Toni Morrison’s “God Help the Child”: Author’s last novel is well-informed portrayal of traumatized people and their unrecognized multiple personality

June 5, 2015

Lula Ann Bridewell—a.k.a. little Lula Ann (pre-age 8), big Lula Ann (age 16), Ann Bride (after high school), and Bride (beautiful career-woman)—has two textbook symptoms of multiple personality: 1. going places and doing things that she can’t remember, and 2. body-image hallucinations.

The first symptom is reported on pages 51-53 (1), when Bride says that she has been “sleeping with men…and not remembering any of it.” In other words, an alternate personality has been going places and doing things that her host personality (Bride) doesn’t remember: Memory gaps are a classic, core symptom of multiple personality.

In the aftermath of one of these episodes, she looks in a mirror and sees that her earlobes do not appear to be pierced (which they have been since she was eight) and she has “not a single hair in my armpit” (p. 52). At various other times in the novel, she sees that her adult breasts have disappeared. “So this is what insanity is,” she says (p. 52).

But no, body-image hallucinations are not insanity. They are a textbook symptom of multiple personality:

“The visual hallucinations reported in MPD [multiple personality disorder] are a curious blend of hallucination and illusion and frequently include changes in the patient’s perceived body image. MPD patients often report seeing themselves as different people when they look into a mirror. They may see themselves as having hair, eyes, or skin of a different color, or as being of the opposite sex. In some instances, these alterations of perception of self are so disturbing that the individuals may phobically avoid mirrors. They may describe seeing themselves sequentially change into several different people while looking in a mirror. MPD patients may also hallucinate their alter personalities as separate people existing outside of their bodies” (2, p. 62).

What multiples are hallucinating in mirrors (and even without mirrors) are their various alternate personalities. So when Bride saw unpierced earlobes, etc., she was seeing her little, prepubescent, Lula Ann alternate personality. But since Bride did not know about multiple personality, she worried that she was insane. (She need not have worried, because multiple personality is not a psychosis.)

1.Toni Morrison. God Help the Child. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

2. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

June 7, 2015

Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child: Round characters? No. Character-driven? Maybe. Multiple personality makes it a literary novel.

Once you know Bride’s and Booker’s childhood traumas, their behavior is predictable. They are not very “round” characters. They are two-dimensional representatives of the lasting effects of childhood trauma. So if this is a literary novel—and it is—what makes it so?

In the first post, I noted two manifestations of Bride’s multiple personality: her amnesia episodes and her body metamorphoses (see Kafka posts). Another indication of multiple personality is at the beginning of the novel when Booker says to Bride, “You not the woman I want.” And she puzzlingly replies, “Neither am I.” Her reply is never explained. His remark is eventually explained on the basis of his childhood trauma, but I have a different explanation.

When Booker says, “You not the woman I want,” he is reacting to her not then being the same one of her personalities that he had fallen in love with. Her reply, “Neither am I”—about which Bride says to the reader, “I still don’t know why I said that. It just popped out of my mouth”—is a reply from yet another of her alternate personalities.

Other examples of multiple personality in this novel involve Booker and Sofia. Booker is described as being inhabited by his deceased brother’s personality. And Sofia’s sudden change from meek to violent is a realistic portrayal of a personality switch.

Thus, multiple personality pervades this novel, as it does in a number of Morrison’s novels (see past posts). And she is not alone. Other writers, including other Nobel Prize winners discussed in this blog, have unrecognized, unacknowledged multiple personality in their works, too.

Is it just coincidence that many literary novels have multiple personality, or are they considered literary novels, because they do have multiple personality?

When a text has unacknowledged multiple personality, the characters and story appear to have—in a way, they do have—profound, mysterious, depth. And the author seems to be—in a way, is—some kind of oracle. Perhaps having unrecognized multiple personality is part of what is meant by literary novel.