“The Lady of the Camellias” by Alexandre Dumas fils: Gratuitous symptoms of multiple personality

The main characters are 1. a nameless narrator; 2. Marguerite, the title character; and 3. Armand, the co-narrator and Marguerite’s young lover.

Namelessness is suggestive of multiple personality, because that is the only situation in which it is commonly seen; whereas, real people almost always have names or numbers. When an author splits his narration, and especially when one narrator is nameless, it suggests that the author had multiple personality trait.

What do we know about Marguerite, other than that she is “the most beautiful, brazen, and expensive courtesan in all of Paris” (back cover), and that she carries red flowers when she is menstruating and white flowers when she is not? She says that her mother “had beaten me for twelve years of her life” (1, p. 116). And a history of childhood trauma is common in persons with multiple personality (2, pp. 46-50). In addition, she refers to herself in the third person as “that lost girl” (1, p. 167), which is something that persons with multiple personality may do (2, p. 84).

Comment: Two narrators suggests that the author was split. Namelessness, childhood trauma, and speaking of oneself in the third person emphasize the multiple personality issue. These gratuitous suggestions of multiple personality suggest that the author may have had multiple personality trait.

1. Alexandre Dumas fils. The Lady of the Camellias. Trans. Liesl Schillinger. New York, Penguin Books, 1848/2013.

2. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.