Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Themes)

Themes

Supernaturalism

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a fine example of supernatural fiction. Supernatural works focus on metaphysical concerns, based on the need to understand the unknown and unnameable. In primitive societies, reality that could not be comprehended was explained through folk-tale and fable — the foundation for all supernatural works. In supernatural literature at least one of the main characters goes against the laws of nature. The themes of these works revolve around good and evil, love and hate. One overriding impulse is to regain the natural order of the universe, to escape from the world of unknown terrors and return to normal day-to-day life. Readers respond to these works with amazement, terror, or relief as the characters struggle to return to that natural order.

One type of supernatural fiction focuses on the Promethean personality. This term was taken from Greek mythology. Prometheus, the son of Iapetus and Clymene, was one of the great benefactors of mankind. According to legend, he molded mankind out of clay and water. He later stole fire from the gods and gave it to man, who was then able to learn the sciences. Zeus considered these acts to be a form of blasphemy, and so he had Prometheus chained to a mountain peak in the Caucasus. During the day an eagle would tear at his liver, which would grow back during the night, only to be eaten again the next day.

The literature that contains elements of the Promethean personality includes Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll are especially Promethean. They are both scientists who defy the natural laws of God and the universe in an effort to create life. In each story there is little scientific detail; the focus instead is on the consequences of "playing God." This type of literature also relies on gothic conventions, especially setting details like desolate landscapes and dark alleys.

Jekyll explains his Promethean urges when he describes the seemingly altruistic motives behind his experiments. He determines that if the evil impulses could be separated from the good,

if each could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together — that the agonized womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling.

Like Frankenstein, however, Jekyll's ambition overtakes his caution. In his confession Jekyll admits,

the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, [but] at that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion.

Identity

Dr. Jekyll disturbs the natural order of the universe because throughout his life he struggles to accept the dual nature of his identity. He determines that all of us are plagued with this duality: "With every day, and for both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed that man is not truly one, but truly two. I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens." He explains that throughout his life he was "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 future." However Jekyll also admits to recognizing in himself a "certain impatient gaiety of disposition" and a failure to conquer his "aversions to the dryness of a life of study." Jekyll is troubled by "those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature" and so determines to rid himself of his baser desires.

Change and Transformation

This need to remove the troublesome part of his identity prompts Jekyll to defy the natural laws of the universe by transforming into the diabolical Mr. Hyde. Irving S. Saposnik, in his essay on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, comments, "As the mirror of Jekyll's inner compulsions, he represents that shadow side of man which civilization has striven to submerge: he is a creature of primitive sensibilities loosed upon a world bent on denying him. A reminder of the barbarism which underlies civilization, he is a necessary component of human psychology which most would prefer to leave unrealized."

Freedom

Jekyll must admit to experiencing a certain sense of freedom when he transforms into this "shadow side" of himself. When he becomes Hyde he notes, "I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul." The freedom he experiences results from the release of his inner desires, which, being a respectable Victorian gentleman, he previously had to suppress.

Good and Evil

Stevenson's main focus in the novel is on this struggle between good and evil in Jekyll's soul. G. B. Stern in his book on Stevenson argues that the novel is "a symbolic portrayal of the dual nature of man, with the moral inverted: not to impress us by the victory of good over evil, but to warn us of the strength and ultimate triumph of evil over good once sin is suffered to enter human habitation."

Topics for Further Study

• Research Freud's theories on sublimation and apply them to the character of Dr. Jekyll.
• Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was Stevenson's contemporary. Investigate Nietzsche's theories of good and evil and apply them to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
• Write your own detective story or tale of the supernatural.
• Compare and contrast the structure of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to that of one of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories.