“Tom Jones” by Henry Fielding (post 6): Multiple Narrators

Sometimes the narrator’s self-reference is “we,” as in Part I, Book I, Chapter I, “The introduction to the work.” But in another metafictional chapter, Part III, Book XVI, Chapter I, the narrator’s self-reference is “I,” followed by Chapter II, a continuation of the story, in which the narrator’s self-reference is “we.” So the alternation between “I” and “we” does not have any obvious reason.

I can’t accept that the inconsistency was simply due to impulsiveness. The author would have corrected a meaningless inconsistency when revising, unless he never reread and revised anything he wrote. And if the latter were true, why was he afraid to see what he had written? Did he sometimes have a memory gap for writing it?

So how many narrators are there? Just two, “I” and “we”? Or does “we” refer to a group of co-writers? I don’t know how many narrative personalities there are in this novel, but it looks like more than one.

1. Henry Fielding. [The History of] Tom Jones [A Foundling] [1749]. Edited by John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Added the same evening: I don't want to give the impression that the particular chapters I cited above are isolated instances. It was where I happened to be up to in reading the novel, which I compared with the beginning. I just now took a random look in the middle of novel and saw a place where "I" and "we" are both used by the narrator in the same short chapter (chapters in this novel are short and numerous). This narrator inconsistency is recurrent. And I don't recall seeing such alternating or mixed self-reference in other old novels, but if you can explain it linguistically or rhetorically, please submit your comment.

New York Times critic on “The Great Gatsby”

Parul Sehgal. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/books/great-gatsby-fitzgerald-copyright.html

For my discussion, search “Gatsby” here. 

“The Pessoa Syndrome” (2013) by Katia Mitova

This is a link to a complete article by Professor Mitova, for whom I gave a link to only an abstract back in 2016 (see below). In the abstract below, her “multiple personality order” (not disorder) is similar to my “multiple personality trait” (not disorder), which I previously called "normal multiple personality."

Added Dec. 29: I have never met Mitova, but she is both a scholar and a poet. Her scholarship is evident. Her being a poet means that her approach to this subject may reflect inside knowledge. So I recommend the following single link:

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/36819001/Mitova_Pessoa_Syndrome_2013.pdf?1425253218=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DThe_Pessoa_Syndrome.pdf&Expires=1611882698&Signature=bEt0K~VcYDMxR3oHCmP-M~Fj5z8DTS0aDesDiv4sAAtydu0QXo9yWb7L4GQZuY-3RqLmv7TgVWVcOF57VT05sDjrSy1akOu7B6~9wcFq03EyX24lZ5O9S6M~PkyC78voivftzCFrgR4Vc1InT-tAlZKhDlvGK9eJ55xbyYFGxbgpNP1lB3R8rAtJ2QX9l2iSWlCqcuizquJ73glakX80aPh6ht1yBWtvEBQLRw31J7AnIRaQD9ipx1E4~AedIxNhUr0jyrKESwvJWz0c2IU3JgwViLzxF30aQMpz81Zolx4KBQz8O888Bc8bs3uFNMNCr7qVGKyjSibxhqI61YyYyg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

Note: The above link may periodically expire. You may find a currently active link by searching the essay on Google Scholar.

August 13, 2016

Professors of Literature who understand importance of Multiple Personality in Literary Criticism: Jeremy Hawthorn, Katia Mitova, Heike Schwarz.

We may not agree on everything, but I honor and commend their psychiatric literacy, and hope that other scholars follow their example.

Jeremy Hawthorn. Multiple Personality and the Disintegration of Literary Character: From Oliver Goldsmith to Sylvia Plath. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1983.

Katia Mitova. “Artistic Creativity as a ‘Multiple Personality Order’: The Case of Fernando Pessoa.” https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9781848882034/BP000016.xml

Heike Schwarz. Beware of the Other Side(s): Multiple Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder in American Fiction. Transcript-Verlag, 2013. 

Talking to Yourself

I was just reading an essay in today’s newspaper, which quotes this humorous saying: “My mum always used to say the good thing about talking to yourself is you always get the answers you want.”

However, persons with multiple personality may not always get the answers they want. An alternate personality might give them an argument. They often do not realize that they have multiple personality, but only know that they sometimes have serious arguments with themselves.

Fortunately, most people with multiple personality have the normal version, which I call “multiple personality trait.” That is, they have real multiple personality, but without its causing them significant distress or dysfunction. Thus they are mentally well and do not have a mental illness.

Indeed, some people find that the trait is a major asset; for example, in writing fiction. Most fiction requires conflict, which makes arguments between personalities—in fiction, called “characters”—a good thing. 

“Tom Jones” by Henry Fielding (post 5): Is the narrator joking or demonstrating his honesty?

“Mrs Fitzpatrick entertained her cousin with many high encomiums on the character of the noble peer, and enlarged very particularly on his great fondness for his wife, saying she believed he was almost the only person of high rank who was entirely constant to the marriage bed. ‘Indeed,’ added she, ‘my dear Sophy, that is a very rare virtue amongst men of condition. Never expect it when you marry; for, believe me, if you do, you will certainly be deceived.’

“A gentle sigh stole from Sophia at these words, which perhaps contributed to form a dream of no very pleasant kind; but as she never revealed this dream to anyone, so the reader cannot expect to see it related here” (1, p. 530).

Many readers don’t realize what I referenced in post 4: that 90% of fiction writers have “the illusion of independent agency” and “experience their characters as having minds of their own.” So if I say that the above passage does not end in a joke, but in a demonstration of the author’s honesty, they will think I am foolish, but my feelings are not hurt.

1. Henry Fielding. [The History of] Tom Jones [A Foundling] [1749]. Edited by John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008. 

“Mrs. Dalloway” & Virginia Woolf: Essay & Posts

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham’s essay in tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/books/review/michael-cunningham-on-virginia-woolfs-literary-revolution.html

Search “Dalloway” and “Woolf” for past posts. 

Sylvia Plath: Biography Mentions Multiple Personality

(Search “Plath” and “The Bell Jar” to see my past posts.)

After reading a review (1), I looked at the biography on Amazon, where only a limited number of pages can be seen. This is all I could find relevant to multiple personality:

“Years before her Smith College thesis on ‘the double,’ she was already interested in dualities” (2, p. 92).

“She had written in her journal of a similar ‘double’—a voice that wrecked and ridiculed her fragile self-confidence, ‘screaming, Traitor, sinner, imposter’…Plath wrote, in her thesis…the inner duality becomes a duel to the death’…(2, p. 352).

“Sylvia’s physical and mental health continued to deteriorate. She feared an impending breakdown that January as she read Shirley Jackson’s 1954 novel The Bird’s Nest, about a young woman with multiple personalities” (2, p. 394).

(Search "bird's nest" to see past posts.)

1. Daphne Merkin. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/books/review/red-comet-heather-clark-sylvia-plath.html

2. Heather Clark. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. New York, Knopf, 2020. 

“Tom Jones” by Henry Fielding (post 4): Author’s “illusion of independent agency, experiences characters as having minds of their own” (multiple personality)

In the first sentence of this novel, the narrator introduced himself as the “author,” which, many readers would assume, puts him in charge of everything the characters think, say, and do. Yet here is another example of the author’s relating to the characters as though they were independent actors, with minds of their own, whose private thoughts he cannot know; in other words, as though they were alternate personalities.

The situation is that Sofia and Tom Jones are deeply in love, but he was born out of wedlock, and their wealthy families are in the process of making a suitable match between Sofia and Mr. Blifil.

The narrator-author has to speculate about what was in Mr. Blifil’s mind, as indicated by the word “perhaps”:

“Of Jones he [Mr. Blifil] certainly had not even the least jealousy; and I have often thought it wonderful that he had not. Perhaps he imagined the character which Jones bore all over the country (how justly, let the reader determine), of being one of the wildest fellows in England, might render him odious to a lady of the most exemplary modesty. Perhaps his suspicions might be laid asleep by the [intentionally misleading] behaviour of Sofia, and of Jones himself, when they were in company together” (1, p. 256).

The author has to speculate about Blifil’s private thoughts, because the author has “the illusion of independent agency” and “experiences the characters as having minds of their own” (2). Or, as I would say, the author has multiple personality trait.

1. Henry Fielding. [The History of] Tom Jones [A Foundling] [1749]. Edited by John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

2. Marjorie Taylor, PhD, et al. “The illusion of independent agency: Do adult fiction writers experience their characters as having minds of their own?” https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/7/8783/files/2014/07/TaylorHodgesKohanyi-130mpe0.pdf 

“Tom Jones” by Henry Fielding (post 3): “And this, as I could not prevail on any of my actors to speak, I myself was obliged to declare,” the narrator says.

In Part I, Book III, Chapter VII, titled “In which the author himself makes his appearance on the stage,” the nameless narrator advises the reader that “hereafter in this history,” Tom Jones is going to have serious problems “to which, it must be confessed, the unfortunate lad, by his own wantonness, wildness, and want of caution, too much contributed…”

The lesson: “It is not enough that your designs, nay, that your actions, are intrinsically good; you must take care they shall appear so…And this precept, my worthy disciples, if you read with due attention, you will, I hope, find sufficiently enforced by examples in the following pages…

“And this [precept], as I could not prevail on any of my actors to speak, I myself was obliged to declare” (1, pp. 121-123).

Comment

Many people, reading the above, think that the author is joking, because they assume that characters are puppets that will say whatever the author wants.

But this author—like many other authors I have quoted from interviews and essays—says that his characters are not like puppets, but more like willful actors, who have minds of their own.

In short, the fiction writer’s important characters are imaginary people who seem to have minds of their own, which are alternate personalities (who may cooperate, but sometimes won’t).

1. Henry Fielding. [The History of] Tom Jones [A Foundling] [1749]. Edited by John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Nameless Narrator in “Tom Jones” by Henry Fielding (post 2) 

The editor’s Introduction of my Oxford World’s Classics edition of Tom Jones notes that the text does call the narrator “author,” but does not call the narrator “Fielding.” The editor then proceeds to discuss the narrator, calling him “Fielding,” “for convenience” (1, p. x).

And if you try to google the name of the narrator, you will find it difficult to get the correct answer: nameless.

To read about the multiple personality implications, search “namelessness,” “nameless narrators,” “nameless narrator,” and “nameless” on this site.

1. Henry Fielding. [The History of] Tom Jones [A Foundling] [1749]. Edited by John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008. 

“Tom Jones” by Henry Fielding (post 1): Narrator’s unreliability is blamed on the “Historic Muse,” who must give permission to reveal secrets

I have just begun this 871-page classic novel, published in 1749.

The chatty, but not explicitly named, narrator, says: “Whether [a character] was innocent or not, will perhaps appear hereafter; but if the Historic Muse hath entrusted me with any secrets, I will by no means be guilty of discovering them till she shall give me leave” (1, p. 88).

I do not see the above as a trivial literary flourish. Instead, I wonder: Who is the Historic Muse, and why must she give permission as to what the narrator can narrate? She is not named. Instead, she is referred to by her function, which is typical of unnamed alternate personalities.

Literary criticism has praised this novel’s well-planned, complex plot, but the narrator denies ultimate responsibility for knowing and telling the whole story. And it does seem improbable that the complex plotting would have been done by someone like the chatty narrator.

In short, the presence of alternate personalities in the creative process of this novel is suggested by the presence of unnamed thinkers, who are known by their function (the narrator and the Historic Muse) and have different responsibilities.

This is not a book review, but I will say it is enjoyable and keep reading.

1. Henry Fielding. [The History of] Tom Jones [A Foundling] [1749]. Edited by John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008. 

John le Carré: New York Times obituary notes his most autobiographical novel, whose protagonist’s multiple personality has been discussed here

“He was a best seller many times over, and at least a half dozen of his novels — including 'A Perfect Spy' (1986), which Philip Roth pronounced ‘the best English novel since the war’ — can be considered classics…

“ ‘A Perfect Spy’ (1986), Mr. le Carré’s most autobiographical work, tells the story of…a double agent with a con man father modeled after le Carré’s own, and how the two deceive and are deceived by each other in an intricate skein of lies…” (1).

Please see my two 2016 posts on John le Carré and “A Perfect Spy.” Search “carré” (include the accent mark over the é).

1. Sarah Lyall. Obituary of John le Carré. New York Times. December 13, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/books/john-le-carre-dead.html

Video: President Trump refers to self in third person

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIV-RwYbWio

In itself, it doesn’t prove anything, but its significance is worth considering. Search posts on "illeism."

Illeism (third person self-reference) and Nosism (plural self-reference): Described as typical behavior in a textbook on multiple personality

As is well known, some people refer to themselves in the third person (1) or as “we” (2). It may be socially appropriate with no diagnostic implications.

Less well known, illeism and nosism are typical of multiple personality:

“From time to time, multiples will…make self-references in the first person plural or the third person. The use of ‘we’ in a collective manner, rather than in the editorial sense, is a…common observation. Patients may also say ‘he’ or ‘she’ in reference to their own behavior” (3, p. 84).

Since multiple personality, even when present, is usually camouflaged and undetected—especially in its most common form as a mentally well, potentially useful trait—the possibility of its presence in any person who uses illeism or nosism is worth considering.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illeism

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosism

3. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

New York Times Front Page: President-elect Biden’s nominee for secretary of defense has “a habit of referring to himself in the third person”

Does General Austin’s third person self-reference reflect multiple personality trait (one personality referring to another personality) or only grandiosity? [But see added note below.]

“WASHINGTON — Retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who is on the brink of becoming the first Black man to be secretary of defense, rose to the heights of an American military whose largely white leadership has not reflected the diversity of its rank and file.

     For much of his career, General Austin was accustomed to white men at the top. But a crucial turning point — and a key to his success — came a decade ago, when General Austin and a small group of African-American men populated the military’s most senior ranks.

     As a tall and imposing lieutenant general with a habit of referring to himself in the third person, General Austin was the director of the Joint Staff, one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes positions in the military…” (1, Front Page).

1. Helene  Cooper. “How Biden’s Defense Nominee Overcame Barriers to Diversity.” Title of front page article in New York Times print edition, Dec. 10, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/biden-lloyd-austin-defense-secretary.html

Added note: In the military, third person self-reference (illeism) may indicate the opposite of grandiosity: “Recruits in the military...are also often made to refer to themselves in the third person, such as 'this recruit,' in order to reduce the sense of individuality and enforce the idea of the group being more important than the self. The use of illeism in this context imparts a sense of lack of self, implying a diminished importance of the speaker in relation to the addressee or to a larger whole” (2).

Actually, it is more often Nosism (3) that may indicate grandiosity.

But both illeism and nosism are sometimes seen in multiple personality, when one personality refers to another personality ("he") or personalities speak as a group ("we").

2. Wikipedia. “Illeism.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illeism

3. Wikipedia. "Nosism." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosism

Multiple Personality Trait is not a mental disorder

Many fiction writers write weird things (1), and even seemingly conventional works may have odd details, but that doesn't mean abnormal.

Psychiatric studies of creative people, including fiction writers (2), never find multiple personality, because they never evaluate for multiple personality, either the more common normal trait, or the less common mental disorder.

As I’ve discussed in more than a thousand posts, symptoms of multiple personality trait, usually unacknowledged and unintentional, may be found in the works of most fiction writers, as a reflection of how they think and conceive of normal psychology.

In addition, I have quoted a number of writers who explicitly say they have two or more distinct parts, selves, or personalities (meaning personified psychological entities that seem to have minds of their own).

One reason that people become fiction writers is that they have multiple personality trait, which is a major asset for writing fiction.

1. Wikipedia. “Weird fiction.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_fiction

2. Wikipedia. “Creativity and mental health.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_and_mental_health 

Alexandre Dumas’ Three Writing Personalities, named by Function and Race (Post 15): Poems on Yellow Paper, Articles on Pink Paper, Fiction on Blue Paper

Dumas’ color-coded manuscripts have earned him a place in a book of famous authors who have odd writing habits (1). It is unusual for an author to write manuscripts on a particular color of paper, other than white, depending on whether it is a poem, an article, or fiction.

As an example of Dumas' attitude, it is told how once when traveling, “he had run out of his precious supply of blue paper. For decades Dumas had been using that particular color to pen all of his fiction. He was ultimately forced to settle for a cream stock, though he felt that color change negatively impacted his fiction” (1, p. 21).

It might not have occurred to me that Dumas’ color-coding had anything to do with multiple personality, except that I’ve previously discussed Doris Lessing, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Her autobiography (Volume One) makes it clear that she had multiple personality. And her most famous novel, The Golden Notebook (1962), features a writer with multiple personality, who has four, different color, notebooks.

The Golden Notebook is divided into five sections, separated by four, different color, Notebooks—Black, Red, Yellow, and Blue—all four written by one character, a novelist. Lessing said that this divided structure represented the “fragmentation” and “compartmentalisation” of identity. 

Furthermore, the novel provides evidence that the notebooks represent four alternate personalities: each Notebook had been written in a different handwriting, even though they were all written by the same person (indicative of different personalities in multiple personality).

I don’t know if there are any handwriting differences in Dumas’ manuscripts, but the color differences suggest that Dumas’ writing was done by three alternate personalities, each represented by its different color.

Perhaps Dumas thought of Poetry, Articles, and Fiction as being persons of different literary races.

1. Celia Blue Johnson. Odd Type Writers: From Joyce and Dickens to Wharton and Welty, the Obsessive Habits and Quirky Techniques of Great Authors. New York, Perigee/Penguin, 2013. 

Alexandre Dumas (post 14): His Grandmother was Marie-Cessette Dumas, an Enslaved Black Woman

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Cessette_Dumas

In childhood, it is possible that he suffered traumatic taunts, prompting him to fantasize about multiple secret identities and glorious scenarios.

“The Mesmerist’s Victim” (post 2) by Alexandre Dumas (post 13): In Chapter XIX, narrator and mesmerist give mesmerist different names

The narrator refers to the hypnotist as “Balsamo” numerous times; also once as “the Italian” and once as “the mesmerist.”

The mesmerist refers to himself as follows: “I am a physician” (1, p. 108) and “my name is Count Fenix” (1, p. 110). Never as “Balsamo.”

Chapter XIX involves hypnosis and surgery. The mesmerist, observing a leg amputation—at a hospital, as the guest of a friend who is a surgeon— successfully gives the patient hypnotic anesthesia (they had no chemical anesthesia back then).

And since it was mentioned earlier in the novel that the character has been known to use two different names—Baron Balsamo and Count Fenix—casual readers might gloss over the chapter’s naming discrepancy.

But why does this character have more than one name, like a person with multiple personality? It does not appear that the author intended to portray multiple personality, per se. And why was the author not bothered by this chapter’s naming discrepancy?

Assuming I will find no other reason in the second half of the novel, my answer is that the character’s multiple names reflected the author’s own psychology, that Alexandre Dumas was another great fiction writer with multiple personality trait.

1. Alexandre Dumas. The Mesmerist’s Victim [1848]. Translated by Henry Llewellyn Williams. The Echo Library, 2015.

___________________________________________________

Added next day: After reading further, I realize that the multiplicity of the protagonist’s names is not inadvertent, but quite intentional. As another character says of the protagonist, “Proteus had not more shapes, Jupiter more names: Acharat in Egypt, Balsamo in Italy…and lastly, Count Fe[nix]” (1, p. 150).

And I now recall that the mesmerist had previously claimed various incarnations throughout the ages. His projection of this fantastic image, if not simply delusional, may be of practical use to enhance his reputation as a magician; his image as a masterful hypnotist, against whose suggestions resistance is futile; and his image as the powerful leader of a secret political conspiracy (one meeting of which has been described).

But whatever its practical use in the plot, and whether the author thought of it this way or not, a multi-named protagonist is a metaphor for multiple personality. And its appearance in two novels now, both this one and Monte Cristo, reinforces the idea that it reflected the author’s psychology.

___________________________________

Added Dec. 6: The rest of the novel did not add anything relevant here, except to reinforce the general idea that Dumas was very interested in trance states, possibly because he experienced them, which is common in persons with multiple personality.

“The Mesmerist’s Victim” (post 1) by Alexandre Dumas (post 12): One of the mesmerist’s (hypnotist’s) victims is his wife

Hypnosis (mesmerism) and multiple personality are related subjects. People with multiple personality have tended to go into trances ever since their traumatic childhood. Their alternate personalities have been created as a psychological defense by using, in effect, self-hypnosis.

Since an admirable, key character in The Count of Monte Cristo is named after Abbé Faria, an actual figure in the history of hypnosis, I was interested to read The Mesmerist’s Victim to learn more about what hypnosis meant to Dumas.

The mesmerist, Joseph Balsamo—a.k.a. Baron Balsamo, Count Fenix, magician, miracle worker, wizard—is mysterious and sinister. His wife lives in his home, but in a secret annex.

“Lorenza Feliciani was his wife, but she railed at him for keeping her a prisoner, and a slave, and envied the fate of wild birds.

“Lorenza,” he softly pleaded, “why do you, my darling, show this hostility and resistance?…

“Because you horrify me—you are not religious, and you work your will by the black art!” replied the woman haughtily…

“Sleep!” he said “imperatively.”

“Scarcely was the word pronounced before Lorenza bent like a lily on its stalk” and “her whole countenance brightened up, as if the breath from Love’s own lips had dispelled the cloud” (1, pp. 43-44).

“Hence she who hated him when in her senses greeted him with a tender embrace” (1, p. 64).

In other words, her regular personality, who hated him, was put to “sleep,” allowing her alternate personality, who loved him, to come out.

1. Alexandre Dumas. The Mesmerist’s Victim [1848]. Translated by Henry Llewellyn Williams. The Echo Library, 2015.