“The Push” by Ashley Audrain (post 2): Blythe sees her daughter as homicidal, which her husband thinks is crazy. Whose view will be vindicated?

Cynics would say Blythe will be vindicated, because as a woman and mother, she would appeal to a much larger novel-buying demographic. Feminists would say Blythe should be vindicated, because women and mothers are unfairly called crazy. Readers who recognize Blythe’s symptoms of multiple personality would say that she will be vindicated, because multiple personality is not a psychosis, and she is in touch with reality.

Early in the novel, before Blythe had seen anything homicidal about her young daughter, Violet, she perceived Violet’s abnormal responsiveness: “She should want me. I’m her mother. She should need me” (but she doesn’t). Blythe’s husband replied, “There’s nothing wrong with her,” implying there was something wrong with Blythe.

And Blythe varies in her feelings toward Violet, depending on which of Blythe’s two mothering personalities is in control: “I rarely felt this yearning for her, especially when I should have, but when I did, I couldn’t remember [she had a multiple-personality memory gap] what it was like not to want her. Who was that other mother? The one who brought me such shame?” (1, p. 86).

At a later date, after she had witnessed Violet push her little brother, Sam, to his death in traffic, Blythe says, “I have no memory of what happened next or how we got to the hospital,” another multiple-personality memory gap (1, p. 151).

And at a still later date, Blythe developed an alternate personality based on her deceased son, Sam. She would sometimes interact with this alternate personality like an imaginary companion: “my imaginary friend…My sweet son” (1, p. 243).

And in an embarrassing situation with her estranged husband, Blythe has a dissociative experience (multiple personality is a dissociative condition): “My head floated away…I left myself. I watched from above” (1, p. 248).

None of the above experiences is labelled as dissociative or as having anything to with multiple personality, because they are probably in the novel only as a reflection of the author’s psychology.

Concluding Evidence of Multiple Personality: The whole novel is narrated by Blythe in the first person, except for the last two pages, where an unnamed, unlabelled, alternate narrator personality describes what is happening with Blythe in the third person (1, pp. 302-303).

I don’t know the author’s explanation for switching narrators in the last two pages, but I would be surprised if her explanation had anything to do with multiple personality, since the issue, though present (see above), has been unacknowledged throughout the novel, as in most novels.

1. Ashley Audrain. The Push. Pamela Dorman/Viking/Penguin Random House, 2021.

Added next day: A possible rationale for the sudden, last-minute change in narrator has just occurred to me. The final line of the novel is supposed to be a twisty clincher as to whether or not Blythe had been credible, and it might have undermined the credibility of the twisty clincher if Blythe had been the narrator. Okay, I see that. However, the sudden change in narrator personality is a multiple-personality-style personality switch, which is another example of the multiple-personality way that the author thinks (which is like most other great fiction writers).