Nobel Prize novelist Saul Bellow: In two past posts on his writing process, acknowledges alternate personalities—his “prompter” and “unknown masters”

November 15, 2014

Nobel Prize Novelist Saul Bellow credits an alternate personality, who has been “advising” Bellow since his “earliest years,” as his “fastidious” co-writer

“I suppose that all of us have a primitive prompter or commentator within, who from earliest years has been advising us, telling us what the real world is. There is such a commentator in me. I have to prepare the ground for him. From this source come words, phrases, syllables; sometimes only sounds, which I try to interpret, sometimes whole paragraphs, fully punctuated. When E. M. Forster said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” he was perhaps referring to his own prompter…

“When I say the commentator is primitive, I don't mean that he's crude; God knows he's often fastidious. But he won't talk until the situation's right. And if you prepare the ground for him with too many difficulties underfoot, he won't say anything. I must be terribly given to fraud and deceit because I sometimes have great difficulty preparing a suitable ground. This is why I've had so much trouble with my last two novels. I appealed directly to my prompter. The prompter, however, has to find the occasion perfect—that is to say, truthful, and necessary. If there is any superfluity or inner falsehood in the preparations, he is aware of it…” (from Bellow’s 1966 Paris Review interview).

The only thing in the above with which I would take issue is Bellow’s assumption that “all of us” have this kind of alternate personality, or have an alternate personality of any kind. My guess is that no more than 30% of the general public has any alternate personalities (in what I call “normal multiple personality”). But if by “all of us” he was referring only to novelists, then I wouldn’t disagree, since most novelists, perhaps 90%, do have a normal version of multiple personality, which is the subject of this blog.

November 29, 2014

Saul Bellow doesn’t understand his own novels, because, when he writes, he is often “deaf, dumb, and blind, the slave of” alternate personalities.

“Bellow maintained that his genius didn’t belong to him alone. He was simply the medium. ‘I often feel, when I’m writing, that I’m a composite person” (1, p. 213).

“Bellow professed—indeed, considered it a matter of honor—not to know what his own books were about. [Bellow said,] ‘It’s hard for me to know, because so much of the time I’m deaf, dumb, and blind, the slave of unknown masters.’” (1, p. 269).

If it is permissible to take Bellow at his word, then he is saying that there is more than one writer who writes his books (psychologically speaking), and that he (the host personality, “Bellow”) is, much of the time, no more than a slave of the others (whom Bellow does not know by name).

If there is any metaphor in what he says, then “deaf, dumb, and blind” may mean that, during much of the writing, the regular Bellow personality is not consciously present.

What sense can biographers, professors of literature, and literary critics make of Bellow’s statements? They can’t make any sense of it, because all standard literary theories assume that novelists have one personality, not multiple personality. No standard literary theory considers a novelist to be “a composite person” with “unknown masters.”

What Bellow says makes sense only from the perspective of Multiple Identity Literary Theory.

1. James Atlas. Bellow: A Biography. New York, Random House, 2000.

“I wandered lonely as a cloud” (“Daffodils”) by William Wordsworth (post 2): The problem with the metaphor is that clouds, being inanimate, don’t have feelings

A more sensible metaphor would have been a lone bird, who might very well have felt lonely. So did Wordsworth make a mistake in his choice of metaphor or did he have his reasons? Here is the poem in its entirety:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

and twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched in never-ending line

along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not be but gay,

in such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils (1).

There are two ready rebuttals to my quibble about clouds. First, this poem is very successful and people like it just the way it is.

Second, if I try to imagine a lonely cloud, I imagine a book written for very young children, whose protagonist is a cloud. (I don’t know if there is such a book, but it seems to me that there could be.) In one edition of this series, the cloud could be lonely at the beginning, but not by the end.

In other words, the metaphor of a lonely cloud is valid, but at an early stage of cognitive development, before the distinction between animate and inanimate objects is firmly entrenched. So the question for this poem becomes why Wordsworth, as an adult writing for adults, used a metaphor more suitable for a child.

Was Wordsworth inspired to use the cloud metaphor by a child-aged alternate personality? Perhaps he even had a child-aged alternate personality named The Cloud. I certainly have no way of knowing the details and specifics. But is there any evidence at all that Wordsworth had multiple personality?

This is not my first post about Wordsworth (search “Wordsworth”). Previously, I briefly discussed his double consciousness; i.e., his multiple personality.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud

“Casino Royale” by Ian Fleming (post 2): Surprisingly, in first James Bond novel, he’s a loser. Of interest here, he has gratuitous multiple personality

I have just read Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, and, coming to it with his superspy, irresistible lover, public image in mind, I found Fleming’s original conception of Bond disillusioning.

To begin with, “007” did not originally mean “license to kill” or anything so glamorous (see Wikipedia “00 Agent”). And the only major success that Bond has in this novel, winning a high-stakes card game, is pure luck. In the middle of the novel, Bond considers quitting his job as a British spy, because he feels that the right and wrong sides have become ambiguous (don’t worry, he gets over this). And at the end of the novel, Bond’s judgment of people and his luck with women turn out to have been so bad that the woman he is about to ask to marry him kills herself and confesses in her suicide note that she has been spying for the other side. In short, although Bond had reportedly had success in past missions, and has potential to do well in the future, he is mostly depicted in the first Bond novel as an unlucky, tormented loser.

Be all that as it may, the following incidental remarks in Casino Royale are of interest here, because they inadvertently reflect the issue of multiple personality, raised by the author’s biographies (discussed in the previous post).

“James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge” (1, p. 169) (the first page of the novel). The way this is worded—he doesn’t suddenly feel tired; rather, he suddenly knows it— makes it appear that Bond has a separate part of his mind (a body-monitoring alternate personality), who does not feel tired, but whose job it is to know whether the body and mind are tired, and act upon that knowledge.

“With another part of his mind, he had a vision of tomorrow’s regular morning meeting of the casino committee” (1, p. 169). As I just said above, Bond’s mind has “parts,” a common euphemism for alternate personalities.

“Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold” (1, p. 173). Dr. Jekyll goes to sleep and Mr. Hyde is revealed.

“At twenty minutes to nine he had exhausted all the permutations which might result from his duel with Le Chiffre [the villain he must defeat in the upcoming high-stakes card game]. He rose and dressed, dismissing the future completely from his mind” (1, p.196). Most people couldn’t do that, at least not completely. But a person with multiple personality might be able to switch to an alternate personality who is oriented to the present only.

“…she was pleased when she felt she attracted and interested him, as she knew intuitively that she did. Then at a hint that they were finding pleasure together…he had suddenly turned to ice and had brutally veered away as if warmth were poison to him” (1, p. 201). One of Bond’s personalities was repulsed by feelings and relationships.

“He seemed to have forgotten the brief coolness between them, and Vesper [the woman] was relieved and entered into his mood” (1, p. 204). He has not only switched to a personality who is interested in feelings and relationships, but may even have a memory gap (a cardinal feature of multiple personality) for the time that his other personality had frozen her out.

“Bond’s eyes narrowed and his face in the mirror looked back at him with hunger” (1, p. 220). People without multiple personality look in a mirror and simply see themselves. In contrast, people with multiple personality may sometimes look in a mirror and see someone looking back at them. (Search “mirror” and “mirrors” for past discussions of this recurrent subject.)

“Continue, my dear friend. It is interesting to see this new Bond. Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes” (1, p. 244). Bond’s friend, in saying that Bond is like Chinese boxes, is using a metaphor for multiple personality.

Comment

Ian Fleming did not intend to imply that Bond has multiple personality. Then why does Bond have all these inadvertent, gratuitous, little indications of multiple personality? They evidently reflect the psychology of the author.

1. Ian Fleming. From Russia, With Love [1957]. Casino Royale [1953, pp. 169-270]. Live and Let Die [1954]. Diamonds are Forever [1956], Dr No [1958], Goldfinger [1959]. New York, Octopus/Heinemann, 1980.

Ian Fleming (author of James Bond) was known for his puzzling inconsistency

Persons with undiagnosed multiple personality usually look like everyone else, because alternate personalities are usually like spies: they remain incognito until their cover is blown (after which they will acknowledge themselves, you can interview them, and obtain previously unknown facts that can be corroborated).

One clue to the presence of unacknowledged alternate personalities is that the person has puzzling inconsistency (search “puzzling inconsistency” for past discussions). According to two biographies:

“…some remembered him as arrogant, prickly, and in general difficult, while others recalled a charming, handsome, witty, and lively young aristocrat…When he was nineteen…he was full of fanciful and imaginative accounts of his life, often made up on the spot, which he told to everyone at the school…The psyche of Ian Fleming was a battlefield. License and puritanical restraint…were constantly at war within him. One urge would control him for a time, only to be counterattacked in the next instant by its opposite” (1, pp. 1-2).

“The second son of a wealthy, socially prominent Scottish family…His investment banker grandfather…was a self-made millionaire…Ian was nearly nine years old when his father was killed [in WWI]. It was a catastrophe for the family, of course, but was not unnoticed by the nation at large. The event was notable enough for the London Times to print an obituary written by Winston Churchill… (1, p. 11).

“I was amazed to learn that Fleming had not graduated from either Eton or Sandhurst, which he certainly permitted and even encouraged me to believe. In fact, he even told me that on graduation from Sandhurst, he had selected the Black Watch as his regiment. I was also under the impression he left the foreign service for journalism. Actually, he had not; he never belonged to it” (1, p. 12).

Note: In multiple personality, some alternate personalities may give fanciful versions of personal history. As discussed in a past post, the novelist William Faulkner once cautioned interviewers not to ask him personal questions, explaining that he might give different answers to the same question on different occasions.

“…she was not the first or last person to be puzzled by the complexity of Ian’s personality. ‘He was a complete schizophrenic [she meant multiple personality]. He was tough and quite cruel, but at the same time he could be very sentimental' ” (2, p. 68).

“As she [another woman] got to know Ian, she became fascinated by his multifaceted character. She compared him to the layers of an onion: as fast as she peeled one layer away, there was always another. At the end she was not sure what was left. Ian remained an enigma. And that had its disturbing side. ‘You simply never could anticipate how Ian would behave. In a wreck I simply didn’t know whether he would go off in the first lifeboat, or go down with the ship…He was totally unpredictable” (2, p. 86).

“Ian seemed ‘really grateful’ to Ann for marrying him, recorded Lady Mary, but she could not help adding the caveat, born out of experience, that he ‘has more characteristics than anyone I know, and the opposite of each too.” (2, p. 225).

“…the contradictions of his character — the puritan and the libertine…” (2, p. 453).

1. Bruce A. Rosenberg, Ann Harleman Stewart. Ian Fleming. Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1989.

2. Andrew Lycett. Ian Fleming. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1995/2013.

“Are Multiple Personalities Always a Disorder?” by Tori Telfer: Discusses “members of the multiple personality community who insist they’re healthy”

I don’t know either Tori Telfer or “the multiple personality community” to which she refers. But I thought her article would interest readers here, because it is consistent with my view that there are many more people with what I call “multiple personality trait” than there are with clinical, multiple personality disorder.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdxgw9/when-multiple-personalities-are-not-a-disorder-400

However, as far as I know, most people with multiple personality trait do not think of themselves as part of “the multiple personality community,” because they are not so aware of it, at least in those terms.

Louisa May Alcott: Author of beloved “Little Women,” also of “Behind a Mask or A Woman’s Power,” both with unacknowledged multiple personality

Another film version of the beloved novel, Little Women, is due later this month. Most reviews and appreciations of the novel and its adaptations say things like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/books/little-women-alcott-anniversary.html

Reviews rarely mention, and so most people don’t know, that Alcott also wrote novels like Behind a Mask or A Woman’s Power, in which the female protagonist is a Jekyll/Hyde character (but published twenty years before Stevenson’s novel).

The following brief past posts will give you additional appreciation of Little Women, the author, and her writing process.

August, 27, 2017

Louisa May Alcott: Before “Little Women,” she wrote “blood-and-thunder” stories with femmes fatales, not only for money, but because A. M. Barnard preferred.

“I fancy ‘lurid’ things,” Louisa May Alcott wrote in her 1850 journal, “if true and strong also” (1, p. xii). And she said in conversation, “I think my natural ambition is for the lurid style” (1, p. xxvi). So who was this who expressed a preference for the lurid, Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women) or A. M. Barnard (her usual pseudonym)?

Most of her sensational tales, what she called her “blood-and-thunder” works, were published under a pseudonym or anonymously, but “The Mysterious Key has a male hero…and…was published over the name of Louisa May Alcott. The possibility suggests itself that Louisa insisted upon secrecy less for her blood-and-thunder stories in general than for her passionate and angry heroines in particular” (1, p. xvi).

“Her characterizations were natural and subtle and her gallery of femmes fatales forms a suite of flesh-and-blood portraits. Her own anger at an unjust world she transformed into the anger of her heroines, who made of it a powerful weapon with which to challenge fate. The psychological insights of A. M. Barnard [her pseudonymous personality] disclose the darker side of the character of Louisa May Alcott” (1, p. xxviii).

Stephen King infers that there were “two Louisa May Alcotts,” and although the conventional one, the author of Little Women, came to predominate, the sensational tales give us “…a fascinating look into a divided mind that was both attracted to themes of violence and sexuality and ashamed by its own interest” (2).

1. Louisa May Alcott. Behind a Mask: the Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott. Edited and with an Introduction and Afterword by Madeleine Stern. New York, William Morrow and Company, 1975/1995.

2. Stephen King. “Blood and Thunder in Concord.” New York Times, September 10, 1995. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/nnp/18425.html?mcubz=0

August 28,2017

“Behind a Mask or A Woman’s Power” by Louisa May Alcott writing as A. M. Barnard: Woman, background like Alcott’s, portrayed as psychopath.

The protagonist of this novella is a poor, 19-year-old governess who uses her skills as an actress to trick her rich, elderly employer into marrying her.

Louisa May Alcott, herself, had a background in theater and was once a poor, 19-year-old lady’s companion, who had to flee her position, because her employer, the lady’s elderly brother, made inappropriate advances.

So I would have expected the governess in this story to have been portrayed sympathetically, with her marriage a triumph, if not for feminism, then at least class struggle and social mobility. But the narrative portrays the governess as a triumphant, scheming psychopath.

Another interesting thing about the governess is that she passes herself off as being nineteen, but she is actually thirty. The reader is told that she is thirty and shown her removing her disguise in private. The latter scene made me think of Dr. Jekyll’s turning into Mr. Hyde. Indeed, at another point in the story, she is referred to as a Scottish witch (Robert Louis Stevenson was Scottish).

But the governess’s transformation reverses Stevenson’s scenario. In A. M. Barnard’s story, the bad personality is the real one. Barnard’s story is like Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde told from Hyde’s point of view (except that Barnard’s story was written twenty years before Stevenson’s).

Maybe Louisa May Alcott was “Dr. Jekyll” and A. M. Barnard was “Mr. Hyde” in a novelist’s normal version of multiple personality.

1. A. M. Barnard (pseudonym of Louisa May Alcott). “Behind a Mask or A Woman’s Power” (1866), in Louisa May Alcott. Behind a Mask: the Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott. Edited and with an Introduction and Afterword by Madeleine Stern. New York, William Morrow and Company, 1975/1995.

September 1, 2017

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott: Is Laurie complimenting Beth, or saying that her music is composed by an alternate personality?

In the brief passage quoted below, there are two ways to interpret what Laurie says to Beth. Most readers rely on the narrator [and Jo], who interpret what Laurie says to Beth as a “compliment.”

However, if narrators are not always reliable, and you entertain the possibility that Laurie means what he says, then what he may be saying is that Beth has an alternate personality who takes over when she is alone, and composes music of which her regular, “stupid” personality is unaware.

“…There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one…” [says Mrs. March].

“…I knew a girl, once, [says Laurie] who had a really remarkable talent for music, and she didn’t know it; never guessed what sweet little things she composed when she was alone, and wouldn’t have believed it if any one had told her.”

“I wish I’d known that nice girl, maybe she would have helped me, I’m so stupid,” said Beth, who stood beside him, listening eagerly.

“You do know her, and she helps you better than any one else could,” answered Laurie…Beth suddenly turned very red, and hid her face in the sofa-cushion, quite overcome by such an unexpected discovery.

“…Beth…could not be prevailed upon to play for them after her compliment” (1, p. 61, book 1, chapter VII).

This is as far as I’ve read, and I’ve been paying attention mostly to Jo. But now that I think of it, Beth is the character whose behavior has been most puzzling.

1. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy [1868-69]. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott: Narrative multiple personality, out-of-character behavior, imaginary friends at age thirteen, the first sixty pages.

After my last post—questioning the reliability of the narrator and suspecting that Beth has multiple personality—I looked back at what I had noticed about the narrator and Beth in the first sixty pages.

I had noticed that the narrator is usually third person, but occasionally switches to first person: “And I think Jo was quite right” (1, p. 34). “They would have been still more amazed, if they had seen what Beth did afterward. If you will believe me, she went and knocked on the study door” (1, p. 56).

The narrator switch is all the more remarkable since conventional wisdom is that Jo, an aspiring writer, is the author’s alter ego. So this novel has at least three narrative perspectives—third person, first person, and Jo—making it another novel with narrative multiple personality.

Regarding Beth, the above quote notes behavior that is so out of character for her that the narrator feels the rest of her family will be amazed when they hear about it (about this, the narrator is reliable). Moreover, Beth’s “little world was peopled with imaginary friends” (1, p. 38) at age thirteen.

There seems to be a pattern, and it is not subtle.

1. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy [1868-69]. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

September 3, 2017

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott: Does the masculine “Jo” personality of Chapter I switch to a feminine personality in Chapter XIV?

Chapter I of Little Women, in its introduction of Jo, lays great emphasis on her masculine identification. She has a “gentlemanly manner.” She is chided for whistling, because “It’s so boyish.” She says, “I like boy’s games, and work, and manners. I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy, and it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with papa [in the Civil War], and I can only stay at home and knit like a poky old woman.” At age fifteen, she continues to be a “tom-boy,” and declares, “I’m the man of the family now papa is away.”

In Chapter XIV, Jo, one year older, has just published her first short story, “The Rival Painters” (which also happens to be the title of the first story published by Louisa May Alcott). When her older sister, Meg, shows signs of being marriage minded, and chides Jo for unladylike behavior, Jo says:

“Don’t try to make me grow up before my time, Meg; it’s hard enough to have you change all of a sudden; let me be a little girl as long as I can.”

My question is why the Jo described in Chapter 1 would say “let me be a little girl as long as I can.”

Readers, if they wanted to, could come up with a rationalization for the apparent contradiction. For example, they could argue that the Jo of Chapter XIV is not talking about gender, but about age only, and that all she is saying is she is not ready to grow up. But in that case, she could have said to let her be a boy or a child as long as she could. The “Jo” personality described in Chapter I would not refer to herself as “a little girl.”

Interestingly, her first story is published under the name “Miss Josephine March.” Why doesn't she publish it as “Jo March” or at least “Miss Jo March”? Perhaps because “Jo” is the name of her boyish personality, and the short story is a romantic tale of a sort that her boyish personality would not have written.

Another possible explanation for the inconsistency between Chapters I and XIV is that it was caused not by a switch in the character’s personality, but by a switch in the narrator. Perhaps the two chapters were written by different narrators, who differed in their perspectives on that character.

All I can say for sure is that there is a discrepancy between the two chapters. If you have a better explanation for it, please submit your comment.

September 4, 2017

Louisa May Alcott: Like her character, Jo, the author seems to have had two rival identities; one tried to delete evidence of the other.

“In Little Women, Alcott based her heroine ‘Jo’ on herself. But whereas Jo marries at the end of the story, Alcott remained single throughout her life. She explained her ‘spinsterhood’ in an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, ‘I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body...because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.’ However, Alcott's romance while in Europe with the young Polish man Ladislas ‘Laddie’ Wisniewski was detailed in her journals but then deleted by Alcott herself before her death.”

Wikipedia. “Louisa May Alcott.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisa_May_Alcott

September 5, 2017

Louisa May Alcott: In Part II of “Little Women,” Jo, Alcott’s alter ego, will call her productive periods of writing a “vortex,” but what is that?

A vortex is a whirling movement that draws you into it, irresistibly, as, for example, a whirlpool.

And a whirlpool would not be a good metaphor for the manic episodes of bipolar disorder, which some people have associated with creative genius.

However, a vortex could be a metaphor for being drawn into an altered state of consciousness in which the person feels taken over by forces beyond their control (perhaps alternate personalities).

But let me read Part II and see what Jo actually says.

September 6, 2017

Jo’s “vortex” in “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott: It is something she falls into, seizes control of her mind, and provides divine inspiration.

In Part II, Chapter IV, “Literary Lessons,” a third-person narrator quotes Jo and describes her “vortex”:

“Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and ‘fall into a vortex,’ as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace…

“…her family…during these periods, kept their distance…

“…when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh…The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her ‘vortex’ hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.

“She was just recovering from one of these attacks when she was prevailed upon to escort Miss Crocker to a lecture, and in return for her virtue was rewarded with a new idea” [writing thrillers for the money] (1, p. 211).

After publishing her first novel, Jo criticizes the critics: “Some make fun of it, some over-praise, and nearly all insist that I had a deep theory to expound, when I only wrote it for the pleasure and the money” (1, p. 217).

“Vortex” metaphor

Jo would “fall into a vortex,” which is a “writing fit,” “divine afflatus,” and “one of these attacks.” “Vortex” combines elements of falling into something, having a seizure, and divine inspiration. It is a state of mind she falls into (like a whirlpool), that takes control of her, and provides content that seems to her like it is not her own imagination, but comes from somewhere and someone else (divine inspiration).

Of course, not all her writing is a product of the vortex, per se. Her writing also includes “parts that were taken out of real life…and scenes that I made up out of my own silly head” (1, p. 217).

Question

Who or what takes control of Jo’s mind when it is seized from her in this pleasurable way? I will continue reading, and see if the novel has anything more to say about it.

1. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy [1868-69]. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

September 9, 2017

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott: Jo’s personality radically changes at end of novel, probably because author’s personality switched.

Jo, at the end of the novel, is not the same as Jo at the beginning: she does not have the same personality.

At the beginning, she identifies herself as the boy or man of the house, who would never get married; moreover, she is a dedicated writer, whose writing process is epitomized by her “vortex” (see previous posts). At the end, she is no longer male-identified, is married, has children, and is not a writer.

This radical transformation of Jo’s personality has been called “The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women,” and interpreted as the author’s pandering to her readers’ wish for a traditional ending (1). I agree that the character’s personality undergoes a radical transformation, but have a different reason for it.

Alcott could have gotten Jo married, but left her personality unchanged in private, or at least in the privacy of her own mind. And Jo’s marriage could have left her free to pursue her writing, just as Amy’s marriage left her free to pursue her art. So I don’t believe that Alcott had to change Jo’s personality for commercial reasons.

What, then, does explain the radical change in Jo’s personality? My theory is that the author had multiple personality, and one personality wrote the beginning of the novel, but a different personality wrote the end of the novel.

Such a thing may be more common than you think. In past posts, I have cited similarly remarkable inconsistencies and contradictions between the beginnings and endings of other novels—e.g., Nabokov’s Lolita and Oates’ You Must Remember This—and, in the context of other things known about the authors, had to come to the same conclusion.

1. Angela M. Estes and Kathleen Margaret Lant. “Dismembering the Text: The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women,” pages 564-583, in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy [1868-69]. New York, W. W. Norton, 2004.

Note added September 10, 2017: Why did the issue of Jo’s marriage prompt the author to switch narrative personalities? The reason is that alternate personalities are relatively specialized and narrow-minded. In this case, the alternate personality who approved of marriage, and could write an ending involving marriage, did not approve of a woman's being boyish or a writer, so when marriage was in, boyishness and writing were out, even in private.

September 13, 2017

Louisa May Alcott: Alcott says stories “grow as they will” and are provided by character alternate personalities; then she transcribes it for publication.

Alcott describes a writing process similar to that described in past posts by Mark Twain and Edward Albee. Twain would wait for his creative, alternate personality to “fill the tank,” and then Twain would take the story from the tank and transcribe it for publication. Albee said that his plays were prewritten for him.

Alcott said: “My methods of work are very simple…My head is my study, & there I keep the various plans of stories for years sometimes, letting them grow as they will till I am ready to put them on paper.

“Then it is quick work, as chapters go down word for word & no need for alteration…

“While a story is underway I live in it, see the people, more plainly than real ones, round me, hear them talk, & am much interested, surprised or provoked at their actions, for I seem to have no power to rule them, & can simply record their experiences & performances” (1, p. 320).

The difference between constructed characters and character alternate personalities is that the latter are experienced by the author as more real than real, and as having minds of their own.

1. Madeleine B. Stern. Louisa May Alcott: A Biography. Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1996/1999.

Childhood Trauma vs. Combat Trauma: Regarding mental health and risk of suicide, childhood trauma is worse, according to studies by U.S. Army

https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-many-soldiers-mental-health-issues-start-before-enlistment-11575561604

Search “childhood trauma” here for discussions related to literature.

Ralph Ellison (post 6): On the occasion of publication of his letters, here are five past posts on the multiple personality reflected in his writing

Here is the New York Times review of Ellison’s letters: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/books/review-ralph-ellison-selected-letters.html

Here are five past posts:

August 8, 2016

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”: Meaning of Title; Relation of Nameless, Unreliable Narrator and Rinehart to Dostoevsky, Melville, Multiple Personality

In the opening paragraph of Invisible Man (1952), the nameless narrator says he is invisible because people refuse to see him. But he is unreliable. Ellison calls him “the hero who is somewhat of a liar” and says “That’s what you have to be alert to whenever you read fiction in the first person” (1, p. 267). Also search “nameless” and “namelessness” in this blog for posts on its relation to multiple personality.

Ellison says, “The invisibility, there is a joke about that which is tied up with the sociological dictum that Negroes in the United States have a rough time because we have high visibility…High pigmentation…But the problem for the narrator of Invisible Man is that he creates his own invisibility to a certain extent by not asserting himself…” (1, p. 96).

“Ellison…modeled his narrator after the nameless narrator of Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground” (2). That’s the same Dostoevsky who wrote The Double, a classic multiple personality story (search “Dostoevsky” and “The Double” in this blog).

Regarding another character in Invisible Man, Rinehart, Ellison says, “I was thinking of a character who was a master of disguise…"(1, p. 18). “He’s a descendant of Melville’s Confidence Man” (1, p. 76). Search “Confidence Man” in this blog to read my post on Herman Melville’s novel about a man with multiple personality.

1. Maryemma Graham and Amritjit Singh (Editors). Conversations with Ralph Ellison. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1995.

2. Invisible Man. Wikipedia.

August 9, 2016

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” (post 2): Is narrator incarnated but invisible, or a disembodied voice? Views of Prologue, Epilogue, Author's Introduction.

Prologue

“I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids…I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (1, p. 3).

Epilogue

“ ‘Ah,’ I can hear you say, ‘so it was all a build-up to bore us with his buggy jiving. He only wanted us to listen to him rave!’ But only partially true: Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do?” (1, p. 439).

Author’s Introduction

“For while I had structured my short stories out of familiar experiences and possessed concrete images of my characters and their backgrounds, now I was confronted by nothing more substantial than a taunting, disembodied voice…an ironic, down-home voice…the voice seemed well aware that a piece of science fiction was the last thing I aspired to write. In fact it seemed to tease me with allusions to that pseudoscientific sociological concept which held that most Afro-American difficulties sprang from our ‘high visibility’…But then as I listened to its taunting laughter and speculated as to what kind of individual would speak in such accents, I decided that it would be one who had been forged in the underground of American experience and yet managed to emerge less angry than ironic…And after coaxing him into revealing a bit more about himself, I concluded that he was without question a ‘character,’ and that in the dual meaning of the term…this has always been a most willful, most self-generating novel…” (1, pp. xiv-xxi).

Comment

As is true of many novelists, Ellison, intellectually, knew that he had imagined and thought up his narrator and main character. But that is not the way he experienced his creative process: His protagonist just seems to have arrived. He is confronted by it. He hears its voice. It has its own opinions and attitude. It seems to be self-generating, with a mind of its own. All of which describes the psychological experience of getting and having an alternate personality.

Although most characters and alternate personalities are embodied, it is not uncommon to have an alternate personality who is conceived of as a disembodied spirit of one sort or another.

1. Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man [1952]. New York, Random House, 1982.

August 11, 2016

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” (post 3): He is invisible, because his true emotions and humanity, in the form of alternate personalities, are hidden.

A man is “invisible” when he has repressed, and buried inside him, his true self, his humanity, so that it is invisible from the outside.

“Behold! a walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative…The mechanical man! (1, p. 72).

But what if that repressed, true self were released, discovered, and became visible, so to speak? What form would it have?

Would it seem like an alien, alternate personality that had been lodged deep inside him? Would he hear its voice? Might he hear more than one voice: the voices of several, contradictory, alternate personalities, each singing its own tune inside his head?

“…I had the feeling that I had been talking beyond myself, had used words and expressed attitudes not my own, that I was in the grip of some alien personality lodged deep within me…” (1, p. 189).

“…but now a new, painful, contradictory voice had grown up within me…If only all the contradictory voices shouting inside my head would calm down and sing a song in unison…” (1, p. 197).

Clinically, the counterpart to what Ellison calls “invisible” is what some clinicians refer to as “depleted.” For example, a patient who is noted to have an absence of strong emotions is later found to have alternate personalities—an angry personality, etc.— who have these strong emotions, leaving the host personality emotionally depleted.

1. Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man [1952]. New York, Random House, 1982.

August 13, 2016

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” (post 4): The title means man is invisible, especially to the extent that his alternate personalities remain hidden.

Neither Ellison’s interviews nor his introduction to this novel nor the novel itself gives a clear and consistent explanation of what he meant by “invisible man.” He is of two (or more) minds about it.

At some points, he says it means that men (especially blacks) are not seen by others (especially whites) for who they really are. But at one point, he says that some of the white characters are not seen for who they are, either. And so, since it is impossible to know what is in the heart of any other person, “Invisible Man” means that man is invisible.

However, at other points, cited in previous posts, Ellison says that his nameless, first-person narrator/protagonist is really only a disembodied voice that he heard. So that is the reason he is invisible.

And as I pointed out, a disembodied person-like entity is an alternate personality, which, not having its own separate body, and being, most of the time, on the inside, behind the scenes, is, usually, invisible. According to this view, a man is invisible to the extent that his alternate personalities remain hidden.

Is there any evidence that Ellison ever thought in terms of multiple personality, per se? Toward the end of this novel, the protagonist is repeatedly compared to Rinehart, a character who is described as having “multiple personalities” (1, p. 377). Indeed, the only apparent purpose for the existence of the Rinehart character is to make the issue of multiple personality explicit.

Ellison is intrigued, but doesn't pursue the issue, because he finds “the possibilities posed by Rinehart’s multiple personalities…too vast and confusing to contemplate” (1. p. 377).

1. Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man [1952]. New York, Random House, 1982.

August 19, 2016

Ralph Ellison (post 5): Multiple Personality character from Invisible Man became core of the novel Ellison worked on for the next forty years.

“Ellison’s Opus II composition book makes it clear that the second novel belongs to 'Rhinehart,' as he spells the name throughout. Bliss Proteus Rhinehart is the hidden name and complex fate of this transitional character belonging both to Invisible Man and to the second novel…

“As Ellison actually began writing the novel, Rhinehart would go by other names—first Bliss, the child evangelist of indeterminate race…then Movie Man, an itinerant scam artist…and finally Adam Sunraider, a ‘race-baiting New England Senator’…

“An agent of transformation, Bliss Proteus Rinehart is a metaphor for the second novel as a whole, a way of explaining how Ellison could write for forty years without finishing his novel…

“He is of indeterminate race, here specified as ‘Negro, white, Indian’; he is raised in the church by a black preacher; he runs away and reemerges as a movie man looking to exploit a small Oklahoma town…and he gains political office, serving in the United States Senate, where he is assassinated…

“Rhinehart emerges as an individual particularly trapped by his racial indeterminacy, his protean ability to shift shades as well as shapes…

“The novel’s central action, as Ellison conceives it in this embryonic form, concerns Rhinehart’s attempt to return to his neglected past, to embrace his blackness…” (1, pp. 125-134).

Professor Adam Bradley is the coeditor of Ralph Ellison’s unfinished second novel, Three Days Before the Shooting, which Ellison worked on for forty years following publication of Invisible Man. He does not raise the issue of multiple personality.

1. Adam Bradley. Ralph Ellison in Progress: From Invisible Man to Three Days Before the Shooting. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010.