“Milkman” by Anna Burns (post 5): Italics in text indicates what is said to protagonist by her alternate personality

In the quoted passage below, the narrator/protagonist says “I told myself” (not in italics, since it is the regular personality speaking) rather than “I thought,” because she recognizes that what is in italics, although coming from her own head, is not her own thought: it is the thought of an alternate personality.

The italic speaker (alternate personality) distinguishes herself from the regular personality by referring to the protagonist as “you.” After the italic passage, the protagonist refers back to it as having come from a particular “part” (alternate personality) of herself. This “part” has employed a proper noun (“Ivor”) for clarity, whereas the protagonist (regular personality), in the previous 107 pages, has never referred to a person by a regular name. 

“…And now, having pitted myself against a sharp, cold intelligence such as I now imagined was that of the milkman, hardly could I backtrack and present a simpler story — the true story — for if I did, that would only compound matters for maybe-boyfriend as well as reveal to this milkman I’d been lying all along.

“This is mad, you’re mad, I told myself. What are you gonna say next and what if this flag business ends up at kangaroo court level? Will you propound that the guy from ‘over the road’ — Ivor, shall we say? — who must be assumed, more because of his religion than because of his fictitiousness, not to want to appear in person in an enemy-renouncer commandery, might be willing all the same, in support of his workmate, to write a little note? Is Ivor in this notelette going to vouch that it was he who possessed the bit with the flag on, perhaps enclosing a Polaroid of himself beside this bit with the flag on, with other indications in the background of his ‘over the road’ status — more flags perhaps? That should do the trick.

"This predictive if sarcastic part of myself again brought back the rashness of maybe-boyfriend…” (1, pp. 108-109).

When a novel has multiple personality, but does not label or acknowledge it as such, italics may be used to indicate what is said or thought by an alternate personality. I have seen this done by other writers, too.

1. Anna Burns. Milkman. Minneapolis Minnesota, Graywolf Press, 2018.