Discuss How Robert Louis Stevenson Explores the Topic of Duality in His Gothic Fiction Novel 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'
English Coursework
The Gothic fiction novel “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, is a novel about a man torn by the desire to separate the good and evil inside people. The plot beholds a scientist who finds a way to literally separate his good from his evil by drinking a potion. The plot picks up on the Victorian hypocrisy that crippled people into being society’s idea of ‘good’ and the shallow nature of the Victorians and how they judged character by appearance. At this particular era classes still reigned, so this meant that reputation was still more important than anything, and if being ‘respectable’ meant suppressing inner desires or altering the person you were and having to live with that, then so be it. This meant most of the Victorian culture was built up a known but unspoken hypocrisy. Stevenson is suggesting that good and evil are inseparable in human nature. By discussing such themes as the hypocrisy of society, and the suppression of passion he proves that Stevenson proposes that we must feed our evil souls as well as the good. In the Victorian society you would be judged for the things you did or wanted to do, so you would just keep them private; but you would have had no problem condemning another person for these same social ‘crimes’. This novel also explores the idea of atavism which was big at the time; this is the idea of a person being an evolutionary throwback. In my essay I will be writing about how Robert Louis Stevenson explores the duality in human nature.
The plot actually starts depicting a man, Utterson, who has been completely twisted by the very nature of the way the Victorian’s were in a very understated way, because even in his home he wasn’t comfortable to be who he was…He had to carry on being the person people expected him to be. ‘He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages.’ This is saying that he was very strict with himself even in the comfort
The Gothic fiction novel “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, is a novel about a man torn by the desire to separate the good and evil inside people. The plot beholds a scientist who finds a way to literally separate his good from his evil by drinking a potion. The plot picks up on the Victorian hypocrisy that crippled people into being society’s idea of ‘good’ and the shallow nature of the Victorians and how they judged character by appearance. At this particular era classes still reigned, so this meant that reputation was still more important than anything, and if being ‘respectable’ meant suppressing inner desires or altering the person you were and having to live with that, then so be it. This meant most of the Victorian culture was built up a known but unspoken hypocrisy. Stevenson is suggesting that good and evil are inseparable in human nature. By discussing such themes as the hypocrisy of society, and the suppression of passion he proves that Stevenson proposes that we must feed our evil souls as well as the good. In the Victorian society you would be judged for the things you did or wanted to do, so you would just keep them private; but you would have had no problem condemning another person for these same social ‘crimes’. This novel also explores the idea of atavism which was big at the time; this is the idea of a person being an evolutionary throwback. In my essay I will be writing about how Robert Louis Stevenson explores the duality in human nature.
The plot actually starts depicting a man, Utterson, who has been completely twisted by the very nature of the way the Victorian’s were in a very understated way, because even in his home he wasn’t comfortable to be who he was…He had to carry on being the person people expected him to be. ‘He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages.’ This is saying that he was very strict with himself even in the comfort