“Random Harvest” by James Hilton (post 2): Protagonist’s perfectly evident multiple personality is not labeled and acknowledged as such

Charles Ranier is portrayed as having two personalities that have memory gaps for each other’s existence, which fulfill the main, formal diagnostic criteria for multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder). His switches from one personality to the other are prompted by two traumatic experiences.

The first trauma, shell-shock on the WWI battlefield, prompts a switch from his regular Charles Ranier personality to a confused, nameless personality. He is committed to a psychiatric hospital. He escapes and is befriended by a young actress, whom he knows by her stage name. She realizes that he’s not really crazy, helps him to live a normal life, and chooses a name for him (Mr. Smith or Smithy). They eventually marry.

The second trauma occurs when Smith visits Liverpool to see an editor for help in his new career as a writer. Smith is knocked unconscious in an accident, wakes up as Charles Ranier, and returns to his wealthy family in another city, with no memory of his life as Smith.

Many years later, Ranier starts to remember his time as Smith. And even though he is now happily married, he wants to search for his first wife, his long lost love. The novel ends as his current wife drives to the place where she knows she’ll find him looking for his old love, and “…she ran into his arms calling out: ‘Oh, Smithy—Smithy—it may not be too late! (1, last line). [He is married to his first love, but his Ranier personality hadn't recognized her.]

Comment

Since the novel, itself, does not explicitly refer to multiple personality or split personality, it is uncertain that the author knew he was portraying his protagonist as having multiple personality, per se.

One reason he may not have known it, is that when this novel was written, classical Freudian theory, which had a blind spot for multiple personality, was still popular.

And the fact that one of the protagonist’s alternate personalities was a writer, supports the probability that the unacknowledged multiple personality in this novel reflected the author’s psychology.

1. James Hilton. Lost Horizon (1933), Good-Bye, Mr. Chips (1934), Random Harvest (1941) (pp. 203-438). Garden City NY, Nelson Doubleday, Book Club Edition.