Eve Dallas: Past Posts on the Character

Monday, June 27, 2016

“Naked in Death” and “Seduction in Death” by J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts) (post 4): Eve Dallas’s Dissociative Fugue and Probable Multiple Personality.

Police lieutenant Eve Dallas, who, in the first of this series of over forty novels (1) is thirty years old, had been found abandoned at age eight in the city of Dallas, with no memory of her own name or of anything else about her first eight years. She was given the name Eve Dallas, placed in foster care, and eventually, at about age twenty, joined the New York City police department.

Remarkably, whenever this background is discussed (and it is repeatedly) even Dr. Mira, the highly regarded police psychiatrist (1, p. 133), does not call it what it was: a dissociative fugue, which is when, after psychologically traumatic experience, people wander or travel away from where they are known, and have amnesia for who they are and what their life had been. [Search “dissociative fugue” for prior posts.]

Dissociative fugue is one of a group of psychological conditions called dissociative disorders, which includes dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality). So if someone has had a dissociative fugue, there is a good chance that they have multiple personality, especially if they’ve had extensive psychological trauma in childhood, which was the case for Eve Dallas (1, p. 133).

In short, the protagonist of this series of novels has been given a backstory suggestive of multiple personality, but the author (as represented by the narrator and characters) does not know it, and so there is no effort to provide the reader with relevant information, such as whether Eve Dallas has identity changes and memory gaps (the narrator would have to say so or another character would have to ask her). 

Nevertheless, inadvertently, there are some indications suggestive of multiple personality. For example, at one point Eve says, “My father raped me.” And the narrator adds: “She heard herself say it. The shock of it, hearing her own voice say the words, mirrored in her eyes.” Now, there are two ways to interpret this; 1. that she had often thought of it, but was surprised at her impulsivity to say it out loud to other people, or 2. that she had had dreams and flashes of memory about this, but had not known there was a part of herself (an alternate personality) who had a clear memory of it. It is a clinically known fact that people with multiple personality sometimes have a subjective sense that they say or do things that do not feel like them saying or doing it (alternate personalities can sometimes pull strings from behind the scenes). This is why multiple personality used to be confused with being possessed.

The other main character, Roarke, thinks Eve Dallas has two distinct personalities, as, for example, when he says, “Lieutenant Dallas wouldn’t be afraid of me, even if Eve might” (1, p. 153).

Like many people with multiple personality, Eve Dallas sometimes hears the voices of alternate personalities in her head. One is a personality based on her deceased father, so she must have had this alternate personality from before she was eight years old. As she is in the process of arresting a criminal: “So what? a voice whispered in her ear. Her father’s voice. Another’s coming. Another always is” (2, p. 304).

In multiple personality, it is not uncommon to have some opposite-sex alternate personalities. The alternate personality related to her father was probably not the only one. For example, Eve Dallas and Roarke were having a playful physical fight, and at one point she says, “Just be careful who you call a female, ace” (2, p. 179). Indeed, J. D. Robb’s decision to have police subordinates address their superiors, like Lieutenant Dallas, as “Sir” makes me wonder whether J. D. Robb thinks of Eve Dallas’s police personality as male (as opposed to her off-duty and romantic personalities, which are clearly female). But I don’t think most readers would like that interpretation.

1. J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts). Naked in Death. New York, Berkley Books, 1995.

2. J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts). Seduction in Death. New York, Berkley Books, 2001.

Nora Roberts (post 3) writes over forty novels in which both protagonists—Eve Dallas and Roarke—are survivors of child abuse and don’t know their own names.

“Eve Dallas” is a pseudonym. It is the name she was given at age eight when she was found in Dallas and had amnesia. Roarke does not know his first name (and there is no record of his ever having one). Nora Roberts—already a pseudonym for Eleanor Robertson—writes this series as J. D. Robb. Both Eve Dallas and Roarke had been abused in childhood by their fathers.

The only psychological condition that is defined by its having identity issues as a result childhood trauma is multiple personality, which is mentioned only once (so far) in this “romantic suspense,” police detective, series. It is mentioned in Seduction in Death (1), but the way it is mentioned is peculiar, because, seemingly, there is no good reason to raise the issue.

In the course of trying to find out who murdered several women, the question arises as to whether it was one man, more then one man, or one man with multiple personality. Roarke raises the possibility that the murderer might have “different personalities” (1, p. 95). The police psychologist says it is possible: “While multiple personality syndrome is rare, except in fiction, it does exist.” Eve Dallas says, “I don’t think this is MPS. I read up on it last night” (1, p. 133).

But the reader knows it was two men. And it seems very unlikely that the police would consider something they think of as such a remote possibility. So why, if it is not used as a red herring for the reader, and is implausible to the police, is multiple personality brought up by Roarke, confirmed to exist by the psychologist, and read up about by Eve Dallas?

J. D. Robb must be telling the reader something about these characters, perhaps also about herself.

Note added later the same day: In a previous post, I quoted the author, at a book-signing, referring to J. D. Robb as a bitch. But elsewhere she has said that the J and D stand for the names of her two sons, Jason and Dan, so it is not clear whether the J. D. Robb pseudonym—or, in my terminology, NAP (narrative alternate personality)—is female or male.

1. J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts). Seduction in Death. New York, Berkley Books, 2001.

Nora Roberts’ (post 5) Eve Dallas in Historical Context: Incest victim, solving a murder about incest, when incest and multiple personality were associated.

Naked in Death, the first of more than forty novels featuring police lieutenant Eve Dallas, was published in 1995. The novel highlights the fact that Eve Dallas had been a victim of incest in childhood. And she solves a murder that had been committed to cover up multigenerational incest: a woman had been blackmailing her grandfather, threatening to expose his crime of incest, so he kills her.

In the 1990s, incest, traditionally a hidden crime, and multiple personality, intrinsically a hidden disorder, had come out of the closet. In fact, discovering incest as the hidden cause of psychological problems had become so popular that some misguided therapists were over-diagnosing it. And since incest had become associated in the popular mind with multiple personality, the backlash against false accusations of incest had become a backlash against multiple personality as well.

In any case, the point is, when Naked in Death, a novel about an incest victim who solves a murder about incest, was published in 1995, incest and multiple personality were associated, not only as a clinical fact, but in the popular mind. And so anyone who reads the story of Eve Dallas without thinking of multiple personality is taking it out of historical context.

The fact that the novel emphasizes and highlights incest, but does not even mention multiple personality as a possibility, is curious, considering the historical context noted above. Perhaps, for the author, multiple personality was too sensitive a subject.

“The Devil You Know” (1) by Freida McFadden: Her first novel, which was based on her experience as a practicing medical doctor before she became a bestselling novelist (2)

1. Freida McFadden. The Devil You Know, 2017.

2. Wikipedia. “Freida McFadden.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freida_McFadden

Comment: See my previous posts in this blog on her best-known novel, The Housemaid, in which I found issues of multiple personality. I just obtained a copy of her first novel (1) to see if it has any earlier signs of this blog’s theme, “Novelist’s Multiple Personality Trait’ (See “Basic Concepts” on the cover page of this blog).

On page 6 of her first novel (1) is the italicized line, “Don’t look directly at the sexy surgeon, Jane [the author’s protagonist].” As discussed in this blog, novelists often italicize words to indicate they are not just ordinary thoughts, but are a voice in the character’s head, probably from an alternate personality. Search “italicized words” in this blog for past discussions.

“My Friends” (post 1) by Fredrik Backman: Teenage Protagonist Louisa’s Two Personalities Share Her Brain

“Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human…the only people who don’t think that teenagers are the best humans are adults. Which is obviously because adults are the worst kind of humans…

“…sometimes Louisa is a genius, but sometimes she isn’t a genius, and the problem is that the genius and the non-genius share a brain. But the plan? Perfect…” (1, p. 1).

Comment: Fredrik Backman introduces his latest novel with a humorous statement that his semi-genius, teenage protagonist has a split personality.

1. Fredrik Backman. My Friends. Trans. Neil Smith. New York, Atria Books, 2025. 

“Broken Country” by Clare Leslie Hall: Author’s Creative Mind Since Childhood

“How quick I have become used to my double life” (1, p. 195). “I try to fit myself back into my duplicitous life” (1, p. 197).

“As a child I’d become so absorbed in my favorite stories, the characters sometimes felt more vivid to me than my friends. Even as an adult, I could still lose myself in fictional worlds, feeling the wrench when I was forced to return to real life” (1, p. 61).

Comment: The novel is divided into five parts, beginning in 1968 (1, p. 1). Why isn’t it organized into one continuous story with an omniscient narrator? In the context of all my past posts, I interpret the above as reflecting the mind of a successful novelist who has a creative version of “multiple personality trait” since childhood.

1. Clare Leslie Hall. Broken Country. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2025. 

“Magic Hour” by Kristin Hannah: Author thinks in terms of Multiple Personality

“She needed to force a confrontation between the two Alices—the child lost in the woods and the girl who’d been returned to the world. These two halves needed to integrate into a single personality or Alice’s future would be at risk” (1, p. 174).

Comment: In this blog, search “The Nightingale”  and “The Women” for past posts on this author.

1. Kristen Hannah. Magic Hour. New York, Ballantine Books, 2006/2023.

“The Vegetarian” by Han Kang, winner of both Booker and Nobel Prizes

Introduction: This very short novel didn’t hold my interest, so I’ll just highlight a few, possibly dissociative disorder-related, facts and symptoms. Her husband introduces the title character on the first page of text, thus:

“The passive personality of this woman in whom I could detect neither freshness nor charm, or anything especially refined, suited me down to the ground” (1, p.10)…“The paunch that started appearing in my mid-twenties, my skinny legs and forearms that steadfastly refused to bulk up in spite of my best efforts, the inferiority complex I used to have about the size of my penis—I could rest assured that I wouldn’t have to fret about such things on her account…And so it was only natural that I would marry the most run-of-the-mill woman in the world…(1, p. 10).

“She was a woman of few words. It was rare for her to demand anything of me…More than likely she would spend the time reading, which was practically her only hobby…reading books that looked so dull I couldn’t even bring myself to so much as look inside the covers…”

“Her face was turned away from me, and she was standing there so unnaturally still it was almost as if there was someone I couldn’t see—some kind of ghost standing near the fridge. What was going on? If she couldn’t hear me, then perhaps that meant she was sleepwalking. When I put my hand on her shoulder I was surprised by her complete lack of reaction…She’d simply ignored me. (1, p 13).

    “I had a dream.”

    Her voice was surprisingly clear.

   She kept putting parcels of meat into the rubbish bag, seemingly no more aware of my existence than she had been last night.

   “I had a dream.”

   Those words again.

“The very idea that there should be this side to her.

“So you’re saying that from now on, there’ll be no rest in the house?”

“Until when?”

“I suppose…forever.” (1, p. 19).

“When a person undergoes such a drastic transformation, there’s simply nothing anyone else can do but sit back and let them get on with it” (1, 21).

 “According to my wife, he (her Father-in-law) had whipped her over the calves until she was eighteen years old.” (1. p. 35).

“I become a different person, a different person rises up inside me, devours me, those hours…” (1, p.38).

Comment: Though I’ve noted some dissociative symptoms and a history of abuse at a younger age, I can’t be more definitive, because my attention was not even held to the end. Judging by the literary prizes, that is probably my fault.

1. Han Kang. The Vegetarian. Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith. New York, Hogarth, 2007/2015/2018., pp.185.

 

“The Forrest for the Trees: an Editor’s Advice to Writers” (1, 2) by Betsy Lerner

“Most writers appear neurotic; the truth is, we don’t know the half of it” (1, p. 98).

“Every editor becomes a de facto therapist, whether or not he engages in the therapeutic as well as the editorial process” (1, p. 108).

1. Betsy Lerner. The Forrest for the Trees (an Editor’s Advice to Writers). New York, Riverside, 2000/2010.

2. Publisher’s Weekly Review. 

The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers

Betsy Lerner. Riverhead Books, (284pp) ISBN 978-1-57322-152-8

In a quirky, informal, engaging guide for aspiring writers, Lerner, a literary agent who was most recently executive editor at Doubleday, assumes the posture of the writer's sympathetic friend, coach and psychotherapist all rolled into one. She views writers as neurotic by definition--isolated, a breed apart, prone to phobias and ritualized behaviors, often seething with bottled-up envy, desire for vindication or revenge, obsessed with sex and money (""In other words, the stuff of great books,"" she quips). Instead of worrying about fame or rejection, or seeking vicarious parental approval through publication, blocked writers and those who can't figure out what they should be writing ought to pursue their obsessions, she urges, mindful that many of the best books are born of anger, pain or the struggle for self-definition. Lerner candidly draws on her experience working both sides of the fence, as poet and teacher of writing workshops as well as editor and agent. She offers hard-nosed advice on topics often overlooked, such as the dynamics of author/editor and author/agent relations; struggles against the temptations of alcohol and drugs; the testing of book titles for marketability; acrimony over jacket art. While a lot of her straight talk has a familiar ring, readers will glean practical nuggets. The book's real value, however, lies in compelling the ambivalent writer to confront his or her inner dreams, demons and strengths, and Lerner illuminates this task with a nonstop barrage of anecdotes and apt observations on writing drawn from Dickens, Orwell, Whitman, Updike, Nabokov, Vidal, Mailer, Grisham, Sontag, Philip Roth and many more. (Apr.)

“Fox” (post 1) a novel by Joyce Carol Oates: Engaging Vocabulary

Front Flap (1):

“beguiles”

“hypnotic”

“magnetically diabolical”

“multiple points of view”

Pages 8-12 (1)

“Yes yes I will do anything you ask.”

“Under the command of her human”

“she is obliged to obey”

“hypnotized”

“For this, I was born”

Comment: If the title character will be a hypnotic villain, the above may be seen as just setting the stage. But is it inadvertently, mildly, hypnotizing avid readers?  Having learned the basics of hypnosis from my past decades as a psychiatrist, I know that the above is probably sufficient to mildly hypnotize highly hypnotizable people, which may include avid readers in their avid reading frame-of-mind. Indeed, “multiple points of view” may be particularly engaging of readers with a mild degree of multiple personality, which is more common than most people think.

Of course, all successful novelists know ways to engage their readers. It’s their job.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. Fox. New York, Hogarth, 2025. 

“Manhattan Beach” by Jennifer Egan: Protagonist gets advice in the form of an italicized voice in her head

“Have you any brothers?” Tabatha asked.

“A sister,” Anna said.

“How pretty?”

“Extremely pretty,” Anna said gravely, then added, “She looks like our mother, who danced with the Follies.” The error of this boast accosted her a moment later. Never part with a fact unless you’ve no choice. Her father’s voice in her ears” (1, p. 6).

Comment: Why didn’t the text simply say that she remembered her father’s advice? Why did she remember his advice in the form of a voice? Because she had retained his advice in the form of an alternate personality who was made in his image and/or who recalled what he had said.

Persons with alternate personalities may hear their voices in their head (2, p. 94). Novelists often have a normal, creative version of multiple personality, as discussed in many past posts. Also search “italicized voices” in this blog.

1. Jennifer Egan. Manhattan Beach, New York, Scribner, 2017.

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

“The Seducer’s Diary” by Søren Kierkegaard: In the Foreword, Novelist John Updike cites a psychological cause for Kierkegaard’s Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity), as an asset for “indirect communication”

Wikipedia (1) lists Kierkegaard’s alternate identities with minds of their own, but he had not been diagnosed with multiple personality, because of no obvious history of a psychological cause (i.e. childhood trauma, etc).

“This work (The Seducers Diary), a chapter from Kierkegaard’s first major volume, Either/Or, springs from his relationship with his fiancé, Regine Olsen…but then he broke off their engagement…Olsen became a muse for him. His attempt to set right what he felt was a mistake taught him the secret of “indirect communication” (2, back cover).

Comment: I had been puzzled as to why a person with such well-known alternate, writer personalities had never been diagnosed. His dissociative identity, like that of most novelists, was mostly an asset (what I call “Multiple Personality Trait,” not Disorder).

1.Wikipedia. “Søren Kierkegaard.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard

2. Søren Kierkegaard. The Seducer’s Diary with foreword by John Updike. Princeton University Press, 1997. 

Q. What makes Finnegans Wake (1), the novel by James Joyce, difficult to read (1,Wikipedia)?

A. “In this journal article (2), I propose a correlation between James Joyce’s composition techniques that required multiple revisions and his interest in multiple personality, which eventually blossomed into that comedy of multiplicity, Finnegans Wake."

Comment: Although what I call “multiple personality trait” is usually an asset for novelists, it can make a novel hard to understand if not adequately controlled. Also search “James Joyce” in this blog for relevant past posts.

1. Wikipedia. “Finnegans Wake.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake

2. Fordham, Finn. “‘Circe’ and the Genesis of Multiple Personality.” James Joyce Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 3/4, 2008, pp. 507–20. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30244392  

Both Helen Oyeyemi (yesterday’s post) and Joyce Carol Oates (1) have complex multiplicity   

                                                             

“Your struggle with your buried self, or selves, yields your art”…Without these ill-understood drives you might be a superficially happier person…but it isn’t likely that you will create anything of substance (1, p. 24). 

“I acknowledge that I share a name and a face with ‘JCO,’ this expression suggests, but this is a mere convenience. Please don’t be deceived! 'JCO’ is not a person, nor even a personality [in the usual sense] but a process that has resulted in a sequence of texts” (1, p. 153).

Comment: Joyce Carol Oates says her mind is too unusual to call ‘JCO’ a “personality” in the usual sense, but it is not her regular self. Also see old past posts on Joyce Carol Oates.

1. Joyce Carol Oates. The Faith of a Writer (Life Craft Art). NewYork, ECCOHarperCollins, 2004.