Multiple personalities in Dracula

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I'm cross-posting this to gothic_lit and multiplicity, two rather different places, so apologies if I repeat stuff you've already heard or leave things out, just ask me.

I'm an English Lit student and I'm currently doing my dissertation on "Voicing the Silent: Gothic on Page and Stage"; more precisely on Dracula (Stoker's 1897 novel, Lochhead's 1985 play) and The Turn of the Screw (James 1898 novella, Britten/Piper's 1952 opera). I've always had an interest in feminist readings as issues of "madness", fragmentation of the self and so on, which I notice has frequently been associated with femininity.

Stoker's Dracula is a highly fragmented text, written as a collection of diaries and letters and so forth, although you do get a fairly unified point of view considering this (domineering heterosexual white male voice etc. etc.). One of the characters, Renfield, is in a mental institution and varies between being highly lucid and, indeed, erudite, and frenziedly eating flies and spiders. He is never allowed a direct voice in the narrative (anything about him is usually reported by Dr Seward, who runs the institution and has his own agenda regarding Renfield) and you never find out what started him off in the first place, how he became connected to Dracula.

In Lochhead's Dracula, he becomes one of the most powerful figures of the play. Put in a cage at the back of the play, he sees and knows everything, speaking sometimes incoherently, sometimes the most marvellous poetry, often a mixture of the two. He is attended by two nurses, Nisbett and Grice, and an orderly, Drinkwater, none of whom appear in Stoker. Drinkwater never speaks. Nisbett and Grice are played by the same actress, in the tradition of theatrical doubling, who also plays a vampire bride, a housekeeper and very briefly a doctor. Nisbett and Grice are presented as different people but opposites in the sense that Grice is a sadist and Nisbett a masochist, "or a martyr at least". Yet near the end, when Dracula has killed Renfield, Nisbett/Grice wash down his body (together with Florrie, a maid, but she's too shocked to speak), and they finally are both present at once, talking to each other, the split finally disappearing "until we have a single grieving whole. Bad and good." It's quite a climactic moment in many ways: a reconciliation, a break-down. I can quote more, if you like, it's a fascinating scene and short enough to quote in its entirety if anyone's interested. One quick quotation:

NISBETT: - Tragedy really. (Pause). You get attached. Funny how they've all got their own personalities -
GRICE: In some cases several.

It's a joke, of course, that exchange, but in a more serious way it's also highly important. I'm getting completely fascinated by it. Being a fairly recent work, I've so far only found one critical article on this play, and unfortunately the author is one of those people who confuse multiple personality disorder with schizophrenia and her analysis of this part of things is not long. (So does Lochhead, I have to confess, there's a stage direction about how they "keep up a schizophrenic switch back and forward between their two modes, her two modes?")

I've been reading lit crit articles about fragmentation of the self and so forth for a while, but I've never really looked into it properly, certainly not from the psychological point of view as opposed to the literary one. Does anyone have any comments to make on anything at all here? (If you can relate it to The Turn of the Screw, where madness is a big issue, I'll love you for ever.) Also, does anyone know anything about multiple personalities in literature? Any good sources I could look at? I'm also interested in the gendering of "madness". The traditional view in lit seems to be that fragmentation is bad/unhealthy and integration is good/healthy, but I believe this has been challenged by feminists (Luce Irigaray, "This Sex Which is Not One" and so on) who claim that multiplicity (used in a general sense rather than specifically about multiple personalities) is a feminine phenomenon and something to be celebrated, connecting it with creativity and so on. I'm not an expert on French feminism or ecriture feminine, though I should really know more about it.

Comments

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I think insofar as the Gothic tradition, multiplicity doesn't really appear in much of the literature. Multiplicity is not, unlike the gothic view of the nature of man, a tension between good and evil. That this split is portrayed in characters looks something the same on the surface doesn't really mean that it's an exploration of multiplicity per se.

Speaking from a literary standpoint I think you would be treading on pretty thin ground to try to characterize that central tension in Stoker's work as multiplicity - and missing a lot of the spiritual framework. The issues in Dracula are not pathological or possessive in the sense of multiple streams of consciousness, but a spiritual split between the evil nature of man and the good nature of man.

I'm not familiar with the play, but it sounds more like a Gestalt approach than a traumatic/multiple approach. I would take a look at the Gestalt and possibly the Jungian traditions before I'd get into multiplicity.

Turn of the Screw is really complex and I'm not sure I'm qualified to take it on, but again I think it's not really inside the framework of multiplicity - more a Freudian kind of hysteria or repression.

The problem with finding representations of multiple personality in literature is first that it is a mode of being that mostly has been fit into other systems of belief - possession, particularly. You can certainly find common threads - Anouilh's Joan of Arc in L'Alouette comes to mind. But really the belief systems in which literature has come to be written have alternate explanations and to take multiplicity out of the context of those beliefs is kind of like trying to separate green into yellow and blue - you may be able to find the yellow but it's no longer green.

It also is just from a structural point of view very difficult to have a multiple character because characters are supposed to behave at least somewhat consistently or else the reader tires of them (or in some cases the plot dissolves; I mean if Hamlet is two people talking to each other about killing Claudius there goes much of the central tension of the play).

So those are some random thoughts. Particularly looking at gothic though I don't think that multiple personality is a great lens for it.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your response, it was just what I was hoping for.

Oops, didn't mean to imply that Stoker was multiple in that sense, more that there's a general interest in fragmentation, which is of course a broader field. So far the crit I've been reading has been mostly Freudian and usually about sex. It's the Lochhead where someone is overtly defined as having a split personality. Does it count as multiple personalities if it's two people in one body and it's being termed "schizophrenic" (which I take to be the common confusion between schizophrenia and split personalities). There does seem to be an issue with pop psychology in lit, simplification and misrepresentation and so on.

What do you make of Jekyll and Hyde? Or Dorian Gray? There's this huge obsession with doubles in Gothic, and it's at the heart of Freud's theory of the Uncanny. I tend to find "it's about good versus evil" a problematic statement; it so frequently involves simplifications and huge assumptions about value systems. One of these days I'll get round to studying it properly, I'm fascinated but I haven't had time so far.

I haven't really thought about mental illness much in any of these texts yet, I'm still pursuing other lines of inquiry. Come to think of it, TotS is more likely about actual schizophrenia in the sense of hallucinations - coexisting with the possibility that it is really about ghosts and possession (the Uncanny and doubles, also the permanent uncertainty so the Fantastic). Tell me more about ideas of possession? In the novel you never know whether the ghosts are real, but in the opera it's almost certain that they are; they certainly have a voice and appear when the Governess isn't there.

I've just acquired the Faber Book of Madness which is probably going to be very useful, but it has no contents list and I'm gritting my teeth over that. Let's hope that at least the index is up to scratch.

[echthros.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of the "doubles" in Victorian lit have much to do with multiplicity. They're morality, ethics, the self presented to society vs the self kept inside. They're not independent people. (Though I do like some of what Moore did with Jekyll and Hyde in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that's really neither here nor there.)

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

But aren't they at least using multiplicity (does it count as that if it's only two, by the way?) as a metaphor, even if they're using it as a way of exploring something else? Hyde is presented for most of the novel as a separate person from Jekyll. There's definitely this absolute obsession with the self kept inside, the "divided self" (REALLY must read that one day), the profound duality of man's nature. I've not really read much analysis of Victorian lit that looks at the religious point of view, apart from how it's representative of the patriarchal establishment (Van Helsing as priest, doctor, scholar and so on being an establishment figure, that sort of thing), any further comments on it?

Apologies again for knowing so little about all of this, by the way; hope I'm not saying anything dreadfully prejudiced without realising! What would you say are the differences between, say, Gothic doubles and real life multiples? Jekyll and Hyde you evidently know; Dorian Gray's another one, though a bit different; the various pairings in Wilkie Collins' Basil have been interpreted as different facets of the same deeply divided person. I've not seen the Moore, tell me about it?

What did you make of the Lochhead one, where someone is presented explicitly as a split personality? I've just checked and they're recognised by the others as two separate people, right up until that scene when they're laying out Renfield. (Next question: should I say "she" or "them", and if both, when do I say which?) Tricks with the theatrical convention aren't new, of course - look at Titania and Oberon accusing each other of infidelities with Theseus and Hipployta, whom they are often playing themselves - but I've never seen anyone doing this with it. I'm curious as to how far it could be derogatory, "the ones keeping the mad are even madder themselves", and how far accepting of multiplicity. She's calling it schizophrenia, which as far as I know is just plain wrong and thus suggesting she hasn't bothered to do her research; but on the other hand, her portrayal of Renfield is reclaiming madness, someone alienated because deemed "mad".

[echthros.livejournal.com]

Dorian Gray? Um, unless you consider paintings to be people, I don't think Wilde's work has much to do with multiplicity. There's a lot of good/evil dichotomy there, just not multiplicity.

"Duality" has very little to do with multiplicity. There are dozens in our system, for example, and we're not easily divided into good/evil or any other real categorizing system.

(I'd recommend you go and track down League, even the movie, though it's not as good.)

As for the Lochhead, I've not had previous exposure to it, but I'd agree with the above poster that it sounds almost more like it's about archetypes than illness. If nothing else, it's a very Sybil-type portrayal of multiplicity, sounds like someone didn't do any research. *shrugs*

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Ah, so duality is different to multiplicity. I'd say it's mostly duality, then. I would disagree that it's all about good/evil, though; it's a lot more complicated than that and often has nothing to do with good/evil. Repression of instincts, particularly sexual ones, is a common theme (anyone who gets vamped, Jekyll/Hyde, Dorian Gray). The point with Dorian Gray is more the general idea that there is a split between surface and depth, between what everyone sees and what is really going on underneath, between what is socially accepted and what isn't, and in that sense there are two Dorians, though the other is represented by a portrait (presumably his "true self", whatever that means: note that his stabbing the portrait actually results in stabbing himself) rather than a physical person (like Hyde).

There are concerns with physicality with the vampires, come to think of it. Renfield in his different modes is like another person (e.g. lucid, intelligent, educated, like "one of them" as opposed to raving, hallucinatory, and, of course, "zoophagous"!), but Lucy is described as developing different physical characteristics when she is in vamp mode; there are two Lucy's, and it's almost as if there are two bodies as well.

It does sound rather like Lochhead didn't do enough research, but I think she meant well. Anyway, it is in general a wonderful play (everything's flawed, you should see the amount of bigotry Stoker displays) and I still have to work on it, whether she did her research or not. This reminds me rather of when I was forced to study Woman on the Edge of Time and the problem was that in some ways you couldn't analyse it beyond a certain level, because it was so badly written it just fell apart. Thankfully Lochhead isn't that bad.

Where do "split personalities", where there is only one other but it is a definite other, fit in, and where can I learn more about it?

[angelari.livejournal.com]

Realistically speaking, the "split between surface and depth, between what everyone sees and what is really going on underneath," the dichotomy between "want" and "should," is what is primarily at issue in literary Victorian duality. The "split personality," in literature, as others have commented, generally boils down to socially acceptable/unacceptable - not quite as cut and dried as good/evil, but for the time period, perhaps even more important. The Victorian societal consciousness was very much concerned with suppressing urges, and what happened to people who did so - or failed to do so. Hyde is Jekyll's attempt to literally split off the parts of himself that he doesn't like, that aren't socially acceptable, and not only does he fail to remove them from himself, but he creates a monster that has no control over his baser desires, and, indeed, no desire to control them.

I would say that the duality is the important thing, not the multiplicity - not the split itself, but the reasons behind the split. I haven't read the play Dracula, but I would hazard a guess that Lochhead is making more of a commentary on the nature of mental health care providers during the period than the actual "schizophrenia" itself. What does it say that the madman's caregiver is herself mad? What does her specific kind of duality - sadist/masochist say about it, and the portrayal of Victorian women on the stage? She and Lucy are both presented with duelling personalities, after a fashion. What about Lucy's duality in the original work? The fact that the play wasn't written until 1985, and is drastically changed in many ways from the original work, impacts any argument about Victorian sensibilities, at least.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

It's a comment both on Victorian society and modern society. She voices what Victorians would have thought and sometimes said, but not said officially (for instance, the girls talk to each other about sex and pregnancy). I posted a few extracts here (http://www.livejournal.com/community/gothic_lit/10839.html), including one of the speeches by one of the nurses, and I'm going to copy in a quick bit by the other nurse and then the scene where they're both present at once.

What I'm looking at in my dissertation is what is changed from one version to the other, and why. Hey, talking of speaking through another voice, Lochhead is speaking through a Victorian text to voice modern concerns. Lucy in Stoker is very much split into polar opposites and doesn't really seem like a real woman. Lucy in Lochhead is real and far more complex (and likeable and interesting), although the duality with her vampire self still shows up, particularly when she is dying.

I would say that the duality is the important thing, not the multiplicity - not the split itself, but the reasons behind the split.

I'd agree; maybe not 100% of the time, but that's the general trend. One of the concerns, of course, is that people are trying to reduce themselves to a single, what's the word, meaning almost, when they are in fact more plural. It's still an interesting choice of metaphor.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

Random quick comments:

From an analytical viewpoint I think it is generally a mistake to read a particular mental illness (particularly one defined after the literary period) into a literary construct, unless the author intended it that way (which in the case of multiplicity isn't likely to be true before the 1940s, certainly; although there were some documented cases prior to that there was not a distinction between multiplicity or schitzophrenia or any number of things).

Authors frequently manipulate mental illness (itself a societal construct) to speak about the general human condition rather than exploring madness. There are exceptions but they are just that - exceptions. When you are looking at literature in particular what tends to endure are precisely those works which are more universal. So while saying "what was madness in 1897" might be useful, trying to use a modern diagnosis and drill it backwards is not, I personally think, likely to illuminate the text for you too much.

Dorian Grey is really magic realism, so I don't think it exists in a world where relating it to multiplicity is going to serve as a good analysis, because Wilde clearly made a decision to leap to the fantastic. Jekyl and Hyde is more a fable on the dangers of scientific progress - one of the main reasons being that it's about the horror of a single individual that is being expressed. I hope I got that across.

I can understand that as a literary explorer you might link multiplicity and the fantastic, but since you're talking to multiples I don't think we're likely to follow you there. :-)

Split personality and multiplicity are often confused by a lot of people but I think people have explained below why they're not similar; multiples have people who exhibit both sides, not fragmentary aspects of one person (at least this is what I believe).

I disagree with the comment below that it's because the only cases had two people; I still think that this is related to the difficulty of writing a coherent work with a multiple-viewpoint narration (although some people have pulled it off; in recent work Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible comes to mind and of course there is the Bible :)). It is simply very difficult and for the purposes of most work not worth the bother of trying to draw what is a somewhat incoherent collection of people in one body, when you might as well give them all their own bodies. :)

For a good overview of modern views of possession I recommend American Exorcism. If I remember right it should toss you towards older source material too.

[kuponutmalt.livejournal.com]

I agree with echthros in that most Victorian-era literature deal more with what we now consider schizophrenia. I don't know any good reference material on multiplicity, but I know that The Divided Self by R.D. Laing is an excellent source on the causes and progression of the schizophrenic mindset. Reading that would probably help you distinguish the two.

I find that in most cases when you find "madness" in literature, movies, and so on, it will be based on the framework of schizophrenia, I think, because the internal conflict is much more tragic and nail-biting; whereas in multiplicity, internal conflict is simply two (or more) people arguing "normally."

As far as examples of multiplicity, I would even say that "Fight Club" is not a very accurate representation of "normal" multiplicity (even though I tend to fit that model); however (please don't kill me for saying this, everyone!), I think "Me, Myself, and Irene," had a much more accurate representation, although it was heavily scripted toward comedic gratification.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I have just thought of something which could refer to multiples in Stoker, actually. You know the bit where Renfield is eating various small creatures in the hope of acquiring lots of lives? Yet when Seward brings up the subject of souls, Renfield has a conniption. Exactly what he is so anxious about (to return to academic language, where you don't have a conniption, you articulate anxiety) is never quite explained fully, of course, but there does seem to be a strong possibility that what's freaking him out is the idea of containing within himself lots of souls.

Speaking of which, I think I read somewhere that one theory about multiplicity is that it's several souls in one body. Any thoughts?

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Would you like to email us? (Use the email address on our lj userinfo page.) We might be able to give you a bit more background on current ideas about multiplicity.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, I think I read somewhere that one theory about multiplicity is that it's several souls in one body. Any thoughts?

Well, we've known several multiples (and non-multiples) who take that view. That's something best left up to the individual's decision, I suppose, since it's one of those things science can't prove or disprove.

Interesting that you mention it, though: one of the reasons multiplicity is associated with women is because during the greatest popularity of the Spiritualist movement in the 19th century, when the ideas of mediums and spirit channeling were very popular, most of the famous mediums were women. Some of them (by their own account and the account of those around them-- I'm not necessarily saying this is literally true) would let channeled spirits move into their bodies and co-exist with them for years, giving the appearance of a multiple system. Some of them would speak through the medium to air their views on controversial political issues of the time, such as abolition and women's suffrage. Interestingly, some historians have called their mediumship into question not because they disbelieve in channeling, but because, at the time, it was believed that women were literally too frail to withstand the rigors of public speaking. In the guise of a channeled (male) spirit, these women would then be able to express themselves intellectually and speak to large audiences, in ways they would not have been ordinarily considered capable of doing.

Multiplicity is also particularly associated with creative and intelligent women because, after the widespread popularity of channeling and trance mediums had begun to fade, psychoanalysts took up the job of interpreting it. Theodore Flournoy, in "From India to Mars"-- his rather stuffy 1900 analysis of a famous spirit medium-- expressed the view that mediumship and multiplicity were the same phenomenon, caused by the repression of women. His theory was that a young, gifted woman, unable to express her talents and pushed into a 'proper' female role, would deal with it by splitting off the parts of herself which held 'undesirable' feelings and needs. Women were also thought to be more vulnerable to 'hysterical reactions' in general-- though at least two famous multiples of the 19th century, Ansel Bourne and Louis Vivet, were male. (In the case of Vivet, it can't be known with certainty that his multiplicity wasn't induced by doctors, but in Ansel Bourne's case, he definitely became 'someone else' entirely.)

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Ooh, very interesting; makes me think of the way Mina keeps getting hypnotised, and it is rather seancey, with Dracula speaking through Mina as controlled by Van Helsing. I'd never thought of the way Victorian seances were gendered before, good point. I'm getting quite interested in voices speaking through other people. You get it in the opera of The Turn of the Screw a fair bit.

Do you have any ideas about this business in gothic where it's not quite multiplicity, but there's an obsession with split personalities where there are only two present in total?

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Do you have any experience with multiplicity yourself? You sound as though you might not really understand what you're talking about.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

You're right, I'm afraid, though I'm now trying to learn. I just started disabled_jews and someone multiple joined yesterday who provided a link to a site, so I started reading up and it sounded rather like what was happening in these texts, though I'm starting to realise that multiplicity and duality are different. Thanks for bearing with me.

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Well, multiplicity and duality aren't really different from a literary framework. The problem is that duality and most other portrayals of multiplicity in literature or popular fiction do not give an accurate representation of what multiplicity is. The problem is further complicated because the fictional portrayals of multiplicity are based and/or influenced by the non-fiction publications which in themselves are not fully accurate representation because they have been edited and sensationalized for novel format.

I can’t judge Dracula because I’m not familiar with it but Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written based on the ideas about multiplicity that were around during that time period. At that time, it was highly associated hypnosis and it was rare to find a documented system bigger than two. There was a period where multiplicity was very popular and the documented cases were very stereotypical. They were usually women. The people in the system were of the same sex and usually had opposing personalities or behaviors. For example, if the first known person was very quiet and shy, the second person would be very flamboyant. You can see how this dichotomy would be very fascinating for authors and it played well into the theme of good vs. evil.

You still see the same sorts of things happening today. The literature about multiplicity has the people in the system behaving in very rigid, opposing manners. For example, you’ll have the crying children, the happy children, the angry person, the naïve person, and the sexually promiscuous person. This happens for several reasons. When you’re describing someone you’re giving a generalization about then so even though someone is described and portrayed as being angry that doesn’t mean they were incapable of feeling and acting other ways. People also take their cues on proper ways to behave from other people. If the multiple is in therapy and their therapist expects each person in the system to be limited to a single set of emotions and behaviors, a lot of times the system will conform their behaviors to the therapist’s expectations. They’ll also model themselves after the very stereotypical portrayals in the media. The other reason that members of a system may act in such a limited role specific manner is that it may be the only way they will be recognized as themselves. They have to highlight their differences from the other people in the system before people will acknowledge that yes they are separate entities.

[This essay (http://www.livejournal.com/users/pengke/29196.html ) might help for a non-stereotypical view of multiplicity.]

Continued

[pengke.livejournal.com]

The stereotypical personality roles of multiplicity have been incorporated into popular media where they’ve mixed with the split personality dichotomy element of multiplicity that was already there. The result is characters like the pair from Me, Myself, and Irene. You still see the good original person vs. the bad ‘alter’ person. It’s very rare to see any of the people as full fledged, actual people. They stick to person A is this set of behavior patterns and person B is this other set and in the rare instances where there is more than two people C, D, ect behave in other set behavior patterns. This fosters the false impression that people in multiple systems aren’t different people so much as they’re different modes of behavior. It’s also where most of your confusion seems to be coming from.

People often make the mistake of thinking that plurality of personality is related to multiplicity. Even philosophers and some psychologists make this mistake. Our personality is not static. We behave in different manners depending on the situations we are in. Our personality changes and grows as we mature. We are capable of holding conflicting opinions on the same topic. We can have a responsible side and an irresponsible side. There is even the potential for dichotomy. Sometimes people will view themselves as two different people. Sometimes people will have internal voices or even names for the different sides of their personality. The key here is that these are manifestations of aspects of the person. This is not multiplicity. With multiplicity, there are several people in the same body. This means that each of them has their own personality that grows and changes and has different sides. There isn’t the angry person and the sad person. There’s the person who is frequently angry but can also be sad and if you catch them in the right mood they’ll even be really sweet and the person who is currently sad but they’re not always and they’re fully capable of getting angry themselves. Unfortunately, the media/literature very rarely displays this part of multiplicity because they either don’t understand it or they’re seeking to keep the characters simplistic.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that is incredibly helpful. Your observations about common misunderstandings, tendencies to categorise people in terms of polar opposites and so on, is absolutely spot on for gothic lit. As far as I can tell it's more about plurality (thanks for clearing that up for me), but I think some may be more borderline, particularly the nurses in Lochhead (I'll post that scene later). It's awkward to know how to analyse something that was written with incorrect information; I suppose part of it is looking at why plurality is being explored and why in that way.

I like your essay; are you published at all? If not, do you know anything useful that is? Articles preferred, I'm lazy and more to the point I am already up to my eyes in reading. I've a feeling I'm meant to cite published academic works only, at least as far as possible.

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Our essay is not published any where and most certainly not in a peer review article. You may be able to use some of the information if you cite it as an interview though. Some other resources:

Multiple Man (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0586201882/qid=1094584792/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-3002238-9637724?v=glance&s=books) by Adam Crabtree

The book focuses a lot on the spiritualistic approach to multiplicity which you were asking about earlier. It has easy to read chapters on the psychological history pertaining to the time period you want. At the end the author makes some conclusions about the multiplicity of man making the same mistake of assuming that multiplicity is just an extension of the different sides of a person’s personality.

Rewriting the Soul (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/069105908X/qid=1094584867/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/102-3002238-9637724?v=glance&s=books) by Ian Hacking

Most of the book is very dry reading. It wasn’t designed for layman. It does have some good information on the psychological history of multiple personalities although it focuses more on the modern post-Sybil time period. You wouldn’t need to read the whole book to get what you needed.

Some of the information can also be found in this article:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/Sutker93.htm

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we know qilora. What site did they link you to? What they told you was that they are able to communicate and to share the body (co-run) and that they were aware of what's going on. This is one example of a functional multiple operating system; as others have pointed out, it has little or nothing to do with the Victorian concept of the double. I used to run across the same thing when I'd do library searches on "multiple personality in literature".

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I've posted more extracts from Lochhead here (http://www.livejournal.com/community/gothic_lit/10839.html), but since we're talking about the nurses in particular, here are a couple more extracts.

I.6

Bedlam (Stoneyfields). NISBETT comes with a bowl of gristly brown stew for RENFIELD, she is a masochist, or a martyr at least.

RENFIELD: Go away!
NISBETT: Mr Renfield, Mr Renfield, it's me, Nisbett, wiv sommat for you. Don't you fancy a little somethin'?
RENFIELD: Not hungry!
NISBETT: Take a bit, do then. Must be famished. Bastard clever-dick doctor putting you on starvation rations. He doesn't care! "Dr Seward, sir, Mr Renfield ett another sparrer. He did, sir. Coughed it up not half-hour after in a pool of puke and blood and feathers." I wouldn't treat a dog like he treats you, Mr Renfield, I call it a sin. Experimenting. Doctor bloody God almighty, eh? Seeing how far you'll go. Well, stands to reason there be just no knowing how far a man'll go, you give him nothin'! Sick as a dog, poor lamb.
RENFIELD (putting his hands over his ears and rocking and singing in loud monotone right in her face.)
Who ate cock robin,
My head is throbbin'
The sweet sound of sobbin', sobbin', sobbing'...
NISBETT: Yes. I wouldn't care, only it's me got to clean it up! (Pause.) Now then, it's not a lot and it's not hot but what I got I'll give it all to you, poor Mr Renfield.
(He dashes plate and spoon out of her hands, all over her apron goes the brown stew. She screams.)
Scalded! Scalded me! You madman, that's the last time I ever try to help you...
(She runs off sobbing. Lights up slowly, very slowly, behind gauze, on Dracula's castle and sound cue the music that heralds it.)

[then it goes into the Renfield extract I put in the other post, "Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly".]

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

II.16

"NISBETT" and "GRICE", during the laying out of RENFIELD, stripping him naked, washing him down, putting cottonwool in ears and nostrils, keep up a schizophrenic switch back and forth between their two modes, her two modes? Both "sides" of the character are, "good" and "bad", reconciling themselves - by RENFIELD's redemption - sacrifice? He certainly ought to look like a pieta. FLORRIE brings on basin and "NURSES" and frozen, shocked FLORRIE work together. "NURSES" prattle matter-of-factly at first - of course they always were one single person.

GRICE: Dead, eh? Would you credit it. Just on my way off duty and Seward nabs us. White as this sheet here, he was. Nurse! Nurse! there's been a terrible accident. Some bloody accident!
NISBETT: Sewage pipes. Who'd have thought old Renfield'd commit sewage pipes? I'd've thought 'e'd of been the last, I always says to Drinkwater, such a lust for life he had in him, old Renfield, even at his maddest and most miserable.
GRICE: Must've went berserk and chucked himself down the well of the stair and with one hell of a force to stove his head in and make a mulch of himself like that -
NISBETT: - Tragedy really. (Pause.) You get attached. Funny how they've all got their own personalities -
GRICE: In some cases several.
(Pause.)
NISBETT: Some of 'em, though, when they're gone, so dead you'd think they'd never been alive, others, eh, pinker 'n' realer than ever, 'cept they've not the breath in them to mist the mirror.
GRICE: (To FLORRIE) Feel sick, girlie? Go on, then, I'll manage. Never seen no one what's croaked before? Get to my age you seen it all -
NISBETT: It's all one to me.
(From now on the NISBETT/GRICE split disappears till we have a single grieving whole. Bad and good. Accepting each other at this point the simple two-women-laying-out-a-corpse picture is broken by every extra on and cleaning up and clearing the stage of everything except RENFIELD's body, on a sheet, on a trolley which can be wheeled out. FLORRIE and NURSE continue their rituals.)
GRICE: Poor old Renfield! One minute it's professors and doctors queuing up for you wiv pennies-for-your-thoughts, now it's pennies-for-your-eyes, eh?
NISBETT: What you do it now for, though, eh? Me day off. Goin' to a wedding. Would choose the time I'd been invited to a bit of a knees-up. Could've been singin' and 'uggin' and kissin' and rollin' out the barrel instead of layin' out a stiff under a windin' sheet.
GRICE: Hey, but we'll miss you, eh, Renfield? Poor mad bugger.
NISBETT: Heigh ho!
(She embraces FLORRIE. Then she breaks down and sobs, FLORRIE comforting her and helping her. In a sort of cortege, FLORRIE, her weeping released, wheels off the covered-over RENFIELD. The stage is bare and clear empty, except for Dracula's cloak. Black velvet on the bare stage.)