“Sisters” by Daisy Johnson (Part 1): The Theme of The Double, Metaphor for Multiple Personality

Two teenage sisters are named September and July.

July, ten months younger, narrates.

From the beginning to the end of Part 1, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the author has written the theme of the double:

“When one of us speaks we both feel the words moving on our tongues. When one of us eats we both feel the food slipping down our gullets. It would have surprised neither of us to have found, slit open, that we shared organs, that one’s lungs breathed for the both, that a single heart beat a doubling, feverish pulse (1, p. 6).

“…in the mirror there is a shock at seeing my own face looking back rather than hers” (1, 33).

“There is something leaving me and I realize with a shock that it is my virginity. Going going gone. Taken in a secondhand way. September is having sex and—because really two means one—I am having sex too” (1, p. 93).

Note: In multiple personality, there are almost always more than two personalities. Some personalities are unaware of each other. But other personalities, although having distinct differences, may be quite aware of each other, as in this case.

1. Daisy Johnson. Sisters. New York, Riverhead Books, 2020.