“The Women’s Room” (post 4) by Marilyn French: Author assumes some mentally well people have opinionated “Parts” and “Voices” in their head

“…But it was the same old story. Mira was tired of it. Women and men. They played by different rules because the rules applied to them were different. It was very simple. It was the women who got pregnant and the women who ended up with the kids. All the rest stemmed from that. So women had to learn to protect themselves, had to be wary and careful. The way the rules had been set up, everything was against them. Martha was courageous and honest and loving, but she was also a damned fool.

“Mira told herself this, sitting in the dark with her brandy. She felt mean and small, foreseeing tragedy for Martha. And tragedy it would be if David failed her. Her emotion for him was too intense and engulfing for it to be anything else. Maybe it won’t happen, her other voice suggested. Maybe he’s telling her the truth—after all, she believes him and she has a built-in shit detector. Maybe it will all work out and they’ll live happily ever after. David had applied for a job in a college in Boston. It was better paying than the one he had, and if he got it, he and Martha would get married and move up there and he could still provide for his wife. That’s what he said. Perhaps it was true. But the other part of Mira’s mind nagged and picked. Why did he force Martha into something he wasn’t ready for?

“But both voices came together when she thought about herself” (1, pp. 200-201).

Comment: Such opinionated “parts” and “voices” are alternate personalities, and they indicate that the author had multiple personality trait.

1. Marilyn French. The Women’s Room (a novel). New York, Penguin Books, 1977/2009.