The Duality of Man

Turner 1
Hunter Turner
Mr. William Connover
Composition, Grammar, and Literature
3 May 2012
Jekyll’s Identity: How it Destroys Him Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a gripping struggle between human nature and a man’s will to tamper with it. The book was written in late nineteenth-century England, just after a time known as the enlightenment, where scientific boundaries were pushed and natural law was questioned. Stevenson’s novella is a prime example of the times, as Dr. Jekyll continually seeks a scientific solution to a natural problem. The problem is social confinements, and the solution seems as simple as a concoction to Jekyll. Yet Jekyll learns that there is no solution, for his predicament is an inherent part of man. As Jekyll slowly becomes destroyed by his alter-ego, Mr. Hyde, one questions who or what is to blame for his defeat, and whether Jekyll is really good or evil. In all, it is because of Jekyll, and his attempts to toy with his own identity that he discovers the duality of human nature, resulting in his downfall. “I was born in the year 18-to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished”(67). The first sentence the reader receives from Jekyll is a statement of how his social status affected him, beginning at a young age. The reader immediately learns that Jekyll is highly regarded and well known. “In his chosen field of medicine, Jekyll is ‘well known and highly considered’; with a name that is ‘often printed’ in the London newspapers” (Grant, “individual and society”). Jekyll “[lives] a life of the favored upper class” (Bright Hub Edu., “Character Analysis”), and because he is a part of this higher social class, he must devote himself to a life of study, stowing away any thoughts that may be considered unholy. Jekyll questions
Wigginton 2 what else there is to life, that may not be considered acceptable for someone of his social level. “He is secretly stifled by the social conventions and the ‘restrictions of natural life’. Unable to express his individuality and openly act on his desires because of the damage it would do to his reputation”(Grant “individual and society”). “Reputation” has played a key role in how Jekyll develops, for as he has grown, with him has his reputation. This reputation, one of the “favored upper class”, causes turmoil as he must put away the evil within him. Jekyll admits to recognizing in himself a...failure to conquer his “aversions to the dryness of a life of study.” Since he found it difficult to reconcile his baser urges with his “imperious desire to carry [his] head high and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public”...Thus he commits himself “to a profound duplicity of life.” (11: 200) It is apparent that Jekyll is troubled by the confinements of his stature, but to him a solution seems to be on the horizon. Jekyll meditates on how to change his “duplicity of life”. His will to do something about these “social conventions” and to free himself from societal fetters drives him to develop an elixir. “Jekyll’s scientific experiments are motivated by his frustration with societal norms and a desire to throw off the constraints of Victorian respectability and responsibility” (Grant “individual and society”). How is one to live two lives, without tarnishing the reputation of one? Jekyll believed the solution lay in separating of the two completely. “If each, [Jekyll] told [himself], could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable “(Stevenson 68). “Each”, referring to his different identities; Jekyll is already beginning to dig into something that should only be determined by nature. Thus far, Jekyll is only tampering with his identity, not to aid others, but simply to help himself achieve new levels of satisfaction. When Jekyll uses the potion, “he transforms himself into a creature which can indulge in secretive self-gratification with amnesty. Jekyll carries out felonious acts to make up for his sparse life lived so far, in a beast known as Mr. Hyde. “Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil” (Stevenson 71). Hyde desires to commit crimes and thrives upon devious acts. At one point in the book, he tramples a little girl, and proceeds to pay the bystanders money to pretend as if the event never occurred. Years later, a maid witnesses someone across the street from her club an old man to death; this man was Hyde(Stevenson 8-9,27). Hyde is not only different from Jekyll in a psychological sense,but a physical one.After Jekyll initially drinks the potion he says “The evil side of my nature...was robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed”(Stiles “the Double Brain”). “The persona embodying Jekyll’s ‘evil side’ is smaller and less robust because it is underused .”(Stiles “the Double Brain”) Hyde is clearly a different man than Jekyll ever will be, yet Jekyll begins to become this beast more often; he begins to crave it, as an addict does. “Jekyll pursues his addiction with a madman’s ardor, not so much because he likes the drug which he consumes, but because he cannot resist the state of intoxication which the drug produces”(Stiles “the Double Brain”). Jekyll describes these fixes, further expressing why he used the drug: There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new, and ,from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy, a solution to the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. (Stevenson 70)
Hyde is not to blame for Jekyll’s addiction; it is Jekyll’s fault for all his wrongdoings “[Hyde’s] cruelty derives from his association with Jekyll,not from any inherent motivation toward destruction”(Saposnik 98). Jekyll’s overall addiction is the result of his initial social identity, and he admits this: Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. (Stevenson 72)
Hyde, the evil side of Jekyll is not the reason for Jekyll’s addiction, but Jekyll himself. “Jekyll was prepared to become an addict; he had only to introduce the agent that would effect his enslavement: Revealingly, Jekyll acknowledges this:‘The drug had no discriminating action, it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the prison- house of my disposition’”(Wright “Prisonhouse”). Hyde is to Jekyll, not an opposite, but a complement. “[Jekyll] has everything Hyde lacks; a palatial home, riches, privilege, and esteem” (Bright Hub Edu. “character analysis”). Hyde is forever a part of all men, yet not all reveal him, Jekyll being an example. “Hyde is the side of ourselves we don’t want the public to see” (Belkin “human nature”). In the process of discovering how to make the side of himself “which [he] [does] not want the public to see” to one that is viewable to the public, he discovers a harsh truth behind man. After Jekyll’s initial addiction to the potion, Hyde begins to appear unwillingly,and without summons. The significance behind this is that Hyde was a part of Jekyll all along, yet he required the potion to draw him out. It was only once he was out, that he was able to take over his host. “[Hyde] is a necessary component of human psychology which most would prefer to leave unrealized.” (Saposnik 98). Essentially, everyone has their “Hyde”, yet not everyone realizes it or accepts it. “Life is bound forever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure” (Stevenson 69). This theory is what ultimately destroys Jekyll. He attempts to change the life he lives, and pays for it, in the form of death. Before Jekyll dies, he writes his “full statement of the case”. In this statement he writes “It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man” (Stevenson 68). After all of Jekyll’s experiments, he finally discovers that “man is not truly one, but truly two” (Stevenson 68). He then concludes about himself that “even if I could be rightly be said to be either, it was because I was radically both, and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream” (Stevenson 68). This suggests that he realizes that he is the reason for his own downfall. “Without Jekyll,there never could have been a Hyde” (14: 310). This is a crucial idea to consider when one analyzes the downfall of Jekyll. “As an essential life force, Hyde’s proper role is to act in harmony with the other parts of man’s being” (Saposnik 98-99). Hyde is there, as a part of all men, yet Jekyll has trouble accepting the natural way, yielding his degradation. “Dr. Jekyll disturbs the natural order of the universe because throughout his life he struggles to accept the dual nature of his identity” (11: 202) “When thinkers brought the western world out of the dark ages and into the ‘age of reason’,where people began to think philosophically about their existence in the world, it was called The Enlightenment. But one point continually divided them: are humans being inherently good or evil”(Belkin, “human nature”)?Jekyll is an excellent example of one who tries to explore his own existence by altering his ego. In this case, despite how Jekyll is regarded by society, he is evil. What remains of Jekyll’s good side ?(Sparknotes, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) The reader may never know, yet as he stands at the end of the tale, Jekyll can be viewed as evil. Jekyll’s socially acceptable “Jekyll and Hyde uncovers the ‘missing link’, whilst it is the morally-acceptable Jekyllian side which provides the untransformable voice which seals and solves the narrative” (Brown “Relativity and the Social Good”). By the end of Stevenson’s book, Jekyll is gone, and only the results of his experiments remain. One final question remains: Is always being socially acceptable a good way to live ones life? The story of Jekyll and Hyde is certainly good proof that this is not so, for Jekyll started out among the revered class, yet it causes him enough internal feud to ruin him.

Works Cited :

Belkin, Samuel. Dr. Jekyll,Mr. Hyde, and the Frightening Truth of Human Nature. Samuel Belkin,2009. Web.6 April. 2012

Book Rags. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Notes| Topic Tracking:Two Faced.BBN, 2009.Web.9 April.2012.

Bright Hub Education. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:Character Analysis. BHE, 2012.Web.10 April 2012

Brown, Alistair. “Relativity and The Social Good: Jekyll and Hyde,the voyage out and the memoirs of a survivor.” The Pequod. (2009):n.pag. Web. 6 April, 2012

Grant, P.B. “Identity in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature.(2011):n.pag. Bloom’s Literary Reference Online.Web.28 March 2012

Grant, P.B. “Individual and Society in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature.(2011):n.pag. Bloom’s Literary Reference Online.Web.28 March 2012

Nash, Andrew. “Walter Besant 's All Sorts and Conditions of Men and Robert Louis Stevenson 's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”Short Story Criticism.(2005):p494-497.Literature Resource Center.Web. 16 April 2012

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Jekyll/Hyde.” Novels for Students.(1988):p603-608.Literature Resource Center.Web. 16 April 2012

Rago, Jane. V. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A ‘Men’s Narrative’ of Hysteria and containment”.Short Story Criticism.(2006):p.275-285.Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 April 2012

“Robert Louis Stevenson.” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism.Ed. Cherie D. Abbey.Vol.14.Detroit: Gale Research,1999:p. 310-311.Print

Saposnik, Irving S. Robert Louis Stevenson. New York: Twayne,1974.Print.

Sparknotes Editors.Sparknotes: Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. SE,2012.Web. 4 April.2012

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories. 1886.Introduction and other notes Jenny Davidson. New York:Barnes and Noble,2003.Print.

Stiles, Anne. “Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde and the Double Brain.” Studies in English Literature. (2006):n.pag. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 April. 2012

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Novels for Students. Ed. Elizabeth Thomason.Vol.11. Farmington Hills:Gale,2001:p.195-211.Print.

Tropp, Martin. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Schopenhauer, and the Power of the Will”.Short Story Criticism.(1991):p141-155.Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 April.2012

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Wright, Daniel L. “‘The Prisonhouse of My Disposition’ :A Study of the Psychology of Addiction in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Studies in the Novel 26.3 (1994): 264-267. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 April.2012

Cited: Web.6 April. 2012 Book Rags Bright Hub Education. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:Character Analysis. BHE, 2012.Web.10 April 2012 Brown, Alistair survivor.” The Pequod. (2009):n.pag. Web. 6 April, 2012 Grant, P.B Literature.(2011):n.pag. Bloom’s Literary Reference Online.Web.28 March 2012 Grant, P.B Nash, Andrew. “Walter Besant 's All Sorts and Conditions of Men and Robert Louis Stevenson 's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”Short Story Criticism.(2005):p494-497.Literature Resource Center.Web. 16 April 2012 Oates, Joyce Carol Criticism.(2006):p.275-285.Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 April 2012 “Robert Louis Stevenson.” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism.Ed Tropp, Martin. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Schopenhauer, and the Power of the Will”.Short Story Criticism.(1991):p141-155.Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 April.2012 Wigginton 8