“The English Teacher” by R. K. Narayan (post 1): Protagonist converses with two nonpsychotic inner voices, suggestive of multiple personality trait

The “voice of conscience” is merely a metaphor for some people, but for others it is a nonpsychotic auditory hallucination that they hear in their head. For this novel’s protagonist, an English teacher and poet, it is not just a metaphor, and not the only voice that he hears.

Voice of Conscience Personality

“I decided to rush back to my [room] and write a poem on nature…

“I returned to my room before seven. I felt very well satisfied with my performance. I told myself: ‘I am all right. I am quite sound if I can do this every day. I shall be able to write a hundred lines of poetry, read everything I want to read, in addition to class-work…’ This gave place to a distinct memory of half a dozen similar resolves in the past and the lapses … I checked this defeatism! ‘Don’t you see this is entirely different? I am different today …’

“ ‘How?’ asked a voice. I ignored the question and it added, ‘Why?’

“ ‘Shut up,’ I cried. ‘Don’t ask questions.’ I myself was not clear as to the ‘Why?’, except that my conscience perpetually nagged over arrears of work…(1, pp. 426-427).

Voice of Another “Part of Me” (Alternate Personality)

“I had four hours of teaching to do that day…Four periods of continuous work and I hadn’t prepared even a page of lecture…

“A babble rose in the class…I banged the table with my fist and shouted over the din: ‘Stop this, otherwise I will mark everyone absent’…

“Who was I that they should obey my command? What tie was there between me and them? Did I absorb their personalities as did the old masters and merge them in mine?…

“Some part of me was saying: ‘These poor boys are now all attention, cowed by your superior force. They are ready to listen to you and write down whatever you may say. What have you to give them in return?’ ” (1, pp. 428-429).

1. R. K. Narayan. Swami and Friends [1935], The Bachelor of Arts [1937], The Dark Room [1938], The English Teacher [1945, pp. 421-609], New York, Everyman’s Library/Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf/Random House, 2006.

“The Saga of Gösta Berling” by Selma Lagerlöf (post 5): In the final chapter, one more character has a multiple personality scenario

The thirty-sixth and final chapter is titled “Margareta Celsing,” which is the actual name of the character who had previously been called the “majoress at Ekeby.” (She had inherited the large estate of the Major of Ekeby, making her a very rich and powerful force in the area). Gösta Berling is one of a dozen “cavaliers” who has been given a temporary home at Ekeby by the majoress. Use of the term “cavalier” is one indication of the novel’s fairy tale-like quality.

At the end of the novel, the majoress has been away from Ekeby for some time. At her return, “the cavaliers hurried to help her out of the sleigh” but “they could scarcely recognize her, for she was just as good and gentle as their own young countess” (the latter refers to Elizabeth, the character played by Greta Garbo in her breakthrough role of the 1924 movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saga_of_Gosta_Berling.

The cavaliers “whispered to each other, ‘It’s not the majoress at Ekeby, it is Margareta Celsing who is coming back’ ” (1, pp. 386-387). And Gösta Berling says, “My dear old majoress, I saw you like this once before! Now Margareta Celsing has come back to life. Now she will never again step aside for the majoress at Ekeby” (1, p. 397).

She is dying, and as she does so, she has changed back to her original personality (just as the title character reverts to his original name and personality at the end of Cervantes’s Don Quixote).

Thus, majoress/Margareta is a fourth character in this novel (see previous posts) with an inadvertently multiple personality scenario.

1. Selma Lagerlöf. The Saga of Gösta Berling [1891]. Translated by Paul Norlen. New York, Penguin Books, 2009. 

“The Saga of Gösta Berling” by Selma Lagerlöf (post 4): A sane character, Anna, hears voices; meaning she, too, probably has multiple personality

As previously noted, the character, Marianne, was described, mentally, as having two halves. Later, it was described how the protagonist, Gösta, awoke one morning and found that his alternate personality had written a lengthy poem during the night, which he hadn’t remembered. Now, it is casually mentioned that another nonpsychotic character, Anna, hears voices (which, in a sane person, would likely be the voices of alternate personalities):

“…Anna Stjärnhök…struggled to deaden inner voices that already began whispering to her…that now she was finally free (1, p. 310).

“…Anna Stjärnhök could not yet speak; she was still listening to the many voices in the depths of her soul” (1, p. 311).

Since the above phenomena of all three characters are casually mentioned, not labelled as multiple personality, and are not necessary to the plot—what I call, in a novel, "gratuitous multiple personality"—they appear to be in the novel only as a reflection of the author’s sense of ordinary psychology, probably based on the author’s own psychology (which would be another example of multiple personality trait in a great fiction writer).

1. Selma Lagerlöf. The Saga of Gösta Berling [1891]. Translated by Paul Norlen. New York, Penguin Books, 2009. 

“The Saga of Gösta Berling” by Selma Lagerlöf (post 3): Protagonist has nocturnal personality-switch and memory gap indicative of multiple personality

Throughout the first half of this 400-page novel, I have wondered why the protagonist—Gösta Berling, a young, handsome, defrocked minister (due to alcoholism)—has remained so ill-defined.

The back cover says that “His defiant and poetic spirit proves magnetic to a string of women.” One of these women was Marianne, discussed in the two previous posts. It had been unclear to me why he broke up with her. There was something about his personality that I could not understand. And contrary to what the back cover said, I could see nothing “poetic” about him.

But the mystery of his personality has suddenly become clear, because of the following:

“He tells them that last night he dreamed as vividly as seldom before, dreamed that he had written verse. He, whom people called ‘the poet,’ although up until now he had not deserved such a nickname, got up in the middle of the night and, half asleep, half awake, started to write. It was a complete poem that he found on his writing table in the morning. He would never have believed any such thing about himself. Now the ladies [with whom he is speaking] would hear it. And he reads”: (1, pp. 186-188) [The poem is two pages long in the novel].

The above is a typical multiple personality scenario:

You find that the person’s life story is puzzling and inconsistent, because different personalities have been doing their own things and the host personality, who is trying to give you his life story, doesn’t remember everything that the various alternate personalities had been doing.

For example, Gösta Berling didn’t know why he had been given the nickname, “the poet.” Apparently, his poet personality had written previous poems, but his host personality hadn’t known about it, because of memory gaps, a cardinal symptom of multiple personality.

In the present example of writing the poem last night, he has a vague memory of starting to write, but when his regular personality finds the completed poem the next morning, he is surprised and doesn’t identify with having written it (“he would never have believed any such thing about himself”).

 

Thus, screening for multiple personality includes such questions as this: Do you ever find evidence that things have happened that nobody else could have done, but you don’t remember doing it? It may be something that you don’t even identify with; it may happen, at times, even without intoxication; and your actual behavior may sometimes seem like a dream.

1. Selma Lagerlöf. The Saga of Gösta Berling [1891]. Translated by Paul Norlen. New York, Penguin Books, 2009. 

“The Saga of Gösta Berling” by Selma Lagerlöf (post 2): The dual personality of Marianne is now multiplied and in two genders

In the previous post, the personality of the character, Marianne, was described as having two distinct halves, which is the simplest form of multiple personality. Thirty pages later, the description of the character’s multiple personality is elaborated into more than two parts and more than one gender (see “his” below):

“…She felt his eyes of ice and scornful smile follow every step, every word…

“She was divided into two halves. Pale, unsympathetic, and scornful, one half of herself sat and watched how the other half acted, and never did the peculiar spirit that picked apart her being have a word of feeling or sympathy…

“And if you look carefully, behind it sits an even paler being, who stares and paralyzes and smiles scornfully, and behind that another and another, smiling scornfully at one another and at the whole world…

“…Everything turned to pretense and unreality under the eyes of ice that were watching her, while they in turn were watched by a pair behind them, who were watched by another pair in an infinite perspective” (1, pp. 112-114).

At the end of this chapter, after Marianne has become estranged from the man she loves, Gösta Berling, she writes a letter to him, which she meant to be poetry. She never sends it. But it is apparently so meaningful to the character (and the author) that it is quoted in its entirety for more than a whole page at the end of the chapter.

The poetry is in two distinct parts. The four stanzas of the first part all begin with, and address, “Child”; for example, “Child, you have loved, but never more shall you taste the delights of love” (1, p. 134). “Child, the only one is gone and with him all love and delight in loving” (1, p. 135). Whatever personality is writing the poem appears to be addressing another of Marianne’s personalities as “Child.” (An adult-aged alternate personality is addressing a child-aged, or at least younger, alternate personality.)

The second group of stanzas is addressed to her love, Gösta Berling, asking him, if he can no longer love her, to at least not let his love turn to hate: “I will ask you for a single thing, you my beloved: Never place on me the burden of hate!” (1, p. 135).

With Marianne’s estrangement from Gösta Berling, the author appears to be writing this character out of the story. If so, then the narrator’s whole psychological analysis of this character would appear to be gratuitous, and of no continuing interest to the novel. Thus, the only reason it is in the novel is that the author felt multiple personality trait was ordinary psychology. But aside from 90% of novelists (possibly including this author), and perhaps 30% of the general public, it is not.

1. Selma Lagerlöf. The Saga of Gösta Berling [1891]. Translated by Paul Norlen. New York, Penguin Books, 2009. 

The Swedish Influence on Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020), a section from today’s obituary in The New York Times

Since I’m currently reading a novel by a Swedish author, who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, I took particular note of this:

“The Swedish Influence

After her graduation from Columbia [law school], Ms. Ginsburg received no job offers from New York law firms…

…Ms. Ginsburg returned to Columbia to work on a comparative law project on civil procedure. The project required her to learn Swedish and to spend time in Sweden. The experience proved formative. Feminism was flourishing in Sweden, and there was nothing unusual about women combining work and family obligations. Child care was readily available. An article by the editor of a feminist magazine caught Ms. Ginsburg’s attention. “We ought to stop harping on the concept of women’s two roles,” the editor, Eva Moberg, wrote. “Both men and women have one principal role, that of being people.”

Between 1963 and 1970, Ms. Ginsburg produced a treatise on Swedish civil law, which remains a leading work in the field, along with a dozen other articles and books. But more than this impressive academic output, the most important product of her Swedish interval may have been the effect on the young lawyer of directly observing a different way to organize society.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/us/ruth-bader-ginsburg-dead.html 

“The Saga of Gösta Berling” by first woman Nobel novelist Selma Lagerlöf: A woman has two halves, one of which “stood and looked on with a cold sneer”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_Lagerl%C3%B6f

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6sta_Berling%27s_Saga

The personification of this character’s inhibitions inadvertently reveals that she had two personalities, one of which had “stood and looked on with a cold sneer.” It is an example of “gratuitous multiple personality”:

“When she loved—or whatever she did—it was as though half of her self stood and looked on with a cold sneer. She had longed for a passion to come and pull her along with it in wild recklessness. And now he had arrived, the mighty one. As she kissed Gösta Berling [a handsome defrocked minister] on the balcony, then for the first time she had forgotten herself…” (1, p. 82).

1. Selma Lagerlöf. The Saga of Gösta Berling [1891]. Translated by Paul Norlen. Introduction by George C. Schoolfield. New York, Penguin Books, 2009.

Pulitzer novelist Richard Russo in tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review implies an author’s characters are alternate personalities (as are his own)

“Not all writerly largess derives from their relationship to readers…It can also be about how a writer relates to her characters — her willingness to put their needs before her own [implying they are people in their own right, and so have needs, as anyone does]. The source of such charity, I suspect, is humility, and it manifests as an eagerness to step aside, to suppress one’s ego. Such writers take on faith that, if you’re able to lose yourself in fictional others [i.e., step aside, since the characters, like autonomous alternate personalities, seem to have minds of their own], any additional storytelling obligations will naturally fall in line or become irrelevant. Your plot is thin? So what? The pace of your narrative unexpectedly slows? You can live with it. The story assumes an odd, unanticipated shape? Well, so does life. This last is the kind of generosity that I particularly associate with Miller’s work, and it’s showcased again in her fine new novel, Monogamy” (1).

Search Richard Russo to see past posts on his multiple personality.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/books/review/sue-miller-monogamy.html [front page in tomorrow’s print edition of The New York Times Book Review]. 

“A Christmas Carol” (post 2) by Charles Dickens: Scrooge’s Visitation Dream

At the end, Scrooge wakes up in his own bed. He had gone to sleep Christmas Eve and woken up on Christmas Day. When he’d met the ghosts or spirits, he’d been asleep, which does not prove they were not real, since sleep may just be a good time for ghosts and spirits to visit.

Of interest here is that “visitation dreams” may seem more real than real:

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/mystery-behind-ghost-visits-dreams

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dream-catcher/201110/visitation-dreams

Before looking up the above, I had not heard of visitation dreams. And the idea that they can seem “more real than real” reminds me of how some novelists say they experience their characters when they are writing.

Is part of the fiction writer’s creative process a sort of visitation dream (the visitors for both Scrooge and fiction writers being alternate personalities)?

“A Christmas Carol, A Ghost Story of Christmas” by Charles Dickens: However, in real life, Dickens mocked belief in ghosts and was a ghost buster!

“Dickens…like many of his contemporaries, routinely mocked the belief in ghosts as a lingering trace of the uncivilized past…” (1, Introduction, p. xiii). Indeed, he was a skeptic of paranormal phenomena and was a ghost buster (2).

Why was he skeptical? As discussed in past posts, citing nonfiction sources, Dickens would sometimes hear the voices of, visualize the presence of, and converse with, people who seemed real, but he knew were imaginary.

Moreover, as an avid student and practitioner of hypnosis (known then as mesmerism) (3), Dickens had probably seen, and possibly induced, such phenomena in others.

1. Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol [1843] and Other Christmas Books. Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.

2. Charlotte Ahlin. “This Famous Author Was a Real Life Ghost Buster.” https://www.bustle.com/articles/186345-charles-dickens-was-a-real-life-ghost-buster-and-member-of-the-worlds-oldest-paranormal-research

3. Fred Kaplan. Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975.

Women's Routine Facial Beauty Enhancements may not only be chores, but may also prompt sexism

Jennifer Weiner. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/opinion/nancy-pelosi-mask-salon.html 

The only novel I have previously discussed in which makeup was an issue was Daniel Defoe's Roxana, about a professional mistress who prides herself on the fact that she does not have to "paint" (wear makeup) in order to look beautiful. Search "Roxana."

Years ago, I published a theory of personal appearance (including facial anatomy, makeup, clothing, and attractiveness) as being one cause of sexual stereotyping:

Nakdimen, K. A. (1984). "The physiognomic basis of sexual stereotyping" [stereotyping and attractiveness based on sexual dimorphism, including women's built-in smile]. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 141(4), 499–503. Reference 3 in Wikipedia. Sexism.

“The Mothers” by Brit Bennett (post 6): The Mothers are members of a real life church, Upper Room Chapel, that most book reviews don’t explain

I have just begun Brit Bennett’s first novel, each chapter of which begins with the thoughts of a women’s group of the community’s church, Upper Room Chapel. I didn’t pay attention to this until their discussion at the beginning of Chapter 3, involving “intercessory prayer,” which, I did not know, is one of the four types of prayer recognized in Christianity. My attention was particularly peeked by the sentence, “Then you have to slip into their body.” I don’t know if this means you have to be empathetic or you have to become someone else, which sounds like switching personalities:

“We don’t think of ourselves as ‘prayer warriors.’ A man must have come up with that term. But prayer is more delicate than battle, especially intercessory prayer. More than just a notion, taking up the burdens of someone else, often someone you don’t even know. You close your eyes and listen to a request. Then you have to slip inside their body…If you don’t become them, even for a second, a prayer is nothing but words” (1, p. 38).

Since I am unfamiliar with the Upper Room Chapel church and with prayer in Christian theology, I looked up related links (2-6). Maybe you can understand this aspect of Brit Bennett’s first novel. I don’t see it discussed in book reviews, and I don’t understand why this is in the novel or what it means. Maybe you do.

1. Brit Bennett. The Mothers. New York, Riverhead Books, 2016.

2. Upper Room Chapel https://upperroomchapel.com/

3. The Upper Room https://www.upperroom.org/

4. Prayer Warrior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_warrior

5. Intercession. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercession#:~:text=Intercession%20or%20intercessory%20prayer%20is,alongside%20adoration%2C%20confession%20and%20thanksgiving.

6. Prayer in the Catholic Church. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_in_the_Catholic_Church

September 7, 2020: I didn't note anything related to multiple personality in the rest of the novel.

“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett (post 5): “Brilliant exploration of race, gender, and identity” (front flap)

In previous posts on this novel, I focussed on the overt multiple personality of the twin sister who marries a white man. But now that I’ve finished the novel, I can’t help but take it, as a whole, with a sense of humor, even as a comedy or farce, although I doubt that the author meant it that way.

The author is a moderately dark-skinned African-American woman. Her two protagonists are identical-twin African-American sisters, who are so light-skinned that they can easily pass for white. One sister marries a dark-skinned African-American man, from whom she must flee, because he turns out to be physically abusive. The other sister, passing for white, marries a white man (who is good, except that he resists a black family who buys the house across the street).

Other characters include a drag queen, a minor character; and a major character who is a female-to-male transsexual in the process of getting sex-reassignment surgery. He is the lover and prospective husband of the daughter of the twin who married the black man.

In short, this novel has such a wide assortment of racial and gender-bending characters that, although it always takes itself quite seriously, it verges on farce, if the reader takes it, not as totally implausible, but with a sense of humor.

However, it would appear that the author did not intend it as a comedy or farce, but as “a brilliant exploration of race, gender, and identity” (1, front flap); or, at least, that is how the publisher understood the author’s intention.

And what of the previously noted, overt multiple personality of the twin who passes as white? Since that issue is not developed in the rest of the novel, it would appear that the author thought of it as ordinary psychology, thus not requiring further comment. Of course, it would be ordinary psychology only to someone who had personally experienced it as ordinary, such as a great fiction writer with multiple personality trait.

1. Brit Bennett. The Vanishing Half. New York, Riverhead Books, 2020.

“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett (post 4): Nobody (including author and publisher) seems aware of the multiple personality, per se, noted in post 3

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/books/review-vanishing-half-brit-bennett.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanishing_Half

https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/the-vanishing-half/

I have not read every word of every review, but I have googled “the vanishing half multiple personality” and found nothing. I infer that neither the author nor the publisher has acknowledged the issue in interviews or publicity. Are they even aware of it? As impossible as this may seem, maybe not.

“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett (post 3): Narrator says Stella is “split in two” (has multiple personality) and had been “two people her whole life”

In the middle of the novel, the story of the missing identical twin, Stella, is taken up. Passing as white, she has married a white man and is living with him in Los Angeles. As background, the narrator says that prior to coming to Los Angeles, back when Stella and Desiree had been in New Orleans: “In New Orleans, Stella split in two” (1, p. 183).

“She didn’t notice it at first because she’d been two people her whole life: she was herself and she was Desiree…She’d always thought of herself as part of this pair, but in New Orleans, she splintered into a new woman altogether after she got fired from the Dixie Laundry.” (1, p. 183).

Stella got a new job for a Mr. Sanders [whom she eventually marries]. At work, she was known as Miss Vignes [her and Desiree’s family name]…She’d walked in a colored girl and left a white one. She had become white only because everyone thought she was (1, p. 188). "Each evening, she went through the process in reverse. Miss Vignes climbed onto the streetcar where she became, again, Stella…She didn’t like to think about Miss Vignes when she wasn’t her, although, sometimes, the other girl appeared suddenly…Sometimes she wondered if Miss Vignes was a separate person altogether. Maybe she wasn’t a mask that Stella put on. Maybe Miss Vignes was already a part of her, as if she had been split in half. She could become whichever woman she decided…” (1, pp. 188-189).

Thus, the author explicitly acknowledges that Stella has multiple personality, although she attributes its origin to identical twinship, not childhood trauma (unless she implies that being an identical twin is inherently problematic).

I don’t know how this issue will evolve in the rest of the novel, but it is unusual for a novel that is not about multiple personality, per se, and which does not label the character that has multiple personality as having “multiple personality” in so many words, to acknowledge the issue to this extent. I wonder if the author is implying awareness of multiple personality in herself, when she says, “She didn’t notice it at first because she’d been two people her whole life” (1, p. 183).

1. Brit Bennett. The Vanishing Half. New York, Riverhead Books, 2020.