jekyll and hyde conflict essay

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Full Analysis and Themes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The story for Jekyll and Hyde famously came to Robert Louis Stevenson in a dream, and according to Stevenson’s stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson wrote the first draft of the novella in just three days, before promptly throwing it onto the fire when his wife criticised it. Stevenson then rewrote it from scratch, taking ten days this time, and the novella was promptly published in January 1886.

The story is part detective-story or mystery, part Gothic horror, and part science fiction, so it’s worth analysing how Stevenson fuses these different elements.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: analysis

Now it’s time for some words of analysis about Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic 1886 novella. However, perhaps ‘analyses’ (plural) would be more accurate, since there never could be one monolithic meaning of a story so ripe with allegory and suggestive symbolism.

Like another novella that was near-contemporary with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , and possibly influenced by it ( H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine ), the symbols often point in several different directions at once.

Any attempt to reduce Stevenson’s story of doubling to a moral fable about drugs or drink, or a tale about homosexuality, is destined to lose sight of the very thing which makes the novella so relevant to so many people: its multifaceted quality. So here are some (and they are only some) of the many interpretations of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which have been put forward in the last 120 years or so.

A psychoanalytic or proto-psychoanalytic analysis

In this interpretation, Jekyll is the ego and Hyde the id (in Freud’s later terminology). The ego is the self in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, while the id is the set of primal drives found in our unconscious: the urge to kill, or do inappropriate sexual things, for instance.

Several of Robert Louis Stevenson’s essays, such as ‘A Chapter on Dreams’ (1888), prefigure some of Freud’s later ideas; and there was increasing interest in the workings of the human mind towards the end of the nineteenth century (two leading journals in the field, Brain and Mind , had both been founded in the 1870s).

The psychoanalytic interpretation is a popular one with many readers of Jekyll and Hyde , and since the novella is clearly about repression of some sort, one can make a psychoanalytic interpretation – an analysis grounded in psychoanalysis, if you like – quite convincingly.

It might be significant, reading the story from a post-Freudian perspective, that Hyde is described as childlike at several points: does he embody Jekyll’s – and, indeed, man’s – deep desire to return to a time before responsibility and full maturity, when one was freer to act on impulse? Early infancy is the formative period for much Freudian psychoanalysis.

Recall the empty middle-class scenes at the beginning of the book: Utterson and Enfield on their joyless Sunday walks, for instance. Hyde attacks father-figures (Sir Danvers Carew, the MP whom he murders, is a white-haired old gentleman), which would fall in line with Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex and Jekyll’s desire to return to a time before adult life with its responsibilities and disappointments.

However, one fly in the Oedipal ointment is that Hyde also attacks a young girl – almost the complete opposite of the ‘old man’ or father figure embodied by Danvers Carew.

Nevertheless, psychoanalytic readings of the novella have been popular for some time, and it’s worth remembering that the idea for the book came to Stevenson in a dream. Observe, also, the presence of dreams and dreamlike scenes in the novel itself, such as when Jekyll remarks that he ‘received Lanyon’s condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed’.

An anti-alcohol morality tale?

Alternatively, a different interpretation: we might analyse these dreamlike aspects of the novel in another way and see the novel as being about alcoholism and temperance , subjects which were being fiercely debated at the time Stevenson was writing.

Here, then, the ‘transforming draught’ which Jekyll concocts represents alcohol, and Jekyll, upon imbibing the draught, becomes a violent, unpredictable person unknown even to himself. (This reading has been most thoroughly explored in Thomas L. Reed’s 2006 study The Transforming Draught .)

Note how often wine crops up in this short book: it turns up first of all in the second sentence of the novella, when Utterson is found sipping it, and Hyde, we learn, has a closet ‘filled with wine’. Might the continual presence of wine be a clue that we are all Hydes waiting to happen? Note how the opening paragraph informs us that Utterson drinks gin when he is alone.

This thesis – that the novella is about alcohol and temperance – is intriguing, but has been contested by critics such as Julia Reid for being too speculative and reductionist: see her review of The Transforming Draught in The Review of English Studies , 2007.

The ‘drugs’ interpretation

Similarly, the idea that the ‘draught’ is a metaphor for some other drug, whether opium or cocaine . Scholars are unsure as to whether Stevenson was on drugs when he wrote the book: some accounts say Stevenson used cocaine to finish the manuscript; others say he took ergot, which is the substance from which LSD was later synthesised. Some say he was too sick to be taking anything.

You could purchase cocaine and opium from your local chemist in 1880s London (indeed, another invention of 1886, Coca-Cola, originally contained cocaine, as the drink’s name still testifies: don’t worry, it doesn’t any more).

This is essentially a development of the previous interpretation concerning alcohol, and arguably has similar limitations in being too restrictive an interpretation. However, note the way that Jekyll, in his ‘full statement’ becomes reliant on the ‘draught’ or ‘salt’ towards the end.

A religious analysis

As such, the story has immediate links with the story Stevenson would write sixty years later. Stevenson was an atheist who managed to escape the constrictive religion of his parents, but he remained haunted by Calvinistic doctrines for the rest of his life, and much of his work can be seen as an attempt to grapple with these issues which had affected and afflicted him so much as a child.

The sexuality interpretation

Some critics have interpreted Jekyll and Hyde in light of late nineteenth-century attitudes to sexuality : note the almost total absence of women from the story, barring the odd maid and ‘old hag’, and that hapless girl trampled underfoot by Hyde.

Some critics have suggested that the idea of blackmail for homosexual acts lurks behind the story, and the novella itself mentions this when Enfield tells Utterson that he refers to the house of Mr Hyde as ‘Black Mail House’ as a consequence of the girl-trampling scene in the street.

As such, the novella becomes an allegory for the double life lived by many homosexual Victorian men, who had to hide (or Hyde ) their illicit liaisons from their friends and families. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote to his friend Robert Bridges that the girl-trampling incident early on in the narrative was ‘perhaps a convention: he was thinking of something unsuitable for fiction’.

Some have interpreted this statement – by Hopkins, himself a repressed homosexual – as a reference to homosexual activity in late Victorian London.

Consider in this connection the fact that Hyde enters Jekyll’s house through the ‘back way’ – even, at one point ‘the back passage’. 1885, the year Stevenson wrote the book, was the year of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment ), which criminalised acts of ‘gross indecency’ between men (this was the act which, ten years later, would put Oscar Wilde in gaol).

However, we should be wary of reading the text as about ‘homosexual panic’, since, as Harry Cocks points out, homosexuality was frequently ‘named openly, publicly and repeatedly’ in nineteenth-century criminal courts. But then could fiction for a mass audience as readily name such things?

A Darwinian analysis

Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species , which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection, had been published in 1859, when Stevenson was still a child. In this reading, Hyde represents the primal, animal origin of modern, civilised man.

Consider here the repeated uses of the word ‘apelike’ in relation to Hyde, suggesting he is an atavistic throwback to an earlier, more primitive species of man than Homo sapiens . This reading incorporates theories of something called ‘devolution’, an idea (now discredited) which suggested that life forms could actually evolve backwards into more primitive forms.

This is also linked with late Victorian fears concerning degeneration and decadence among the human race. Is Jekyll’s statement that he ‘bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul’ an allusion to Charles Darwin’s famous phrase from the end of The Descent of Man (1871), ‘man […] bears […] the indelible stamp of his lowly origin’?

In his story ‘Olalla’, another tale of the double which Stevenson published in 1885, he writes: ‘Man has risen; if he has sprung from the brutes he can descend to the same level again’.

This Darwinian analysis of Jekyll and Hyde could incorporate elements of the sexual which the previous interpretation also touches upon, but would view the novel as a portrayal of man’s – and we mean specifically man ’s here – repression of the darker, violent, primitive side of his nature associated with rape, pillage, conquest, and murder.

This looks back to a psychoanalytic reading, with the ‘id’ being the home of primal sexual desire and lust. The girl-tramping scene may take on another significance here: it’s a ‘girl’ rather than a boy because it symbolises Hyde’s animalistic desire to conquer and brutalise someone of the opposite, not the same, sex.

There have been many critical readings of the novella in relation to sex and sexuality, but it’s important to point out that Stevenson denied that the novella was about sexuality (see below).

A study in hypocrisy?

Or perhaps not: perhaps there is something in the idea that hypocrisy is the novella’s theme , as Stevenson himself suggested in a letter of November 1887 to John Paul Bocock, editor of the New York Sun : ‘The harm was in Jekyll,’ Stevenson wrote, ‘because he was a hypocrite – not because he was fond of women; he says so himself; but people are so filled full of folly and inverted lust, that they can think of nothing but sexuality. The Hypocrite let out the beast’.

This analysis of Jekyll and Hyde sees the two sides to Jekyll’s personality as a portrayal of the dualistic nature of Victorian society, where you must be respectable and civilised on the outside, while all the time harbouring an inward lust, violence, and desire which you have to bring under control.

This was a popular theme for many late nineteenth-century writers – witness not only Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray but also the double lives of Jack and Algernon in Wilde’s comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). This is a more open-ended interpretation, and the novella does appear to be about repression of some sort.

In this respect, this interpretation is similar to the psychoanalytic reading proposed above, but it also tallies with Stevenson’s own assertion that the story is about hypocrisy. Everyone in this book is masking their private thoughts or desires from others.

Note how even the police officer, Inspector Newcomen, when he learns of the murder of the MP, goes from being horrified one moment to excited the next, as ‘the next moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition’. He can barely contain his glee. The maid who answers the door at Hyde’s rooms has ‘an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent’.

From these clues, we can also posit a reading of the novel which sees it as about the class structure of late nineteenth-century Britain, where Jekyll represents the comfortable middle class and Hyde is the repressed – or, indeed, oppressed – working-class figure.

Note here, however, how Hyde is repeatedly described as a ‘gentleman’ by those who see him, and that he attacks Danvers Carew with a ‘cane’, rather than, say, a club (though it is reported, tellingly, that he ‘clubbed’ Carew to death with it).

A scientific interpretation

The reference to the evil maid with excellent manners places Jekyll’s own duality at the extreme end of a continuum, where everyone is putting on a respectable and acceptable mask which hides or conceals the evil truth lurking behind it. So we might see Jekyll’s scientific experiment as merely a physical embodiment of what everyone does.

This leads some critics to ask, then, whether the novella about the misuse of science . Or is the ‘tincture’ merely a scientific, chemical composition because a magical draught or elixir would be unbelievable to an 1880s reader? Arthur Machen, an author who was much influenced by Stevenson and especially by Jekyll and Hyde , made this point in a letter of 1894, when he grumbled:

In these days the supernatural per se is entirely incredible; to believe, we must link our wonders to some scientific or pseudo-scientific fact, or basis, or method. Thus we do not believe in ‘ghosts’ but in telepathy, not in ‘witch-craft’ but in hypnotism. If Mr Stevenson had written his great masterpiece about 1590-1650, Dr Jekyll would have made a compact with the devil. In 1886 Dr Jekyll sends to the Bond Street chemists for some rare drugs.

This is worth pondering: the use of the ‘draught’ lends the story an air of scientific authenticity, which makes the story a form of science fiction rather than fantasy: the tincture which Jekyll drinks is not magical, merely a chemical potion of some vaguely defined sort. But to say that the story is actually about the dangers of misusing science could be a leap too far.

We run the risk of confusing the numerous film adaptations of the book with the book itself: we immediately picture wild-haired soot-faced scientists causing explosions and mixing up potions in a dark laboratory, but in fact this is not really what the story is about , merely the means through which the real meat of the story – the transformation of Jekyll into Hyde – is effected.

It’s only once this split has been achieved that the real story, about the dark side of man’s nature which he represses, comes to light. (Compare Frankenstein here .)

All of these interpretations of Jekyll and Hyde can be – and have been – proposed, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the popularity of Stevenson’s tale may lie in the very polyvalent and ambiguous nature of the text, the fact that it exists as a symbol without a key, a riddle without a definitive answer.

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The Duality Within:Jekyll and Hyde

This essay about “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson analyzes the theme of dual nature within humanity, contrasting Dr. Jekyll’s respectable persona with Mr. Hyde’s violent alter ego. It explores how Jekyll’s attempt to separate his nobler self from his baser instincts through Hyde leads to a portrayal of the struggle between higher and lower selves, reflecting on the human condition and the potential for evil within us all. The essay suggests that Stevenson presents civilization’s veneer as thin, with a primal nature lying beneath, integral to our essence. It discusses the dangers of repressing darker impulses and the necessity of balancing different aspects of our nature. Through the examination of Jekyll and Hyde’s duality, the essay invites reflection on personal inner conflicts and the universal human struggle to reconcile opposing forces that define our humanity, highlighting the complexity of human identity and the inherent tension between societal expectations and individual desires.

How it works

Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” emerges as a seminal exploration into the dichotomous essence inherent in humanity, adeptly portraying the conflict between the esteemed façade of Dr. Jekyll and the violent, primal essence of Mr. Hyde. This narrative plunges into the intricacies of human identity, morality, and the shadowy impulses lurking beneath the veneer of civilized society. Through Jekyll’s metamorphosis into Hyde, Stevenson unveils a vivid portrayal of the strife between the loftier and baser selves, offering profound insights into the human condition and the potential for malevolence within.

At the nucleus of this novella resides Dr. Jekyll, a figure of science and decorum who embodies the Victorian archetype of the rational, virtuous individual. However, concealed beneath his polished exterior lies a tumultuous inner realm, driven by suppressed yearnings and the yearning for liberation from societal constraints. Jekyll’s creation of Hyde constitutes an endeavor to segregate his nobler attributes from his primal instincts, affording him the liberty to indulge in his darker inclinations without repercussion or remorse. Nevertheless, as the tale unfolds, it becomes apparent that this schism is not only unattainable but also perilous.

Mr. Hyde, the embodiment of Jekyll’s suppressed desires, epitomizes the unfettered id, emancipated from the fetters of conscience and societal norms. His conduct is dictated by impulse rather than reason, culminating in a succession of increasingly violent deeds. The glaring disparity between Jekyll’s outward respectability and Hyde’s monstrous conduct underscores the novella’s central motif: the dual nature of humanity. This dichotomy posits that malevolence is not an extrinsic force but an integral facet of the human psyche, capable of overpowering one’s nobler inclinations.

The ramifications of Jekyll and Hyde’s duality on human nature are profound. Stevenson intimates that the veneer of civilization is fragile, concealing beneath it a primal, instinctual essence that constitutes an intrinsic aspect of our being. The conflict between these two facets of the self is a ubiquitous human ordeal, mirroring the internal struggle between societal expectations and individual impulses. Furthermore, the novella prompts contemplation on the essence of identity and the degree to which it is fabricated or innate. Jekyll’s inability to restrain Hyde underscores the perils of disavowing or stifling facets of our essence, underscoring the imperative of equilibrium and amalgamation.

In summation, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” stands as a masterful inquiry into the theme of dual nature, depicting the enduring conflict between the cultured self and the untamed essence within. Stevenson’s opus serves as a cautionary narrative concerning the hazards of suppressing our darker impulses and the intricacy of human identity. By delineating the disparity between Jekyll’s respectability and Hyde’s ferocity, the novella beckons readers to introspect on their own inner conflicts and the ubiquitous struggle to reconcile the contradictory forces that define our humanity. Through this exploration, Stevenson not only exposes the shadowy aspects of the human psyche but also illuminates the intricate fabric of the human condition, marked by the perpetual tension between illumination and obscurity.

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Victorians and the Hidden Self: Cultural Contexts for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Picture of Dorian Gray

• March 12, 2014
• 19th Century , Collection Essays

Introduction

Why was the idea of a hidden or double self so appealing to writers and readers of the late Victorian period? Two of the most powerful and controversial English novels of the time are Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Both novels explore a conflict between the demands of social respectability and the desire to pursue pleasure. Both offer the fantasy solution of having a second self to carry the burden of one’s vices. Dr. Jekyll confesses that he possessed a “gaiety of disposition” that could not be reconciled with his desire “to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public.” Even before he learned to transform himself into Mr. Hyde, he “stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.” The identity of Mr. Hyde takes this duplicity to its logical extreme. Mr. Hyde allows Jekyll to shed all restraint and “spring headlong into the sea of liberty.”

Dorian Gray’s path to a double life begins with vanity, the wish that he might hold onto his beautiful, youthful appearance and let his portrait bear the ugly changes associated with age. But it quickly becomes clear that changes in our appearance are not due to a neutral process of aging, they are manifestations of our sorrows and our crimes. When Dorian discovers that his appearance will not change regardless of his actions, he claims full license to act as selfishly and cruelly as he chooses in pursuit of pleasure and “passionate experience.”

The following collection of primary sources develops the cultural contexts for these novels’ representations of double and hidden selves. While Stevenson’s novel draws attention to early theories of the unconscious, Wilde’s novel points to his engagement with Aestheticism, the late-nineteenth-century arts movement that promoted art for the sake of its beauty alone, not for any utilitarian, moral, or political purpose. Both novels also raise questions about gender and sexual identity. Dorian Gray and Jekyll/Hyde explore what it could mean for educated, Victorian men to pursue pleasure free of the inhibiting threat of social ostracism. Recent literary critics, as well as some nineteenth-century readers, have suggested that the ultimate feared and forbidden pleasure these novels tacitly evoke is sexual relations between men. Indeed, during Wilde’s 1895 trials for “indecency,” the prosecutor tried to use The Picture of Dorian Gray as evidence against him. Many of the sources that follow explore changing ideas about gender and sexual identity in England and America at the turn of the last century.

Essential Questions

• What were the cultural contexts for Stevenson’s and Wilde’s novels? How can studying these contexts lead us to a deeper understanding of the novels?
• How did writers and audiences in late Victorian England and America explore the idea of a hidden or double self? What does the hidden self represent?
• What is the role of sexuality in representations of the hidden self in Victorian society? What were the prevailing norms around gender and sexual identity at this time?
• What are the roles of class and urban geography in Stevenson’s and Wilde’s novels?
• In what ways do Wilde’s and Stevenson’s representations of the hidden self challenge prevailing conceptions of sin and crime? In what ways do they reinforce these conceptions?

Geography of the Double Life

Late one night, near the end of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray , Dorian dresses himself in “common” clothes, conceals his face behind a scarf and hat, and walks to Bond Street where he hails a carriage. The driver initially refuses to take him to the address he requests, but after Dorian has promised a large payment, they take a long journey through London to a neighborhood by the shipping docks on the Thames River. The streets are roughly paved and dimly lit. Dorian enters “a small shabby house, that was wedged in between two gaunt factories.” The house is an opium den, peopled with gentlemen, sailors, and prostitutes, South Asians and whites: “grotesque things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lusterless eyes…”

Dorian’s journey on that night makes explicit a pattern of behavior that both Robert Louis Stevenson and Oscar Wilde reference throughout their novels: wealthy Victorian men escaped stifling social conventions and the surveillance of their peers by seeking pleasure in London’s poor neighborhoods. In the 1880s and ’90s, London was a city deeply divided by class. The city’s population had increased exponentially during the course of the nineteenth century, from less than one million in 1800 to over four million in 1890. The population increase was due to immigration from the English countryside as well as from Ireland and Central and Eastern Europe.

Many poor and working-class people found themselves crowded into miserable slums on the East End, that is, the neighborhoods east of the City of London and north of the Thames River. The area included the docks that received goods from Britain’s growing empire in South and East Asia and the West Indies. It also included sea-related industries, such as shipbuilding and rope making. The hub of the East End was Whitechapel, a neighborhood that became notorious in the late 1880s as the site of the Jack the Ripper murders.

In contrast, the main characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray spend much of their known lives in Mayfair, a wealthy, fashionable neighborhood in central London. Lord Henry Wooton’s house, the Royal Academy of Arts, and the Grosvenor House Hotel are all in Mayfair. In Stevenson’s novel, Dr. Lanyon, the close friend of Utterson and (at one time) Jekyll, lives at Cavendish Square, one block north of Mayfair. Henry Jekyll chooses Soho, the neighborhood just east of Mayfair, but still in central London, as the location for Edward Hyde’s house. This formerly respectable, if not wealthy, neighborhood had, by the mid-nineteenth century, become known for its music halls, small theaters, and prostitutes.

Wilde’s and Jekyll’s wealthy characters were not unusual for venturing to poor and working-class neighborhoods. As historian Seth Koven notes, by the 1890s, large numbers of wealthy Londoners regularly visited the East End, sometimes under the auspices of philanthropy and social reform, but often as tourists and pleasure-seekers or some combination of all of these. For the educated elite, Koven argues, the East End could be the site of personal liberation, an escape from upper-class, Victorian mores into a world they saw as exotic, primitive, and free of moral restraint.

The map below shows the layout of London in the 1890s and, specifically, the neighborhoods represented in Wilde’s and Stevenson’s novels.

Bartholomew, New Plan of London

Questions to Consider

• Describe the layout of London in the 1890s. What do you notice about the city’s location?
• How are London’s streets arranged? How would you compare the city’s plan to that of American cities, such as New York and Chicago?
• Compare the neighborhoods of central London to those of the East End. Where are the green spaces, such as parks and squares? How large or small are the streets? What evidence do you see of industry or commerce? Which routes would one take from central London to the docks or to other parts of the East End?

Victorian Representations of the Hidden Self

British journalist and reformer W. T. Stead devoted the 1891 Christmas issue of his journal Review of Reviews to scientific studies of “real ghost stories.” Yet, the first essay that Stead published was not a ghost story in the conventional sense of gothic and supernatural. Instead, it was a study of “the ghost that dwells in each of us.” The article suggests that there was widespread interest in the idea of the unconscious—a part of the mind that exists below the level of conscious thought—years before Sigmund Freud’s landmark work The Interpretation of Dreams (1899).

Stead, Real Ghost Stories, The Ghost in Each of Us

The magazine also included an account of a woman referred to as Madame B. who, under hypnosis, revealed alternate personalities.

Stead, Real Ghost Stories, Mme. B as Leonie I and II

The second source below is an excerpt from the biography of Richard Mansfield, a British actor celebrated for his dual performance as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in an 1887 stage adaptation of Stevenson’s novel. The photograph of Mansfield was created using the technique of double-exposure. The photographer took Mansfield’s picture, then rewound the film and took a second shot over the first, making the two images appear to be one. Both the text and the image below suggest how Mansfield attempted to express Jekyll/Hyde’s double nature.

• Why do you think Stead included this “Caution to the Reader” at the beginning of his Real Ghost Stories issue? How might the warning contribute to interest in the magazine? What could be dangerous or threatening about the magazine’s subject?
• What does the essay’s author mean by “the ghost that dwells in each of us”? How does the writer both build on and depart from Christian understandings of the “dual nature” of man, that is, torn between good and evil? Is there a moral distinction between the conscious and the unconscious?
• How does the Review of Reviews writer compare the conscious and the unconscious to husband and wife? What are the implications of this metaphor, both for thinking about the mind and for thinking about gender?
• According to Mansfield’s biographer, how did the actor understand the character of Jekyll and Hyde? How did he convey the differences between them and the transformation from one to the other?
• Based on the photograph, describe Mansfield’s physical appearance in each of the roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Why were audiences terrified by Mansfield’s performance? Why were people reluctant to believe that the actor could make this transformation without the assistance of artificial devices?

Wilstach, Richard Mansfield: The Man and the Actor

Victorian Masculinity and Effeminacy

In Britain and the United States today, boys and men who display feminine behaviors are often subject to ridicule and accused of being gay. Yet cultural theorists such as Michel Foucault and Eve Sedgwick caution against assuming that the Victorians thought about gender and sexuality in the same ways that people would in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Critic Alan Sinfield argues that, as late as the 1870s, “recognition of homosexuality as a practice and a subculture was still very uneven and muddled.” For much of his life, Oscar Wilde and other aristocratic men could embrace the public persona of the “effeminate aesthete and dandy” without necessarily being accused of having sexual desire for other men. This apparent freedom did not reflect tolerance of homosexuality. Rather, to the majority of people in Victorian England, sexual relations between men were so horrifying as to seem unthinkable, at least among respected acquaintances. However, as later texts in this collection will show, these cultural norms were changing rapidly. In 1885 the British parliament passed a law making it much easier to prosecute men for homosexuality and in 1895 Wilde found himself convicted of crimes and publically vilified for his relationships with men.

The documents that follow testify to the acceptability of some expressions of male effeminacy in England throughout much of the nineteenth century. The illustrations come from the London magazine The Woman’s World , which Wilde edited from 1887 to 1889. They portray Charles Edward Stuart, known as the Young Pretender, the grandson of the Catholic king James II (who ruled Britain from 1685 to 1688). Stuart proclaimed himself the rightful heir to the throne and in 1745 attempted to invade England from Scotland. His forces were quickly defeated and he escaped into exile in France, reportedly in the disguise of a maid named Betty Burke. Although Charles earned a reputation for drunkenness and debauchery in his remaining years in Europe, he was romanticized as a national hero of Scotland. Wilde published these illustrations, based on 1748 paintings, along with other drawings from history and fashion.

The second document is an excerpt from a series of interviews conducted with a Conservative British politician and aristocrat shortly before his death. They were published in Blackwood’s magazine. Lord Lamington reminisces about the “polished and brilliant society” of the 1830s and 1840s, which he and his interviewer lament no longer exists. In this passage, “A” stands for author, that is, Lord Lamington, who has written his memoirs, and “Maga” for the magazine’s publisher who interviews him. Lamington spends some time discussing the Count d’Orsay, a French artist and man of fashion who married into the English aristocracy, but went bankrupt in the last years of his life. (D’Orsay was the model for the New Yorker magazine’s Eustace Tilley.)

Blackwood, In the Days of the Dandies, pg 4-7

• Describe the two portraits of Charles Edward Stuart. What differences and similarities do you notice between them? In what ways would you characterize his appearance as masculine or feminine in each portrait? Does he appear beautiful?
• What does Lord Lamington mean by the term dandy ? What qualities do—or did—dandies possess? What is the role of class in the making of a dandy?
• Consider the description of Count d’Orsay specifically. What are the qualities that made d’Orsay an impressive or memorable person in Lamington’s eyes?
• Does sexual identity seem to be a factor in Lamington’s descriptions of d’Orsay or in any other passages from this text? Why or why not? Do you think that such attention to men’s fashion and appearance would be associated with sexual identity today? Why or why not?

The Trials of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde’s vaguely scandalous reputation took a devastating turn in 1895 when Wilde participated in three court cases. The first, he initiated as a libel suit against the Marquess of Queensbury, the father of Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Queensbury had accused Wilde of “posing somdomite” (that is, pretending to be a sodomite, a man who has sex with other men) and Wilde sued to clear his name, assuming that Queensbury could have no proof. Queensbury hired private detectives who produced a great deal of evidence, not only incriminating letters that Wilde had written to Douglas, but testimony of Wilde’s liaisons with young, working-class, male prostitutes as well. Wilde lost the case and found himself immediately prosecuted by the state on the basis of the evidence that Queensbury had produced in the libel trial. The charges were “gross indecency”—sexual acts—“with another male person.” The jury did not reach a verdict in this trial, but the prosecution brought the case again and, this time, Wilde was found guilty. He received the maximum sentence: two years in prison with hard labor. Upon his release, he left England for France and spent the last three years of his life in poverty and exile. He died of cerebral meningitis in 1900.

It is worth noting that the law that Wilde was convicted of breaking was itself less than a decade old. The Labouchere Amendment, as it was known, was hastily added to an 1885 law intended to protect young women from prostitution. English law already prohibited sodomy, though it was rarely prosecuted. The amendment provided a way to punish same-sex relations, even when sodomy could not be proved.

During the trial, Wilde eloquently defended “the love that dares not speak its name” (a phrase taken from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas). It is “a great affection of an elder for a younger man,” he said, “as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art.” Wilde’s words would make him a hero to defenders of gay rights in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Public Opinion, Oscar Wilde’s Disgrace, pg 374-375

But the trials had the effect of hardening public attitudes against homosexuality in the years that followed. Scholars such as Alan Sinfield and Douglas O. Linder argue, “Many same-sex relations that appeared innocent before the Wilde trials became suspect after the trials.” Previously accepted qualities among educated men, such as a love of art or attention to fashion or an effeminate style, were now increasingly perceived as evidence of gay identity.

The document below represents commentary on the trials that appeared in various U.S. newspapers and was compiled by the New York weekly Public Opinion . Wilde was well known in the United States. In 1882 he had gone on a very successful lecture tour throughout the country in which he presented his ideas on aestheticism. The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published in the Philadelphia magazine Lippincott’s in 1890 before it appeared in London in book form.

• How did U.S. newspapers write about Wilde’s trials and alleged crimes? If you did not have any additional information, would you be able to tell what exactly Wilde was accused of? How would you or wouldn’t you?
• What does the newspapers’ language tell you about prevailing ideas about homosexuality in the United States at the turn of the century? What connections do the papers draw between homosexuality and the Aesthetic movement?
• How does “Wilde’s disgrace” provide the basis for these American newspapers to criticize other aspects of English culture, such as the aristocracy and the press?

Criminals and Their Punishment

The two texts below offer competing understandings of what it means to be a person convicted of a crime. The first piece was published in the London weekly magazine The Speaker , which featured articles on politics, science, and the arts. It presents increasingly popular, pseudoscientific theories associating certain physical and intellectual characteristics with a propensity to commit crimes.

The Speaker, The Criminal Appearance, pg 13-14

The second text is an excerpt from Oscar Wilde’s long poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol , published after his release from prison. The narrative is based on the life of Charles Thomas Wooldridge who was executed at the prison (or gaol , pronounced as “jail”) in Reading, England, on July 7, 1896, for cutting the throat of his estranged wife whom he suspected of adultery. Wilde was imprisoned at Reading at the same time and observed Wooldridge, though they never met. He published the ballad anonymously, using his prisoner identification number, C.3.3, instead of his name. It was a great commercial success, going through seven editions in two years, while few knew the author’s identity. It was the last book Wilde published during his lifetime.

Wilde , The Ballad of Reading Gaol, pg 1-3; 26-27

• What is the author’s argument in the magazine article “The Criminal Appearance”? What are the “two orders” of crime that the author identifies? How do these two categories of crime correspond to two “classes,” or types, of appearance?
• According to this author, are criminals almost always recognizable as such, even when they are not committing a crime? How are they recognizable and by whom?
• In what ways do Stevenson and Wilde explore the idea that a person’s crimes become manifest in the person’s appearance? Does Edward Hyde fit the description of either of the physical types identified in “The Criminal Appearance”?
• How does Dorian Gray’s perpetually youthful and innocent appearance affect other characters’ responses to him? What are the physical changes that he and, later, Basil perceive in his portrait?
• Why do you think that Victorian writers, such as the author of “The Criminal Appearance,” were so committed to the idea that a person’s moral character and propensity to crime could be read in his or her physical appearance? Why is the idea of completely dissociating morality and appearance so appealing to Henry Jekyll and Dorian Gray? Do you think that a person’s physical appearance usually reflects his or her moral character?
• How does Wilde portray the prisoners in The Ballad of Reading Gaol ? Are they different from other people or monstrous in the way the magazine article suggests all criminals are?
• What are Wilde’s criticisms of the prison system?
• Why do you think Wilde wrote this poem as a ballad, that is, the popular, folk, poetic form?

Further Reading

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction . Volume 1. Vintage: New York, 1990.

Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London . Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2004.

Lindner, Douglas O. The Trials of Oscar Wilde. 1895 .

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet . University of California Press: Berkeley, 1990.

Sinfield, Alan. “Queer Thinking.” In The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Movement . Columbia University Press: New York, 1994. 1–24.

Showalter, Elaine. “Dr. Jekyll’s Closet.” In Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle . Viking: New York, 1990. 105–126.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales . Oxford University Press: New York, 2008.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray . Oxford University Press: New York, 2008.

Key Themes (Jekyll and Hyde)

This section looks at the Key themes in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Duality of man

Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,”

Stevenson uses the characters of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to expresses his beliefs about human duality by introducing them as two contrasting characters. Using two completely different characters with different names and appearances gets his message of human duality across effectively.

Good versus Evil

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is as an allegory about the good and evil that exist in all men, and about our struggle with these two sides of our personality. In the novella the battle between good and evil rages within the individual. Since Hyde seems to be taking over, one could argue that evil is stronger than good. However, Hyde does end up dead, perhaps suggesting a weakness or failure of evil. The big question, of course, is whether or not good can be separated from evil, or whether the two are forever intertwined.

Repression is indisputably a cause of troubles in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The repression here is that of Victorian Britain: no sexual appetites, no violence, and no great expressions of emotion, at least in the public sphere. Everything is sober and dignified. The more Jekyll’s forbidden appetites are repressed, the more he desires the life of Hyde, and the stronger Hyde grows. We see this after Dr. Jekyll’s two-month hiatus from being Hyde; Dr. Jekyll finds that the pull to evil has been magnified after months of repression.

Friendship and Loyalty

Friendship in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde serves to drive the plot forward. Aside from human curiosity, Utterson is compelled to uncover the mystery of the evil man because of his friendship with Dr. Jekyll. In trying to unravel the secret, he uncovers crucial pieces of information. In this sense, friendship acts as both a motivator and an enabler. As for the friendship between Dr. Lanyon and Dr. Jekyll, it’s certainly not as unconditional as the loyalty Mr Utterson bears for Dr. Jekyll. Instead, it’s fraught with competition, anger, and eventually an irreconcilable quarrel. We see that friendships can be ruined by differences of opinion.

Appearances and Reputation

Appearances figure in the novel both figuratively and literally. Dr. Jekyll definitely wants to keep up a well-respected façade, even though he has a lot of unsavoury tendencies. In a literal sense, the appearances of buildings in the novel reflect the character of the building’s inhabitants. Dr.Jekyll has a comfortable and well-appointed house, but Mr. Hyde spends most of his time in the "dingy windowless structure" of the doctor’s laboratory.

In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, curiosity drives the characters to seek knowledge. This curiosity is either suppressed or fulfilled in each character. Curiosity lacks any negative connotation; instead, characters who do not actively seek to unravel the Jekyll and Hyde mystery may be viewed as passive or weak. Finally, the characters’ curiosities are, to some degree, transferred over to the reader; we seek to solve the puzzle along with Mr. Utterson.

Lies and Deceit

The plot is frequently driven forward by secrecy and deception; Mr.Utterson doesn’t know the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and he wants to find out. Also, by omitting the scenes of Mr. Hyde’s supposedly crazy debauchery, Stevenson allows our imaginations to run to wild and fill in the gaps.

This novel details two crimes of violence against innocent and helpless citizens: first, a little girl, and second, an elderly man. The violence in the novel centres on Mr. Hyde, and raises the question as to whether or not violence is an inherent part of man’s nature.

God and Satan figure prominently in this text, as well as many general references to religion and works of charity. As part of their intellectual lives, the men in the novel discuss various religious works. One sign of Mr. Hyde’s wickedness, for example, is his defacing Dr. Jekyll’s favourite religious work. Mr. Hyde is also frequently likened to Satan.

Women and Femininity

Most female characters in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are passive and weak. The first female we see is a young girl mowed over by Mr. Hyde. Although she is "not much the worse, more frightened, "she still kicks up an incredible fuss and a large group of people come to her aid. The next woman we see is via a maid’s narrative of the Carew murder. After witnessing the murder, she faints, awakening long after the murderer is gone making her a passive spectator.

Science, Reason and the Supernatural

Science Reason and the Supernatural are the main factors in the development of the conflict between Dr. Lanyon and Dr. Jekyll which is integral to the plot. Dr. Lanyon adheres to a more traditional set of scientific notions then Jekyll. In the book science becomes a cover for supernatural activities. Jekyll’s brand of science veers towards the supernatural.

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Jekyll & Hyde Essay Plan (Sentence Starters)

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Other

Last updated

21 September 2024

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Full framework for any essay on Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde . It is based on having an extract to analyse where quotations also need to be taken from elsewhere in the novella.

Essay structure includes:

• Introduction
• 3 chunky analytical paragraphs

There are also some keywords listed underneath the introduction, to be used in it or throughout the essay. Context specific keywords already embedded in the sentence starters so students don’t forget to include.

Easy to edit should you need, but these are lifesavers for my students. Great for revision , or for when first teaching students model essay structure , so they can use as reference materials in their books. For students who prefer a ‘formula’ to follow, I encourage them to memorise sentence starters to use as a ‘checklist’ when writing their paragraphs, so they know if they’re ‘writing enough’.

I have essay plans (sentence starters) available for other texts and questions, so do take a look.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — Duality in “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

Analysis of Jekyll and Hyde Duality in Stevenson's Novel

• Categories: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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Words: 2426 |

13 min read

Published: Jul 17, 2018

Words: 2426 | Pages: 5 | 13 min read

• Edley, N., & Wetherell, M. (2001). Jekyll and Hyde: Men's constructions of feminism and feminists. Feminism & Psychology, 11(4), 439-457. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0959353501011004002)
• Doane, J., & Hodges, D. (1989, October). Demonic Disturbances of Sexual Identity: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr/s Hyde. In NOVEL: a Forum on Fiction (Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 63-74). Duke University Press.(https://www.jstor.org/stable/1345579)
• Rose, B. A. (1996). Jekyll and Hyde Adapted: Dramatizations of Cultural Anxiety (No. 66). Greenwood Publishing Group. (https://www.worldcat.org/title/jekyll-and-hyde-adapted-dramatizations-of-cultural-anxiety/oclc/32921958)
• Becchio, C., Sartori, L., Bulgheroni, M., & Castiello, U. (2008). The case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: a kinematic study on social intention. Consciousness and cognition, 17(3), 557-564. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810007000207)
• Lacey, N. (2010). Psychologising Jekyll, demonising Hyde: The strange case of criminal responsibility. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 4, 109-133. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11572-010-9091-8)

Should follow an “upside down” triangle format, meaning, the writer should start off broad and introduce the text and author or topic being discussed, and then get more specific to the thesis statement.

Cornerstone of the essay, presenting the central argument that will be elaborated upon and supported with evidence and analysis throughout the rest of the paper.

The topic sentence serves as the main point or focus of a paragraph in an essay, summarizing the key idea that will be discussed in that paragraph.

The body of each paragraph builds an argument in support of the topic sentence, citing information from sources as evidence.

After each piece of evidence is provided, the author should explain HOW and WHY the evidence supports the claim.

Should follow a right side up triangle format, meaning, specifics should be mentioned first such as restating the thesis, and then get more broad about the topic at hand. Lastly, leave the reader with something to think about and ponder once they are done reading.

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