Jekyll And Hyde Duality

Stemming from the idea that Hyde is Jekyll’s second personality, is the idea that life and society at the time also had a second, evil other half; the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde merely serve as a metaphor for all men and all of society. Hyde is supposed to represent the duality that is present in all men: the pull between the desire to be socially and morally acceptable, and the desire to live out the animalistic passions that reside in the heart of men. “Gothic fiction had examined the idea of the sinister alter ego or double before on many occasions but Stevenson’s genius with Jekyll and Hyde was to show the dual nature not only of one man but also of society in general” (Buzwell). One major point of the novel is that Hyde is a

“In Stevenson’s novella, the professional world struggles to maintain its authority through its own controlling invisibility (attempting to see Hyde) and silence (attempting to write Hyde) - negotiating Hyde illustrates this crisis in representation or hot to know Hyde-as-one-of-us” (Rago). Hyde is another member of society, thus society tries to cover up this flaw that exists within itself. “What makes Hyde so threatening within this schema is that he is not an atavistic other but rather a gentleman, a part of the very same masculine order of the text”(Rago). In English society during the 1800s, the gentleman was an influential and well-respected figure. The fact that Hyde is one of these esteemed figures helps bring out the ugly hypocrisy that existed in that society. “To the fellow-members of the middle-class community, any transgressive acts of Jekyll are ‘hidden,’ officially nonexistent; and yet ‘The Maiden Tribute’ had effectively proven that men leading double lives were, in reality, prowling the city streets” (Dury 256). Hyde represents, in that case, all the animalistic desires of men, even those of high stature, that exist and flourish in society.

There are repeated suggestions that Jekyll views his alter ego as enjoying an unprecedented freedom in his separation from the unified being. Not only is the dry characterized as a means of escape from

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde believes that the focus should be less on Jekyll’s state on mind, but rather his growing addiction that is present in the novel. Daniel Wright is one such scholar who believes that ignoring the addiction aspect of the novel is to look at the novella in a light that is much more simplistic than Stevenson intended. “The reduction of Jekyll’s character to one of simple duality, however, is to oversimplify and misapprehend the enormity of the psychological affliction of Stevenson’s tortured physician, for Dr. Jekyll is not so much a man of conflicted personality as a man suffering from the ravages of addiction” (Wright). Wright claims that the novel is not focusing so much on the good and evil that exists in man, as it is the addiction that can corrupt and drive any sane man to do immoral things. “In any case, to assume that Jekyll represents human ‘good’ while Hyde embodies that which is ‘evil’ is to forget that Hyde is but the consequence of Jekyll’s experiments in forbidden science; he exists only by the will of Jekyll; he has no independent being. Hyde is not other than Jekyll; he is Jekyll” (Wright). Wright claims that Jekyll’s addiction to his potion, or Hyde, is the only reason that Hyde exists in the first place. Hyde is much like a high that someone would achieve when taking a drug. Jekyll, in turn, becomes