“The Resurrection of Joan Ashby” by Cherise Wolas: The metaphor of reversible death suggests that the protagonist has multiple personality

I have just started this 531-page novel, which is the story of how marriage and motherhood suspend the career of a promising fiction writer.

My first question is about the title metaphor, “resurrection.” When I think of resurrection, I think of Jesus Christ. But since I doubt that either the author or the character has a God complex, the resurrection metaphor must imply something else. Why do I think it implies multiple personality?

Because the narrator says that the protagonist’s writing career is the function of a particular Joan Ashby, who is not the same as the Joan Ashby who marries and has children.

“It was the first Joan Ashby, the realest Joan Ashby, the one who was neither wife nor mother, that she was in immediate danger of losing” (1, p. 82).

The concept of reversible “death” is often seen in people with multiple personality. Alternate personalities who have been rendered unable to come out and perform their characteristic function are often thought of, and referred to, as “dead.” But they are not dead in the ordinary, permanent sense, because they are capable of being resurrected if the forces or circumstances preventing them from coming out are neutralized.

1. Cherise Wolas. The Resurrection of Joan Ashby. New York, Flatiron Books, 2017.