“The Woman in White” (post 1) by Wilkie Collins: Title Character Probably Has Multiple Personality

The narrator, Walter Hartright, talks with the mysterious title character, trying to find out if she was the one who wrote an anonymous letter warning Miss Fairlie not to marry a particular man.

But it is a difficult interview, because the Woman in White has strange memory gaps and changes in demeanor.

She is confused by her memory gaps, saying, “It’s little enough I remember…little enough, little enough!” (1, p. 118).

“Don’t ask me about mother,” she went on. I’d rather talk of Mrs. Clements. Mrs. Clements is like you, she doesn’t think that I ought to be back in the Asylum; and she is as glad as you that I escaped from it. She cried over my misfortune, and said it must be kept secret from everybody…

“What misfortune?” I asked.

“The misfortune of my being shut up, she answered, with every appearance of feeling surprised at my question. “What other misfortune could there be?”

“There is another misfortune,” I said, “to which a woman may be liable, and by which she may suffer lifelong sorrow and shame.”

"What is it?” She asked eagerly…

“She looked up at me, with the artless bewilderment of a child. Not the slightest confusion or change of color; not the faintest trace of any secret consciousness or shame struggling to the surface, appeared on her face—that face which betrayed every other emotion with such transparent clearness.”

[She had probably written an anonymous letter warning Miss Fairlie not to marry a particular man, who was probably the man responsible for her own “misfortune.”]

“I never wrote it…I know nothing about it!”

[But] The instance I risked reference to [the man who had probably caused her "misfortune,” and put her in the Asylum [to cover up his crime]…a most extraordinary and startling change passed over her. Her face… became suddenly darkened by an expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear. Her eyes dilated….like the eyes a wild animal…

“Talk of something else,” she said. I shall lose myself if you talk of that” (p. 118-123).

Comment: Memory gaps for writing the letter and for her probable sexual “misfortune,” together with her talk of “losing” herself (switching away from her regular personality), all suggest dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality).

I recognize this as a presentation of multiple personality, because of my clinical psychiatric experience in its diagnosis and treatment. And I’m not surprised to find it in a novel by Wilkie Collins, who was a friend of Charles Dickens. Search “Dickens,” “memory gaps,” and “diagnosis” in this blog.

1. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White. New York, Bantam Classic, 1860/1985.