E. B. White by Michael Sims (post 2): Story of E. B. White’s prior children’s classic, “Stuart Little,” is self-contradictory, suggesting multiple personality

Although Michael Sim’s biography of E. B. White (1) highlights the story of “Charlotte’s Web,” it also discusses the author’s writing of his previous novel, “Stuart Little,” which is more psychologically revealing.

Mouselike boy or Mouse?

First, the title character of Stuart Little is said to have come to E. B. White in a 1926 dream “of a tiny, mouselike child” (1, p. 145). But only two pages later, E. B. White is reported to have “pointed out that, while Stuart was an imaginary mouse, he did not in any way resemble [Disney’s] Mickey…He explained that because Stuart had appeared to him in a dream, as a gift rather than an invention, he didn’t feel free to metamorphose him from a mouse” into any other kind of animal (1, p. 147).

In 1945, he told his brother “that he suffered from ‘mice in the subconscious.’ Mice had always been a recurring theme in his writing. He had identified with them even more than most children do” (1, p. 149).

Although he dreamt of the title character in 1926, he did not finish and publish Stuart Little until 1945.

“The book is a realistic yet fantastical story about a mouse-like human boy named Stuart Little. According to the first chapter, he ‘looked very much like a rat/mouse in every way’ ” (2).

Puzzling Contradiction

As I have said in past posts, a key clue that a person might have multiple personality is that the person has puzzling contradictions, because alternate personalities often have contradictory views, and if you don’t know that the person has multiple personality, you can’t understand why the person says contradictory things at different times. 

The story of E. B. White’s creation of the title character of Stuart Little is puzzlingly self-contradictory—sometime he says it is a mouse, other times he says it is a mouselike boy—suggestive of the possibility that he had multiple personality trait.

Also suggestive of multiple personality is that White experienced the character as coming to him, not being invented by him. So then who did invent it? Probably his alternate personality. Give credit where credit is due.

1. Michael Sims. The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic. New York, Walker & Company/Bloomsbury, 2011.

2. Wikipedia. “Stuart Little.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Little

Added the same day: In rereading the above, it occurs to me that some readers might think that what I call a contradiction (between mouse and mouselike) is merely an inexact choice of words by a sloppy biographer. But the writing in this biography is meticulous and attentive to details.

Nobel Prize novelist Kazuo Ishiguro quoted on his “parallel lives”: In tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine cover story

Since I have a past post here on Ishiguro’s novel, “Never Let Me Go,” I was interested to see if tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine article quotes Ishiguro about his own psychology. It does.

In a section of the article that begins with the sentence, “What exactly is an individual?”—it quotes Ishiguro on his having two personalities:

“ ‘They’re like parallel lives,’ he [Ishiguro] said, distinguishing between his public self, who gives interviews and wins awards [his host personality], and the private one [his alternate personality], who spends day after day in his study, trying to will imaginary worlds into being” (1).

This is the same kind of fiction writer’s multiple personality that Henry James depicted in his short story, “The Private Life,” and that Margaret Atwood wrote about at length in her nonfiction book, “Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing,” both of which I have previously discussed.

Search “Ishiguro” here to see my 2017 post.

1. Giles Harvey. “The Age of Ishiguro.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/magazine/kazuo-ishiguro-klara.html 

“The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic” by Michael Sims (post 1)

Halfway through this biography (1) of Elwyn Brooks White (2), author of the children’s classic, “Charlotte’s Web,” I am intrigued by his use of names and animals.

In college, he was jokingly nicknamed Andy, but since he didn’t like his first name, Elwyn, he continued to use Andy, informally, in subsequent years.

And in Andy’s poems and personal letters to Katharine (3), before and after they were married, a spider expressed his feelings in the first person, and a dog referred to him in the third person.

“Andy spent a lot of time thinking about Katharine. Finally he wrote a poem to her that united his close-up observation of nature and his growing sense that their marriage was the right antidote to his rootlessness. Over the three decades of his life, he had spent more time watching spiders than he had experiencing romance…

The spider, dropping down from twig,

Unwinds a thread of his devising;

A thin, premeditated rig,

To use in rising.

And all the journey down through space

In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,

He builds a ladder to the place

From which he started.

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,

In spider’s web a truth discerning,

Attach one silken strand to you

For my returning” (1, pp. 117-118).

After they were married, Andy and Katharine had a dog, Daisy, who wrote this letter to Katharine (Mrs. White), referring to Andy (White) in the third person:

“Dear Mrs. White,

        White has been stewing around for two days now, a little bit worried because he is not sure that he has made you realize how glad he is that there is to be…a blessed event [she is pregnant]…I know White so well that I always know what is the matter with him, and it always comes to the same thing—he gets thinking that nothing that he writes or says quite expresses his feeling, and he worries about his inarticulateness just the same as he does about his bowels, except it is worse, and it makes him either mad, or sick, or with a prickly sensation in the head.

        Lovingly, Daisy” (1, pp. 119-120).

Is E. B. White just shy and eccentric? After I finish this biography and read “Charlotte’s Web,” I hope to have more to say.

1. Michael Sims. The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic. New York, Walker & Company/Bloomsbury, 2011.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._White

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Sergeant_Angell_White 

Isaac Asimov (post 2): End of Life Manifestation of Multiple Personality?

In her epilogue to his memoir, Isaac Asimov’s wife recalls “an incident from Isaac’s last week at home [he was dying of heart disease and terminal kidney failure]. Isaac couldn’t talk much, and was asleep most of the time, but once he woke up looking terribly anxious. He said to me:

“I want…I want…”

“What is it, Isaac?” I asked.

“I want…I want…”

“What do you want, darling?”

It seemed to burst out of him. “I want—Isaac Asimov!”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s you.”

Then he said wonderingly, and with triumph, “I AM Isaac Asimov!” (1, pp. 561-562).

Was this his poignant wish to be healthy and full-functioning again? Or was this one of his unnamed personalities asking for his regular, named personality, and then the regular personality’s surprised, but triumphant response?

1. Isaac Asimov. I. Asimov: A Memoir. New York, Bantam/Doubleday, 1994. 

Isaac Asimov (post 1): Author of five hundred (500) fiction and nonfiction books, including many award-winners, discusses his writing process

“I don’t write only when I’m writing. Whenever I’m away from my typewriter—eating, falling asleep, performing my ablutions—my mind keeps working. On occasion, I can hear bits of dialogue running through my thoughts, or passages of exposition. Usually it deals with whatever I am writing or am about to write. Even when I don’t hear the actual words, I know that my mind is working on it unconsciously.

[It is “unconscious” only from the point of view of his regular personality. Obviously, there is some kind of intelligent consciousness (an alternate personality) producing the dialogue and the passages of exposition.]

“That’s why I’m always ready to write. Everything is, in a sense, already written. I can just sit down and type it all out, at up to a hundred words a minute, at my mind’s dictation. Furthermore, I can be interrupted and it doesn’t affect me. After the interruption, I simply return to the business at hand and continue typing under mental dictation.

“It means, of course, that what enters your mind must stay in your mind. I always take that for granted, so that I never make notes…

“Even the most complicated plot, or the most intricate exposition, comes out properly, with everything in the right order…but I don’t know how I do it. I simply have the knack and had it even as a kid…

“…how have I avoided writer’s block, considering that I never stop? If I were engaged in only one writing project at a time I suppose I wouldn’t avoid it. Frequently, when I am at work on a science fiction novel (the hardest to do of all the different things I write) I find myself heartily sick of it and unable to write another word. But I don’t let that drive me crazy. I don’t stare at blank sheets of paper. I don’t spend days and nights cudgeling a head that is empty of ideas.

“Instead, I simply leave the novel and go on to any of the dozen other projects that are on tap. I write an editorial, or an essay, or a short story, or work on one of my nonfiction books. By the time I’ve grown tired of these things, my mind [by virtue of his alternate personality] has been able to do its proper work and fill up again. I return to my novel and find myself [his regular personality] able to write easily once more" (1, pp. 203-210).

1. Isaac Asimov. I. Asimov: A Memoir. New York, Bantam/Doubleday, 1994.

2. Wikipedia. Isaac Asimov. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

“Go Tell It on The Mountain” by James Baldwin (post 2): Symptoms of multiple personality are understood as being a religious experience

The climax of the novel, John’s religious experience, begins when “something moved in John’s body which was not John. He was invaded, set at naught, possessed” (1, p. 227). Afterwards, he asks, “Was I praying long?” Laughing, his friend answers, “Well, you started praying when it was night and you ain’t stopped praying till it was morning. That’s a right smart time, it seems to me” (1, p. 258).

Since John does not speak of them, he apparently has a memory gap for various things, including: “a malicious, ironic voice” (1, p. 228); “the Holy Ghost was speaking” (1, p. 229); visions of his father, mother, aunt, and friend (1, pp. 229-231); the ironic voice again (1, p. 231); “He did not know where he was” (1, p. 231); and “John saw the Lord—for a moment only” (1, p. 240).

From a psychological perspective, being “possessed,” hearing rational voices, seeing meaningful visions, and having a memory gap, taken together, are symptoms of multiple personality. Since several characters have such experiences, and they are not labeled as multiple personality, it probably reflected the author's sense of ordinary psychology, based on people he knew and the author's own experience.

1. James Baldwin. Go Tell It on The Mountain [1953]. New York, Vintage International/Penguin Random House, 2013. 

Unreliable: New York Times review of one fiction writer’s unreliability fails to see issue's relationship to multiple personality

“He Writes Unreliable Narrators Because He Is One, Too” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/books/viet-thanh-nguyen-the-committed.html

Search “unreliable” here to see past discussions of this recurrent issue.

Added next day: When I wrote the above, I had not heard of that novelist, whose novel, The Sympathizer, had won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize. Its first paragraph looks relevant:

“I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, and although it is admittedly one of a minor nature, it is perhaps also the sole talent I possess. At other times, when I reflect on how I cannot help but observe the world in such a fashion, I wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you—that is a hazard, I must confess.”

“Go Tell It on The Mountain” by James Baldwin (post 1): Protagonist has visual illusions suggestive of multiple personality

The protagonist, John Grimes, is a well-functioning fourteen-year-old. The principal of his school says he is “very bright” (1, p. 15). But the visual illusions he has of his mother’s face and his own face are noteworthy. Since he is not psychotic, neurologically impaired, or on drugs, such illusions suggest multiple personality.

“…his mother’s face changed. [He was wide awake, but] Her face became the face that he gave her in his dreams, the face that had been hers in a photograph he had seen once, long ago, a photograph taken before he was born” (1, p. 17). Sometime multiples have difficulty distinguishing between dreams and waking experiences.

When doing some cleaning at home, “he attacked the mirror with the cloth, watching his face appear as out of a cloud…He stared at his face as though it were, as indeed it soon appeared to be, the face of a stranger, a stranger who held secrets that John would never know” (1, p. 23). Search “mirror” and “mirrors” for prior discussions.

1. James Baldwin. Go Tell It on The Mountain [1953]. New York, Vintage International/Penguin Random House, 2013.

2. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baldwin

“The Way of All Flesh” by Samuel Butler (post 3): Protagonist’s symptoms of multiple personality continue, but are mentioned only in passing

“His inner self never told him that this was humbug as it did about the Latin and Greek” (1, p. 133). An inner self with opinions of its own, who may or may not choose to advise the regular personality, is an alternate personality.

“Here Ernest’s unconscious self [a conscious, alternate personality] took the matter up, and made a resistance to which his conscious self [regular personality] was unequal, by tumbling him off his chair in a fit of fainting” (1, p. 169). If it had been “unconscious,” it could not have known what was going on, and could not have tumbled him off his chair. It was unconscious only from the point of view of his regular, host personality. 

“He had been listening to the voice of the evil one on the night before, and would parley no more with such thoughts” (1, p. 232). Voices in nonpsychotic persons are probably alternate personalities.

“It puzzled him, however, that he [his regular personality] should not have known how much he [an alternate personality] had hated being a clergyman till now. He knew that he did not particularly like it, but if anyone had asked him whether he actively hated it, he would have answered no” (1, 254).

“It was not simply because he disliked his father and mother that he wanted to have no more to do with them; if it had been only this he would have put up with them; but a warning voice told him distinctly enough that if he was clean cut away from them he might still have a chance…” (1, p. 265).

“Ernest being about two and thirty years old…I knew he was writing, but…I did not know that he was actually publishing till one day he brought me a book and told me that it was his own. I opened it and found it to be a series of semi-theological, semi-social essays purporting to have been written by six or seven different people and viewing the same class of subjects from different standpoints” (1, p. 357-358). Perhaps his novel with six or seven different people—who are really alternate personalities of one person, Ernest—anticipates “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf.

Conclusion

The above symptoms of multiple personality are not acknowledged as such, because the author had not intended to write about multiple personality. Such symptoms are in novels as a reflection of the writer’s multiple personality trait.

1. Samuel Butler (1835-1902). [Ernest Pontifex or] The Way of All Flesh [A Story of English Domestic Life] [1903]. Introduction by P. N. Furbank. New York, Everyman’s Library/Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

Multiple Imagination, Multi-imagination, Multimagination, Imaginations: possible names for imagination in writers with multiple personality trait

“The Way of All Flesh” by Samuel Butler (post 2): Two Ernests

Theobald and Christina’s son Ernest, the main character, who had been whipped by his father since early childhood as routine discipline, is now twelve and starting boarding school. The narrator, Mr. Overton, mentions that he is a writer, saying that “in the intervals of business I had written a good deal…almost exclusively for the stage” (1, p. 102). And as Volume One comes to a close, the narrator says about Ernest that…

“…as yet he knew nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him and was so much stronger and more real than the Ernest of which he was conscious” (1, p. 118). And since regular Ernest does not hear the other Ernest’s voice, the narrator puts the latter’s thoughts into words:

“You are surrounded on every side with lies…the self of which you are conscious…will believe these lies” but “I will not allow it to shape your actions…Obey me, your true self, and things will go tolerably well with you…” (1, p. 119).

The narrator says that this “wicked inner self gave him bad advice about his pocket money, the choice of his companions…” (1, p. 119), which got him into trouble with drinking, but “Ernest’s inner self must have interposed at this point…for he dropped the habit ere it had taken hold of him…And so matters went on till my hero was nearly fourteen years old!” (1, p. 120).

Comment

I don’t know whether the narrator is thinking of “the other Ernest that dwelt within him” as an alternate personality or only as a metaphor for adolescent development. That Ernest does not hear a voice, makes it more like a metaphor. That the narrator speaks of an “other Ernest,” who is “more real,” and is able to provide dialog for it, makes it more like a personality.

1. Samuel Butler (1835-1902). [Ernest Pontifex or] The Way of All Flesh [A Story of English Domestic Life] [1903]. Introduction by P. N. Furbank. New York, Everyman’s Library/Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

“The Way of All Flesh” by Samuel Butler (post 1): Theobald Pontifex argues with a voice in his head, a textbook symptom of multiple personality

Samuel Butler withheld this classic novel from publication during his lifetime, because of its controversial, cynical attitude toward Victorian family life, not because of the issue I raise in this post, which was probably not recognized.

Semi-Autobiographical

“Every man’s work whether it be literature, or music, or pictures, or architecture, or anything else is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him. I may very likely be condemning myself all the time that I am writing this book for I know that whether I like it or no I am portraying myself more surely than I am portraying any of the characters whom I set before the reader. I am sorry that it is so, but I cannot help it…” (1, p. 57).

Argues With Himself

Theobald and Christina Pontifex have just been married, and they are riding together in a carriage from the church toward an inn, where they will have dinner. Christina is a little panicked as to whether she can properly order dinner for them at the inn, as is her wifely duty. Theobald is tempted to return her to her parents: 

“But a voice kept ringing in his ears which said, ‘YOU CAN’T, CAN’T, CAN’T.’

“ ‘CAN’T I?’ screamed the unhappy creature to himself.

“ ‘No,’ said the remorseless voice, ‘YOU CAN’T. YOU ARE A MARRIED MAN.’

“He rolled back in his corner of the carriage and for the first time felt how iniquitous were the marriage laws of England” (1, p. 54).

Comment

As I discussed in a past post, citing a textbook, arguing with a voice in your head is typical of multiple personality.

1. Samuel Butler (1835-1902). [Ernest Pontifex or] The Way of All Flesh [A Story of English Domestic Life] [1903]. Introduction by P. N. Furbank. New York, Everyman’s Library/Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. 

Alternate Personalities

Don’t Believe

in Multiple Personality

So if you don’t believe in it either, you’re in good company. 

“Native Speaker” by Chang-rae Lee (post 4): Protagonist is both traitor to, and lover of, immigrants, in novel’s split personality ending

The protagonist says that in his work as a spy, since he betrayed a Korean-American politician and got other immigrants deported, “My ugly immigrant’s truth…is that I have exploited my own, and those others who can be exploited. This forever is my burden to bear…Here is the sole talent I ever dared nurture” (1, pp. 319-320).

Later, in heart-warming contrast, he assists his wife, Lelia, who is a speech therapist and teacher of English-as-a-second-language to young immigrant children. He says, “I like my job. I wear a green rubber hood and act in my role as the Speech Monster. I play it well. I gobble up kids but I cower when anyone repeats the day’s secret phrase, which Lelia has them practice earlier” (1, p. 348).

And at the end of the class, in the last line of the novel, she says good-bye to each child by name, “taking care of every last pitch and accent, and I hear her speaking a dozen lovely and native languages, calling all the difficult names of who we are” (1, p. 349).

Thus, the protagonist has a split, self-contradictory attitude, which may be a clue to multiple personality (search “self-contradictory”). Did the author have a profound sociological/psychological insight? Or is this how he happened to find the character and story in the dark caves of his mind? From what he once said about his writing process, it appears to be the latter: “Lee has compared his writing process to spelunking” (2, 3).

In conclusion, the features of multiple personality noted in this and prior posts appear to be another example of “gratuitous multiple personality,” which is when a novel has features of multiple personality that were probably not intended as such, but are probably in the novel only as a reflection of the psychology of the author.

1. Chang-rae Lee. Native Speaker. New York, Riverhead/Penguin, 1995/1996.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang-Rae_Lee

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caving 

“Native Speaker” by Chang-rae Lee (post 3): Protagonist’s job as spy is a multiple-personality metaphor, since alternate personalities are spies

In undiagnosed multiple personality, the host (regular) personality is often unaware of the alternate personalities (and has memory gaps for periods of time that alternate personalities have been in control), so people often make the mistake of thinking that all of the personalities are unaware of each other, which is very far from the truth.

For example, one of the most common types of alternate personality is the protector personality. Whom does it protect? The host personality. And to perform its function, it must spy on what is going on with the host personality, with whom it has one-way co-consciousness. And if the protector sees that the host is in danger, it will take over, deal with the situation, and leave the host with a memory gap.

Other kinds of alternate personalities may have things that they want to come out and do, such as write poems, but they can’t take over and do this as long as the host personality is in control. So they monitor the host for weakness, such as when the host is sleepy or sedated. Then the poet personality takes over and writes a poem, which the host may find the next morning, unless the poet has hidden it.

The same thing may be accomplished when the host personality is a writer, who purposely, to one extent or another, in one way or another, gives up full control, interacts with, or switches to become, the narrative and character, alternate personalities. Thus, the host personality, when interviewed, may not really have full, first-hand knowledge of why everything in the novel is the way it is. 

“Native Speaker” by Chang-rae Lee (post 2): Four more clues to the possibility of multiple personality in the protagonist

Extraordinary Memory

The memory gaps of multiple personality—occurring when one personality doesn’t remember what happened when another personality had been in control—may be especially surprising to discover, if you ask a person about this, because persons with multiple personality may, generally, have extraordinarily good memory, as does the protagonist:

“I was always good at memory games, and as a boy I annoyed my father by beating him if he slipped just once. But now…my memory is fantastic, near diabolic. It arrests whatever appears before my eyes. I don’t memorize anymore. I simply see” (1, p. 178).

Mirror Doubles

As discussed in many past posts, persons with multiple personality may sometimes see alternate personalities when they look in a mirror.

“When I was young I’d look in the mirror and address it, as if daring the boy there; I would say something dead and normal, like, ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ and I could barely convince myself that it was I who was talking” (1, p. 180).

“My Alter Identity”

In discussing his work as a spy, in which he would have to use a false identity, the protagonist refers to “my alter identity” (1, p. 181). His use of the word “alter,” the standard abbreviation for alternate personality in the multiple personality literature, raises the possibility that the author had been interested in reading about multiple personality. “My alter identity” suggests he might have been interested in understanding himself.

Inconsistent Life History

One reason to suspect multiple personality is if a person gives an inconsistent life history, which may be due to different personalities remembering things differently.

The protagonist had once spied on a psychoanalyst by becoming his patient. In the course of presenting his life history to the psychoanalyst, “Inconsistencies began to arise in crucial details, all of which I inexplicably confused and alternated” (1, p. 181), which you wouldn’t expect in a person who had an extraordinarily good memory (see above), unless different personalities were telling different stories.

1. Chang-rae Lee. Native Speaker. New York, Riverhead/Penguin, 1995/1996. 

“Native Speaker” by Chang-rae Lee (post 1): Since other Korean-American characters are not like protagonist, what is his problem?

Henry Park, second generation Korean-American, first-person narrator-protagonist, is married to Lelia, a white American woman. At the beginning of the novel, she describes him as “surreptitious…emotional alien,… sentimentalist, anti-romantic…stranger…spy” (1, p. 5). He is employed by a private American company to infiltrate organizations and write reports.

One hundred and twenty-one pages later, Lelia elaborates and Henry replies:

She says, “I realized one day that I didn’t know the first thing about what was going on inside your head. Sometimes I think you’re not even here, with the rest of us, you know, engaged, present. I don’t know anymore why you do things…I don’t know what you need in life. For example, do you need your job?”

He replies, “I’m not understanding what you mean by need.”

“See what I mean?…Maybe it’s a condition with you. I just know that you have parts to you that I can’t touch…

He says, “I tried to answer but I couldn’t. I wanted to explain myself, smartly, irrefutably. But once again I had nothing to offer. I had always thought that I could be anyone, perhaps several anyones at once” (1, pp. 126-127).

Comment

Multiple personality is a condition in which a person can be puzzling even to the people who know them best, because they have hidden “parts” (alternate personalities) and are “several anyones at once.” If that is Henry’s condition, it is unacknowledged, and I will be interested to see if it is clarified in the rest of the novel.

1. Chang-rae Lee. Native Speaker. New York, Riverhead/Penguin, 1995/1996.

“Postmortem” by Patricia Cornwell (post 3): Multiple-personality symptoms are present in several relatively normal characters, but not in the serial killer

A man Dr. Scarpetta has been dating is shunned by her after the way he behaves, like he has a split personality: “He was so rough. He was hurting me. He thrust his tongue into my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t he. It was as if he’d become somebody else” (1, pp. 311-312). This might have been integral to the plot if there had been speculation that the killer had a split personality, but there had not.

Another character with inconsistent behavior is the detective working on the case of the serial killer. He is initially described as inflexible, especially in his wrong-headed insistence that the serial killer must be the husband of the most recent victim. But in the second half of the novel, he becomes heroically flexible and perceptive, and is in the right place at the right time to kill the serial killer and save Dr. Scarpetta’s life. It is as if he has a different personality in the first and second halves of the novel.

Another character, a city official, had been trying to plant evidence against Dr. Scarpetta, to scapegoat her for the failure to stop the killer. But there is an unnecessary episode in which he is seen to be secretly smoking cigarettes, in contradiction of his reputation as being strongly against smoking. This gratuitously portrayed self-contradiction suggests that he might have a split personality, but why is it in this novel?

Finally, there is the protagonist herself, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, whose symptoms of multiple personality have been noted in the previous two posts. She has one more communication from her inner-voice alternate personality: “You’re making it too complicated, my inner voice was telling me. You’re getting farther and farther removed from what you actually know” (1, p. 396).

And in the two days after the detective had killed the serial rapist-murderer in Dr. Scarpetta’s house, saving her life, she has had a multiple-personality memory gap: “I could hardly remember the past two days” (1, p. 422).

Thus, in this novel, it is not the serial killer who has symptoms suggestive of multiple personality, but the relatively normal people, possibly as a reflection of the author’s multiple personality trait and her view of it as ordinary psychology.

1. Patricia Cornwell. Postmortem [1990]. New York, Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, 2017.