“Mr. Fox” by Helen Oyeyemi: Three characters, including a fiction writer, have multiple personality, but book reviews of this novel do not mention it

The three main characters are St. John Fox, a fiction writer, his wife Daphne, and his alternate personality, Mary Foxe.

As the novel begins, Mr. Fox, a novelist, becomes aware of the presence of Mary Foxe, after he had not seen her for seven years (1, p. 2). When Daphne suspects he has a mistress, he explains that “Her name’s Mary…I made her up during the war…Just a precaution for the times I came dangerously close to feeling sorry for myself” (1, p. 85). Actually, he considers Mary to be a love interest, and often thinks he prefers her to Daphne.

As is common in multiple personality fiction, Mary is often incarnated, and appears like a real-life (but magically appearing and disappearing) person, not only to Mr. Fox, but eventually to Daphne, too (although they both always know that Mary is imaginary).

In a long chapter beginning on page 145, St. John Fox is reimagined as a psychiatrist, and Mary Foxe as a model with a psychology degree whom he meets on an airplane on his way back from a psychiatric convention, where he had delivered a paper on fugue states (1, p. 151).

Readers of this blog know that fugue states (search “dissociative fugues”) happen mostly in persons with multiple personality, and are a big version of memory gaps (search “memory gaps”), which are periods of time for which the regular, host personality has amnesia, because one of the alternate personalities had been in control. So in this chapter’s scenario, St. John Fox is a psychiatrist with interests related to multiple personality.

Furthermore, after a date with the psychiatrist (Dr. Fox), Mary loses time, has a memory gap (1, p. 177), suggesting to the alert reader that she probably has multiple personality in this chapter’s scenario.

In a later chapter, Daphne feels a hand on her thigh, and then is surprised to realize it is her own hand, whereupon, a voice in her head, from her own alternate personality, says to her (italics in the original),“Stupid Daphne…” (1, p. 231). So Daphne has multiple personality, too.

Comment

There are two reasons that the many book reviews of this novel do not recognize the blatant multiple personality.

First, Mary Foxe is referred to in the novel as the fiction writer’s “muse,” which is the way all the book reviews refer to her. See my recent post on the definition of “muse.” Mary is critical of Mr. Fox’s novels, but she is definitely not his muse. And even if she were his muse, a psychological muse is just a type of alternate personality.

Second, the text never refers to Mary Foxe as what she obviously is, an alternate personality. And reviewers might not think of it, because they are confused by the term “alternate personality,” thinking it means that two personalities can’t be present at the same time. But alternate personalities are often co-conscious and present at the same time.

In short, this novel is another example of unlabeled, unacknowledged, multiple personality, which is probably in the novel as a reflection of the author’s own psychology.

1. Helen Oyeyemi. Mr. Fox. New York, Riverhead/Penguin, 2011.