Sybil

“‘Maybe it was some part of her native Wisconsin,’ she thinks, but how could she have gotten to Wisconsin in the split second between standing at the Columbia University elevator and now? But she couldn’t have gotten anywhere in that time. Maybe she hadn’t; maybe she wasn’t anywhere. Maybe this was a nightmare.” 

These lines, from the very beginning of the book, give the reader a snapshot into Sybil’s mind right after she “awakens” in a strange city, when the last thing she remembers is being in the lab at Columbia University. They show what the experience of being ill feels like from the “waking” Sybil’s perspective, as she tries, with panic, to reason through where she is and what happened. Even though Sybil knows what her “lost time” means at this point in her treatment, and has experienced such episodes for years, the blank spell still perplexes her. These lines exemplify Schreiber’s narrative style in the opening chapter, as she seeks to help the reader empathize with the “waking” Sybil and establish Sybil as the central personality.

“The excitement about seeing a psychiatrist was overshadowed, however, by the pronoun she. A woman? Had she heard correctly? All the doctors she had ever known were men[…]Sybil only half heard him because the initial terror of seeing in her mind a woman psychiatrist almost eradicated his words. But then suddenly the fear lifted. She had a warm relationship with Miss Updyke, the college nurse.” 

Sybil’s reaction to learning that her family doctor’s referral is to a female psychiatrist gives the reader indirect insight into Dr. Wilbur’s character. Sybil’s reaction exemplifies how many people in that time and place must have reacted to Dr. Wilbur: with suspicion and preparedness to underestimate her, because they only know male doctors. At the same time, Sybil’s reaction in the first moment of hearing about Dr.