Which One?

by Robert Ames Bennet

An imaginative tale of triple personality by an author whose craftsmanship and versatility suggest an ambitious mind. It takes place along the coast of California, starting in San Francisco and working its way south by sea with a long section on board a passenger ship, eventually stopping at a theosophist colony at Pt. Loma, San Diego. Miss Rosemary Willets is on her way to see her aunt Mirah, a fervent theosophist at Pt. Loma. Also present on board the ship is a mysterious and apparently sinister Hindu fakir. But the real complexity arises from the fact that Miss Willets is really two people. One is Marie, a proper but wan young lady who is ardently "spiritual" (in the manner of the day, following a sentimentalized Western vision of esoteric "Eastern" wisdom). The other Miss Willets is Billie, a high-spirited tomboy who takes great pleasure in pranks and games and views romance and love-making, as well as Eastern wisdom, as a lot of silly mush. What gives this duality a special twist is that the two selves alternate unexpectedly and, while Billie knows all about Marie and feels contempt for her, Marie has no memory of Billie's exploits and is mortified to learn of them. Thus, the two personalities form an antagonistic split that will remind readers of Jekyll and Hyde, but tagging the two selves as "good" and "bad" would be utterly misleading. The story comes to a rousing climax in Pt. Loma with a generous supply of reversals, revelations and highly-charged scenes. Most of the characters, who had seemed rather generic at first, all develop extra dimensionality. The hero Lancing gets wise. His boyish rival Connors grows up. The Hindu displays genuine powers of hypnotism and telekinesis -- as well as a surprisingly sound character. Not least of all, Miss Willets reveals a third personality: Rose, an imperious mature woman who despises the hoydenish Billie as much as Billie despises the droopy Marie. Lancing finally recognizes that only the Hindu fakir can help heal this shattered person and meld Rose and Billie and Marie into the unified person of Rosemary. This novel, curiously absent from genre references, belongs among the very top rank of stories of multiple personality and personality exchange, closely allied motifs which proved very fruitful in the decades around the turn of the century. Smith, American Fiction 1901-1925, B-514.

403 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1912