“Bleak House” (post 3) by Charles Dickens: Esther addresses herself in third-person and has memory gap, both indicative of multiple personality

“…Mr Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bedchamber…‘My dear, how you are trembling!’

“I could not help it: I tried very hard: but being alone with that benevolent presence…I kissed his hand. I don’t know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was disconcerted, and walked to the window; I almost believed with the intention of jumping out, until he turned, and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes what he had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat down.

“ ‘There! There! he said. ‘That’s over. Pooh! Don’t be foolish.’

“ ‘It shall not happen again, sir, I returned, ‘but at first it is difficult—

“ ‘Nonsense! he said. ‘It’s easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good little orphan girl without a protector. She grows up…and I remain her guardian and friend. What is there in all this?…and I have before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again.’

“I said to myself, ‘Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is not what I expected of you!’ (1, p. 117).

1. Charles Dickens. Bleak House [1853]. London, Penguin Books, 2003.

Comment: In the context of how Dickens, in his novel, Edwin Drood, was to use addressing oneself in the third person to mean the person had multiple personality, should the reader just shrug it off when he does the same thing in Bleak House more than once, first with Skimpole, now with Esther Summerson?

Moreover, “Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is not what I expected of you!” sounds like the words of an alternate personality that originated as an identification with someone who abused her in childhood.

And her memory gap as to what she said or even that she spoke is a cardinal symptom of multiple personality.