“Milkman” by Anna Burns (post 7): Tablets Girl, a serial poisoner, leaves written evidence of multiple personality

After tablets girl is murdered, her sister finds a handwritten letter: “It was written in her sister’s hand and seemed to be a private missive written by some aspect of tablets girl to another aspect of herself” (1, p. 262).

It is reported that one of tablets girl’s named aspects had “killed” another of her named aspects: “So it was that Terror Of Other People overruled, disordered, and then finally assassinated Lightness and Niceness” (1, p. 267).

About which the narrator says: “Never do they realise, these psychological usurpers and possessors, that in dispensing with the host — with the one being above all whom they need for their own survival — inevitably they are also dispensing with themselves” (1, p. 267).

Comment

In the past six posts, there is evidence suggestive of multiple personality in both the author and this novel, but since it is not labeled as multiple personality, it has been unclear whether the author thought of it in those terms.

In the above quotes, there is still no explicit labeling of tablets girl’s “aspects” as alternate personalities, and still no use of explicit terms like multiple personality or split personality.

However, the narrator’s use of the word “host,” as in host personality, suggests that the narrator is, indeed, thinking in terms of multiple personality, per se.

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