“Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (post 4): “Marian’s dead,” says Marian (or is it Marian’s alternate personality who is speaking?)

In the Sixth Book, Marian Erle, the lower class, poorly educated woman whom Aurora’s cousin, Rodney, had been about to marry, had suddenly disappeared on the wedding day. She is eventually found by chance by Aurora in Paris. Lady Waldemar, who had wanted to marry Rodney, had tricked Marian, had sent her away, and Marian had wound up drugged and raped in a Paris brothel. She is now caring for her baby.

Marian says: “Marian’s dead…I’m dead, I say…I’m nothing more but just a mother. Only for the child…just for him!…” (1, p. 204).

Marian starts by referring to herself in the third person (“Marian’s dead”), which may mean that the Marian who is “dead” is not the one speaking. The one speaking may be an alternate personality who specializes in child care.

But she quickly changes to first person, which may be the alternate personality’s way of hiding: Alternate personalities prefer to remain incognito and don’t want people to think that the person is crazy.

I will see if this is clarified in the rest of the novel.

1. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Aurora Leigh [1856/1859]. Edited by Margaret Reynolds. A Norton Critical Edition. New York, W. W. Norton, 1996.

Added Aug. 9: In multiple personality, a personality is referred to as "dead" when it is inside and unable to come out. But it is still there and could be resurrected, so to speak, as when Dr. Manette, a character with multiple personality in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, was "recalled to life."