“Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson (post 2): “Lucille had a familiar” as did Bertha Mason in “Jane Eyre,” meaning they had alternate personalities

Halfway through this novel, the three main characters are Aunt Sylvie and her two adolescent nieces, Ruth, the first-person narrator, and her younger sister Lucille. Sylvie is increasingly portrayed as being mentally ill; Ruth is relatively tolerant of Sylvie’s odd behavior; but Lucille insists on conventional behavior.

Most readers misunderstand the following:

“Lucille had a familiar, Rosette Browne, whom she feared and admired, and through whose eyes she continually imagined she saw” (1, p. 103). And it is described in the next four pages how “Rosette Browne” and “Rosette Brown’s mother” disapprove of Sylvie’s odd behavior.

Most readers, not knowing what “a familiar” is, think that Lucille is referring to a real mother and daughter. So let me reprint a past post that discussed “a familiar” in Jane Eyre:

October 24, 2015

Jane Eyre (post 7): Bertha Mason misbehaves because she is “prompted by her familiar”—the alternate personality of her multiple personality disorder.

Rochester says that his wife, Bertha Mason, “is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night [himself], to stab them, to bite their flesh [her brother]…” (1, p. 257).

Who or what is Bertha’s “familiar”? What is a “familiar”?

According to Wikipedia, familiar spirits, sometimes referred to simply as “familiars,” are supernatural entities. “When they served witches, they were often thought to be malevolent, while when working for cunning-folk they were often thought of as benevolent…The former were often categorized as demons, while the latter were more commonly thought of and described as fairies.”

Some familiars take animal form, such as a witch’s black cat. Other familiars take human form, common in Western Europe. According to one definition, “A familiar spirit (alter ego, doppelgänger, personal demon, personal totem, spirit companion) is the double, the alter-ego, of an individual.”

Accounts of familiars were often striking for their “ordinariness” and “naturalism.” Familiar spirits “were often given down-to-earth, and frequently affectionate, nicknames. One example of this was Tom Reid, who was the familiar of the cunning-woman and accused witch Bessie Dunlop.”

Now, if I were to translate “familiar” to modern, psychiatric terminology, I would say that it refers to alternate personality, as in multiple personality. And since Bertha Mason’s multiple personality causes her distress and dysfunction, it would be multiple personality disorder.

1. Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. New York, W. W. Norton, 2001.

Unlike Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, in which “a familiar” (alternate personality) is given to “the mad woman in the attic,” Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping gives “a familiar” (alternate personality; actually two alternate personalities) to the best adjusted character, Lucille. Jane Eyre illustrates clinical, multiple personality disorder, while Housekeeping illustrates the normal version, which is the subject of this blog.

And since Marilynne Robinson does not appear to be intentionally giving Lucille multiple personality, per se, or intentionally using multiple personality in the plot, then Lucille’s multiple personality is gratuitous (search “gratuitous multiple personality”), and is probably just a reflection of the author’s concept of ordinary psychology.

1. Marilynne Robinson. Housekeeping. New York, Picador/Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980.