Marilynne Robinson’s “Housekeeping” and Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”: In both novels, characters have alternate personalities referred to as “familiars”

Many readers of Marilynne Robinson’s celebrated novel, “Housekeeping,” think that there are two characters, “Rosette Browne” and “Rosette Browne’s mother,” who tell Lucille that they disapprove of her Aunt Sylvie’s behavior.

But if you look at the novel’s list of characters in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housekeeping_(novel), you see that Rosette and her mother are not listed, because they are not portrayed as real people, as explained below.

from June 17, 2018

“Housekeeping” by Marilynne Robinson (post 2): “Lucille had a familiar” as did Bertha Mason in “Jane Eyre,” meaning they had alternate personalities

Halfway through this novel, the three main characters are Aunt Sylvie and her two adolescent nieces, Ruth, the first-person narrator, and her younger sister Lucille. Sylvie is increasingly portrayed as being mentally ill; Ruth is relatively tolerant of Sylvie’s odd behavior; but Lucille insists on conventional behavior.

Many readers misunderstand the following:

“Lucille had a familiar, Rosette Browne, whom she feared and admired, and through whose eyes she continually imagined she saw” (1, p. 103). And it is described in the next four pages how “Rosette Browne” and “Rosette Brown’s mother” disapprove of Sylvie’s odd behavior.

1. Marilynne Robinson. Housekeeping. New York, Picador/Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980.

Many readers, not knowing what “a familiar” is, think that Lucille is referring to a real mother and daughter. So let me reprint a past post that discussed “a familiar” in Jane Eyre:

October 24, 2015

Jane Eyre (post 7): Bertha Mason misbehaves because she is “prompted by her familiar”—the alternate personality of her multiple personality disorder.

Rochester says that his wife, Bertha Mason, “is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night [himself], to stab them, to bite their flesh [her brother]…” (1, p. 257).

Who or what is Bertha’s “familiar”? What is a “familiar”?

According to Wikipedia, familiar spirits, sometimes referred to simply as “familiars,” are supernatural entities. “When they served witches, they were often thought to be malevolent, while when working for cunning-folk they were often thought of as benevolent…The former were often categorized as demons, while the latter were more commonly thought of and described as fairies.”

Some familiars take animal form, such as a witch’s black cat. Other familiars take human form, common in Western Europe. According to one definition, “A familiar spirit (alter ego, doppelgänger, personal demon, personal totem, spirit companion) is the double, the alter-ego, of an individual.”

Accounts of familiars were often striking for their “ordinariness” and “naturalism.” Familiar spirits “were often given down-to-earth, and frequently affectionate, nicknames. One example of this was Tom Reid, who was the familiar of the cunning-woman and accused witch Bessie Dunlop.”

Now, if I were to translate “familiar” to modern, psychiatric terminology, I would say that it refers to alternate personality, as in multiple personality. And since Bertha Mason’s multiple personality causes her distress and dysfunction, it would be multiple personality disorder.

1. Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. New York, W. W. Norton, 2001.

Comment

Unlike Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, in which “a familiar” (alternate personality) is given to “the mad woman in the attic,” Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping gives “a familiar” (alternate personality; actually two alternate personalities) to the best-adjusted character, Lucille.

Thus, Jane Eyre’s Bertha Mason illustrates an extreme case of clinical, multiple personality disorder, while Housekeeping illustrates the normal version, multiple personality trait, which is the subject of this blog.

And since Marilynne Robinson does not appear to have intentionally given Lucille multiple personality, per se, and has not used multiple personality in the plot, then Lucille’s multiple personality is gratuitous (search “gratuitous multiple personality”), and is probably just a reflection of the author’s view of ordinary psychology.