“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.