“Villette” (post 5) by Charlotte Brontë (post 17): Polly/Paulina is probably another character with unacknowledged multiple personality

In the last post, the protagonist, Lucy Snowe, was discovered to have multiple personality by virtue of a discrepancy in memory from one time to another (implying that different personalities had different memory banks). Her multiple personality would not have been suspected from obvious overt behavior, which is most commonly the case, and the reason that finding memory gaps is usually the first step in making the diagnosis.

However, when a person does have remarkable changes in behavior, beyond what one would expect from having one drink or being with different people, even those who know the person well may be puzzled. But they usually don’t think of multiple personality, as is seen with the character Polly/Paulina:

She changed “into another tone and manner as soon as she had fairly assayed the beverage, just as if it had acted upon her like some disenchanting draught, undoing the work of a wizard…the child of seven was in the girl of seventeen. Graham looked after her a little baffled, a little puzzled…I saw he hardly knew how to blend together in his ideas the dancing fairy and delicate dame…

“But she had other moods besides the arch and naïve…all the child left her…she rose at once to the little lady: her face seemed to alter, that play of feature, and candour of look, which, when she spoke to her father, made it quite dimpled and round, yielded to an aspect more thoughtful, and lines distincter and less mobile.

“No doubt, Graham noted the change as well as I" (1, pp. 282-287).

In short, Lucy Snowe and Graham, who have known Paulina since she was a young child, are puzzled by these behavioral changes (suggestive of multiple personality), but don’t know what to make of it or what questions might lead to an explanation (e.g., age self-image, fund of knowledge, what year it is, and memories that vary with the behavior).

1. Charlotte Brontë. Villette [1853]. Edited by Margaret Smith and Herbert Rosengarten. Introduction and Notes by Tim Dolan. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000/2008.