“Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo (post 9): Is Javert’s suicide an internal homicide by an alternate personality?

Police inspector Javert is an unusual personality. Many policemen and detectives in novels are known for bending the rules. In contrast, Javert never bends the rules. He is narrowly specialized in being “irreproachable” (1, p. 1142).

And as discussed in yesterday’s post, alternate personalities, per se, are typically specialized. Thus, in that regard, Javert doesn’t seem like a whole person, but more like an alternate personality.

I have often mentioned the fact that when nonpsychotic people hear rational voices in their head, it may be voices of alternate personalities. And Javert does hear a voice: “…in the depths of his mind he had heard a voice, a strange voice crying to him…” (1, p. 1141).

And when Javert had recently released Jean Valjean from his custody, he had not been aware of any intention to do so: “It was in some sort without his knowledge that his hand had opened and released him” (1, p. 1142). Something within him had had a will of its own. Moreover, “without his knowledge” may even imply a multiple personality memory gap.

In short, Javert “was not sure of being himself” (1, p. 1143). 

Why does he commit suicide? Is it that his regular personality has been freaked out by what his alternate personality has been saying in his head and doing with his prisoner? Or is his alternate personality so fed up with the rule-bound regular personality that it finally couldn’t take any more and killed him? In clinical, multiple personality disorder, so-called “internal homicides” sometimes do happen.

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