“Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo (post 8): Marius and Cosette are lover-specialized alternate personalities, with definitive feature of memory gaps

In the last post, I inferred that when Marius and Cosette did not exchange names until the very end of their hour-long intimate conversation, they were acting like alternate personalities. Since some readers may have doubted that opinion, Victor Hugo provides more definitive evidence.

“Strange to say, in the kind of symphony in which Marius had been living since he had seen Cosette, the past, even the most recent, had become so confused and distant to him that what Cosette told him satisfied him fully. He did not even think to speak to her of the night adventure at the Gorbeau tenement, the Thénardiers, the burning, and the strange attitude and singular flight of her father [Jean Valjean]. Marius had temporarily forgotten all that; he did not even know at night what he had done in the morning, nor where he had breakfasted, nor who had spoken to him…he existed only during the hour in which he saw Cosette” (1, pp. 873-874).

Readers who are new to this site, and do not have even the most basic knowledge of multiple personality, will misinterpret the above passage as merely a romantic exaggeration of how enraptured they were. But what is being described is that the two lovers, per se, were lover-specialized alternate personalities, with amnesia for anything other than their specialized interest. Perhaps the author had had that kind of alternate personality when he had been in love.

1. Victor Hugo. Les Misérables [1862]. New York, Modern Library, 1992.