Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Gender Roles Essay

The female characters throughout The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are characterized as passive and weak, reflective of social norms during the Victorian Era. In characterizing women as inferior, Stevenson is better able to convey the duality of man and demonstrate that women may be victims of the sadistic unconscious of man itself.

Throughout the entirety of Stevenson’s novel, women are portrayed as passive and weak beings, reflective of the social norms of the time. Set during the Victorian Era, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde takes place in a world characterized by strict gender norms and a rigid social hierarchy. During the 19th century, a woman’s place was thought to be in the house, far removed from the public eye.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the theme of the duality of man. The idea that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are one man in two bodies rather than two men sharing one body suggests that man itself is a combination of both good and evil. In distinguishing the female characters as inferior beings, Stevenson begins to suggest that women are victims of the evil side - the sadistic unconscious - of men. Each time female characters are mentioned in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they are victims of violent and unfortunate circumstances. The culprit of these violent circumstances is always Mr. Hyde. Because Mr. Hyde represents the evil side of man and because Mr. Hyde is the one who is directly hurting the women in the novel, Stevenson suggests that men has a sadistic unconscious. In other words, all individuals are both good and evil. Included in the evil side of man is a subconscious desire to hurt other individuals, especially women. Throughout the novel, individuals continuously suffer physically at the hands of Mr. Hyde. For example, the first appearance of a female in the novel results in a “horrific” situation. On his walk with Mr. Utterson, Mr. Enfield recounts being a witness to a strange scene, “All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along...and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street...the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground” (Stevenson, 9). The female child is clearly the victim of male violence, specifically that of Mr. Hyde. Because Mr. Enfield claims that the man trampled “calmly” over the young girl, he suggests that the culprit shows no remorse for the female child, who is left “screaming on the ground.” Furthermore, this implies that the man ran over her with ease, further demonstrating the imbalance of power between men and