“A Window Opens” by Elisabeth Egan: Mentally well protagonist hears rational voices, probably voices of alternate personalities

Alice is the first-person narrator of her job and family struggles (1, 2). Near the beginning and end of this novel, Alice casually mentions that she hears voices. The author may have assumed, as do many novelists, that everyone hears voices, but most people don’t.

Mentally well novelists may assume that everyone hears voices, because 90% of novelists probably do hear voices. But 70% of the mentally well public probably do not hear voices.

Voices heard by the mentally well are probably the voices of alternate personalities in multiple personality trait (the mentally well version of multiple personality disorder). Those persons in the general public who have that trait are more likely to become fiction writers, because it is an asset in writing fiction (as discussed in past posts).

Alice’s Voices

“The waiter arrived and deposited two mugs on our table as I struggled to heed my inner voice, which tends to be more sensible than my actual one. (Bossy, too.)” (1, p. 50).

“There was another voice in my head…and it belonged to my [deceased] dad…You have a voice. Use it. (1, p. 332). As noted in past posts, the words of voices in novels are often written in italics.

Comment

Since the symptom of multiple personality in this novel—hearing voices—was not intended by the author to raise the issue of multiple personality, and is neither integral to the plot nor necessary to character development, it is one more example of “gratuitous multiple personality,” and is probably in the novel only as a reflection of the author’s multiple personality trait.

1. Elisabeth Egan. A Window Opens. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015.

2. Alexandra Alter. “Elisabeth Egan's ‘A Window Opens’ Has Echoes of Her Amazon Odyssey.” The New York Times, Aug. 19, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/books/elisabeth-egans-a-window-opens-has-echoes-of-her-amazon-odyssey.html