Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” (post 9): Monte Cristo switches personality when addressed as “Edmond” (Dantès)

For seven hundred pages, until page 980 (in this 1243-page novel), Monte Cristo’s real name, “Edmond Dantès,” is not mentioned by anyone, including the character, himself, in his own thoughts, and the narrator.

But now, Mercédès, the woman he had loved when he was known as Edmond Dantès, recognizes him. And she repeatedly addresses him as “Edmond,” which causes a major change in his attitude: from Monte Cristo’s single-minded revenge to Edmond Dantès’ sentimentality.

Monte Cristo had previously recognized Mercédès, but his personality did not change until she called him “Edmond.”

“What!” he thought…“What! The structure that was so long in building, which demanded so much anxious toil, has been demolished at a single blow, a single word…this ‘I’ that I thought was something; this ‘I,’ of which I was so proud; this ‘I’ that I…managed to make so great, will be…a speck of dust!” (1, p. 987).

He tends to attribute the sudden change in his attitude to the reawakening of his heart by his former beloved, which, of course, is part of the truth. But the novel’s sudden, striking change in naming him—from not mentioning his true name for seven hundred pages to suddenly bombarding him with it—seems to be the main cause of his switch in personality.

After Mercédès goes away, he reverts to his Monte Cristo personality. And the narrator, as usual, portrays him as thinking of himself as Monte Cristo, not as Edmond Dantes pretending to be Monte Cristo, which suggests multiple personality.

1. Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo [1845]. Translated by Robin Buss. London, Penguin Books, 1996.