:

January 2, 2016

Multiple personality in Preface to Roxana (post 1) by Daniel Defoe (post 2): The novel is a collaboration between the character and writer personalities.

Roxana is the first-person narrative of a beautiful lady. According to the preface (see below), the narrative is her words, somewhat dressed up by the Relator and edited by the Writer, especially to avoid indecencies. The Writer knew Roxana’s first husband and father-in-law, and the veracity of that part of her narrative suggests to him that the rest of it is true, too.

Are the Relator and the Writer the same person? If they are, why use the two different names, and why use “we” in the preface’s last sentence? Or, perhaps, “we” refers to the writer and Defoe.

Indeed, who wrote the preface? If Daniel Defoe wrote the preface, then he is not The Writer, unless Defoe is referring to himself in the third-person (which people with multiple personality sometimes do).

Preface (abridged) 

“The History of this Beautiful Lady, is to speak for itself: If it is not as Beautiful as the Lady herself is reported to be…the Relator says, it must be from the Defect of his Performance; dressing up the Story in worse Cloaths than the Lady, whose words he speaks…

“The Writer says, He was particularly acquainted with this Lady’s First Husband…and with his Father…and knows that first Part of the Story to be Truth…This may, he hopes, be a Pledge for the Credit of the rest…she has told it herself…

“If there are any Parts of her Story, which being oblig’d to relate a wicked Action, seem to describe it too plainly, the Writer says, all imaginable Care has been taken to keep clear of Indecencies…

“In the mean time, the Advantages of the present Work are so great, and the Virtuous Reader has room for so much Improvement, that we make no Question, the Story…will…be read both with Profit and Delight.”

Comment: In past posts, many other writers have been quoted as saying how their characters are like alternate personalities who come to them (not from them) and tell their story to a writer personality. The latter may or may not be the same as the regular, everyday, host personality.

According to this preface, the writer personality knew and spoke with three other personalities—Roxana, her first husband, and his father—and got Roxana’s whole story directly from her, with partial corroboration from the other two.

To whom does “we” refer? Relator & Writer? Writer & Defoe? Roxana, Writer, and Defoe? All I can say is that “we,” when used in regard to one person, refers to more than one personality.

The only other possibility I can think of is that “we” is an editorial “we” of the publisher. But it seems unlikely that the publisher would say the writer knew Roxana’s relatives.

Daniel Defoe. Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress, or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, afterwards called the Countess de Wintselsheim in Germany, Being the Person known by the Name of the Lady Roxana in the time of Charles II. Edited with an introduction and Notes by John Mullan. Oxford University Press, 1724/2008.

January 3, 2016

Nameless characters: The silly explanation in the Preface of Roxana (post 2) by Daniel Defoe (post 3) for why most of the characters are nameless.

from The Preface

“The Scene is laid so near the Place where the Main Part of it was transacted, that it was necessary to conceal Names and Persons; lest what cannot be yet entirely forgot in that Part of the Town, shou’d be remember’d, and the Facts trac’d back too plainly, by the many People yet living, who wou’d know the Persons by the Particulars.

“It is not always necessary that the Names of Persons shou’d be discover’d, tho’ the History may be many Ways useful; and if we shou’d be always oblig’d to name the Persons, or not to relate the Story, the Consequence might be only this, That many a pleasant and delightful History wou’d be Buried in the Dark, and the World be depriv’d both of the Pleasure and the Profit of it.”

Now, obviously, since good pseudonyms do not make people more identifiable, the preface’s explanation for why most of the novel’s characters are nameless is pure nonsense.

To understand the more probable explanation for the novel’s nameless characters, you need to know about naming in novels, and names in multiple personality.

Naming in Novels

In past posts, I have quoted some novelists as saying that their characters come to them already having names. These novelists consider it their job to tell the truth about their characters, and so, if a character came to them nameless, then to put a name on that character would be a lie, and the novelist would not want to do it.

I infer that most of Defoe’s characters in this novel came to him without names, and he did not want to lie about them.

Names in Multiple Personality

In multiple personality, some alternate personalities come with names, but many do not.

Daniel Defoe. Roxana [1724]. Edited by John Mullan. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Nameless, incognito protagonist in Roxana (post 3) by Daniel Defoe (post 4): An illustration of the typical secrecy of alternate personalities in multiple personality.

“We call the novel by a name that Defoe did not give to it. Roxana was first recorded as the title of the book in an edition published in 1742, eleven years after its author’s death” (1, p. 332), eighteen years after it was first published in 1724. Its original title was The Fortunate Mistress.

The preface does not name the protagonist, and it will turn out that “Roxana” is a nickname she picks up along the way. She keeps her real name secret for most of the novel. I wonder if the character had kept her name secret from Defoe, too.

One of the reasons that multiple personality usually remains hidden and undiagnosed is that alternate personalities like it that way, and prefer to remain incognito. I discussed this in a past post about “Rumpelstiltskin”:

Monday, May 5, 2014

The Brothers Grimm tale "Rumpelstiltskin," an Allegory of the Secret, Incognito, Alternate Personality in Multiple Personality

In a previous post about Edgar Allan Poe, I discussed that in real life Poe had an alternate personality named “Nobody,” which is the kind of name sometimes used by alternate personalities to remain secret and unidentified. I noted that it was the same kind of naming trick used by Odysseus to fool the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey, suggesting that Homer knew things about multiple personality.

Poe and the Odyssey illustrate that, in multiple personality, alternate personalities like to carry on their lives, and go about their business, incognito. Indeed, to understand multiple personality, you have understand that it is, by nature, hidden and secretive.

In the Brothers Grimm tale “Rumpelstiltskin” (1812), a young woman must spin straw into gold or be killed. A magical imp, Rumpelstiltskin, gets the straw spinned into gold for her, but to pay him, she will have to sacrifice her first-born, unless she can guess or discover his name.

So this is a story about a secret person, who acts behind the scenes, and who maintains his personal power relative to a regular, well-known person by keeping his identity and name secret.

The tale is an allegory of multiple personality, in which the young woman represents the regular or host personality, while Rumpelstiltskin represents the hidden, behind-the-scenes alternate personality.

In multiple personality, the host personality often knows little or nothing about the alternate personalities. And the alternate personalities are often particularly reluctant to divulge their names.

I can’t be more specific now in regard to this novel, because I haven’t finished reading it. All I can say is that a novel with a nameless and incognito protagonist is probably a multiple personality scenario.

1. Daniel Defoe. Roxana [1724]. Oxford University Press, 2008.

January 4, 2016

Alternate Personality Narrates: Literary criticism knows, but cannot explain, that the first-person narrator in Roxana (post 4) by Daniel Defoe (post 5) is Susan.

“…As a matter of fact, the narrator[’s real name is] not ‘Roxana’ but ‘Susan’. We discover this, in passing, late in the book…The keeping hidden of her original name (and of her married names) will not, in itself, surprise any reader familiar with Defoe’s fiction. All the narrators of his novels change or conceal their names…In none of Defoe’s other novels, however, is the imposition of a new name as perturbing as it is in Roxana…

“The woman…often finds it useful, and more comfortable, to be ‘Incognito’…(1, p. xvi-xvii).

It is not merely “perturbing.” It is bizarre, and requires an explanation, why Susan doesn’t use her real name, and why the reader learns her real name only late in the novel, and then only when it is mentioned in passing. Is it that she knows her real name, but doesn’t identify with it, because she sees herself as a different person? Who is this first-person narrator, psychologically speaking?

The above reminds me of a past post on Dostoevsky’s The Double:

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Post #3 on Dostoevsky’s The Double; Post #2 quoting Mikhail Bakhtin

“But who tells the story in The Double?…one gets the impression that the narration is dialogically addressed to Golyadkin himself, it rings in Golyadkin’s own ears as another’s voice taunting him, as the voice of his double, although formally the narration is addressed to the reader.” 

As I previously said, the story is not really about Golyadkin’s downfall. It is about the double’s triumph. “History is written by the victors.” The double—the alternate personality—tells the story.

Perhaps Roxana is narrated by Susan’s alternate personality.

1. Daniel Defoe. Roxana [1724]. Introduction by John Mullan. Oxford University Press, 2008.

January 8, 2016

Why the nameless protagonist of Roxana (post 5) by Daniel Defoe (post 6) does not want to meet her abandoned daughter: shame or multiple personality?

The nameless protagonist—her secret, real name, is Susan; her nickname as a whore, is Roxana—gives a bogus reason for not wanting to meet the daughter she abandoned many years ago.

Her bogus reason is that she is now retired from her life as a whore (her word); she has just married a man who knows nothing about her past; and she fears that her daughter would expose her. Moreover, she wants to shield her daughter from the shame of knowing that her mother was a whore. So now that she is rich, she wants to provide financial support to her daughter as an anonymous benefactor.

However, there is little or nothing in the text to indicate that the daughter—also named Susan—either wants to expose, or would be ashamed of, her mother. From the daughter’s words and behavior, it appears that her motivation for trying to find and meet her mother is purely emotional: She longs to have a mother, and to be loved and recognized by her mother.

So what is the real reason that Nameless fears meeting her daughter? I call the protagonist “Nameless,” because Roxana is not her real name, Susan is, but she never uses her real name. Literary analysis of Roxana must explain its most salient fact: the protagonist is nameless.

One possible explanation is that Nameless has multiple personality. She does not use the name Susan, because that is the name of a personality who has not been in control for many years. Susan may be a depressed, victimized personality, who was last in control at the time her first husband abandoned her and their five young children to dire poverty. The real risk to Nameless of meeting her daughter is that such a meeting could bring out that depressed, victimized personality.

The unnamed personalities who made her rich and happily married want to remain in control. However, that depressed personality, Susan, is always behind-the-scenes and trying to come out. And the presence of the daughter—also named Susan, who was last in her life when the depressed personality was in control, and, especially, would address her by the name Susan—might shift the balance of power in favor of the depressed personality and enable the latter to come out and take over.

If you have a better explanation for both why the protagonist is nameless and why she does not want to see her daughter, please submit your comment.

January 9, 2016

Oxford University Press bungles title and cover illustration of Roxana (post 6) by Daniel Defoe (post 7): Protagonist is not “Roxana,” and her face is not “painted”

The Oxford University Press edition is highly commendable. It uses the original 1724 text, not the many later, unauthorized revisions. And it has an excellent Introduction and Textual History.

However, it disregards the novel’s text in its use of the unauthorized, revised title, “Roxana” instead of the original title, “The Fortunate Mistress.” And its cover illustration, the portrait of a woman who is obviously wearing makeup, is also at odds with the text.

When Daniel Defoe published his novel with the title, “The Fortunate Mistress,” he knew what he was doing. His protagonist is an extremely fortunate mistress, and remains fortunate until the very last paragraph, which appears tacked on to appease moral censors.

As the Introduction and text make clear, “Roxana” is not the protagonist’s name, but only a nickname for whore, which, on one occasion, was called out by men watching her do an exotic dance. If the publisher wanted to retain that name in the title, because that is the title by which the novel is best known, the least they should have done was to make it “The Roxana,” meaning The Whore. But the novel is not really about being a whore, but about a woman who was very fortunate in her career as a mistress.

Moreover, the title Roxana, especially if you skip the Introduction, misleads the reader into thinking that the protagonist uses that name, or any name at all. And if you don’t realize that the protagonist does not use any name, you miss the salient feature of this novel that distinguishes it from most others.

As to the cover illustration: It is a running joke in this novel that the protagonist is so beautiful that she does not need to “paint” (use makeup). Time and again, she declares to her clients that she does not paint, and gives them a glass of hot water and a cloth with which to rub her cheek as hard as they wish, to prove that her perfect complexion is not due to any makeup. They are amazed.

Daniel Defoe. Roxana. Oxford University Press, 1724/2008.