BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

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Thursday, May 18, 2023

“Wuthering Heights (post 1) by Emily Brontë: Narrator says Catherine has multiple personality, if readers pay respectful attention to Emily Brontë's words and details

“Catherine had…a double character without exactly intending to deceive anyone” (1, p. 67)…“now and then; besides, she hurt me extremely, so I started up from my knees and screamed out. O, Miss, that’s a nasty trick! You have no right to nip me, and I’m not going to bear it!

“I didn’t touch you, you lying creature! cried she…

“What’s that, then? I retorted; showing a decided purple witness to refute her.

She stamped her foot, wavered a moment, and then irresistibly impelled by the naughty spirit within her, slapped me on the cheek…

“Catherine, love! Catherine! interposed Linton, greatly shocked at the double fault of falsehood, and violence, which his idol had committed…” (1, pp. 67-71). 


Comment: Since Catherine assaults a longterm female servant, who is also the author’s narrator, in front of a witness, I interpret “double character” to mean multiple personality, not merely impulsiveness and hypocrisy.


And since an old interpretation of multiple personality is demon or spirit possession, “naughty spirit within her” also suggests multiple personality.


Furthermore, persons with multiple personality are often called liars, because memory gaps lead them to deny what witnesses have seen them do, as seen in this case.


Since Wikipedia (2) does not mention that Catherine has multiple personality, I’m not expecting it to become more obvious than it already is.


1. Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights [1847]. UK, Penguin Books 1995/2003.

2. Wikipedia. “Catherine Earnshaw.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Earnshaw

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