“Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine” by Gail Honeyman (post 2): Eleanor’s multiple personality is unacknowledged (both in novel and reviews)

The novel ends optimistically. Eleanor, after being on the verge of suicide, and then on leave-of-absence from work, is now in psychotherapy, is also in a relationship with Raymond, and is back to work. Moreover, she has stopped binging on vodka every weekend, which she might have been doing for more than a decade. And on Wednesday night, the night of the week she’s been hallucinating conversations with her deceased mother for perhaps the last twenty years, she tells the hallucination “Good-bye…And, just like that, Mummy was gone” (1, p. 316).

Throughout the novel, Eleanor has repeatedly specified that her alcohol binges and her hallucinated conversations have always happened in different parts of the week (the binges on weekends and the hallucinations on Wednesdays). Her consistently separating these two things indicates that the hallucinations were not the major stress of Eleanor’s week. Indeed, these hallucinations came in the middle of the best functioning part of her week (Monday-Friday, when she was working full time). This circumstantial evidence suggests that her conversations with “Mum” were actually, in their own way, supportive.

Of course, these conversations were not with Eleanor’s actual Mum. She was not being visited by the spirit of her deceased, abusive mother on Wednesday leaves-of-absence from hell. No, this “Mum” was one of Eleanor’s alternate personalities, and was, relatively speaking, a nice version of her mother, one who kept Eleanor company every Wednesday evening for the last twenty years (during which time Eleanor graduated from university and then worked full-time for the last nine years).

If a person with multiple personality decides to ignore an alternate personality that she has had for twenty years, that alternate personality might become quiet, but will remain behind-the-scenes. “Mum,” like all of her alternate personalities, is a part of who Eleanor is.

1. Gail Honeyman. Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine. New You, Pamela Dorman/Viking Penguin, 2017.