“Persuasion” (post 3) by Jane Austen (post 6): Why are both Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth split in half?

As quoted in the previous post:

“Captain Wentworth must be out of sight. She left her seat, she would go, one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half, or always suspecting the other of being worse than it was…He was more obviously struck and confused by the sight of her, than she had ever observed before; he looked quite red…Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery (Vol. II, Ch. VII, 1., p. 332).

Captain Wentworth’s climactic love letter

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W. (4).

Only the two most important characters—both of whom are sane, emotionally stable, and admirable—are given this split personality-suggestive psychology. And these features are not labelled as multiple personality-suggestive. In short, this is one more novel with unacknowledged multiple personality, which I consider to be a reflection of the author’s own psychology. Why else would it be in this novel? After all, it is irrelevant to this novel’s plot and character development.

I assume that the author was like her two main characters: sane, emotionally stable, and admirable. Therefore, she would assume it to be realistic for such characters to have such splits in their personalities, too.

1. Jane Austen. The Annotated Persuasion [1818]. Annotated by David M. Shapard. New York, Anchor Books, 2010.

2. Wikipedia. Persuasion (novel). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasion_(novel)

3. Wikipedia. Anne Elliot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Elliot

4. Wikipedia. Frederick Wentworth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Wentworth_(Persuasion)