Meeting the Double in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Major
English – Literature
Submission Type
Oral Presentation
Area of Study or Work
English-Literature
Expected Graduation Date
2023
Location
CNS E103 1.3 Literary Diversity and Dualities
Start Date
4-15-2023 9:00 AM
End Date
4-15-2023 10:00 AM
Abstract
Even if a person has never read Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), they probably have a sense of what the story is about: a man who attempts to separate from himself, in the form of his evil alter ego, his sinful desires, but who ultimately discovers the impossibility of their separation. It is a masterplot of our culture; as John Herdman has observed, Jekyll and Hyde strikes “on an image so vivid and arresting, and of such dramatic force, that its title has provided the most popular proverbial shorthand for the divided personality” (1990). However, despite the novella’s lasting impression, Herdman views its use of allegory as the mark of a decline in the literary tradition of the double. But, for the reader who is not already familiar with the double in literature, perhaps meeting the themes on allegorical terms represents an opportunity. While the text itself is short, the images within the text are representative of much of the theory connected with understanding the double in literature. The double is a subject which Karl Miller argues both, “stretches beyond literature… [and which] is literature…writers have been responsive from the first to…puns, puzzles, conundrums, cruxes, clefts, coalescences and coincidences, to the binariness of body and soul, to the two souls which may share a breast, to the tendency to run away which coincides with the tendency to remain” (Doubles 1987). In my presentation, I provide close readings of key passages from the novella that are indicative of the genres historical concerns — religion, morality, and fate, among others. I also examine how Stevenson then uses the double to expose and interrogate a range of cultural problems in Victorian London.
Meeting the Double in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
CNS E103 1.3 Literary Diversity and Dualities
Even if a person has never read Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), they probably have a sense of what the story is about: a man who attempts to separate from himself, in the form of his evil alter ego, his sinful desires, but who ultimately discovers the impossibility of their separation. It is a masterplot of our culture; as John Herdman has observed, Jekyll and Hyde strikes “on an image so vivid and arresting, and of such dramatic force, that its title has provided the most popular proverbial shorthand for the divided personality” (1990). However, despite the novella’s lasting impression, Herdman views its use of allegory as the mark of a decline in the literary tradition of the double. But, for the reader who is not already familiar with the double in literature, perhaps meeting the themes on allegorical terms represents an opportunity. While the text itself is short, the images within the text are representative of much of the theory connected with understanding the double in literature. The double is a subject which Karl Miller argues both, “stretches beyond literature… [and which] is literature…writers have been responsive from the first to…puns, puzzles, conundrums, cruxes, clefts, coalescences and coincidences, to the binariness of body and soul, to the two souls which may share a breast, to the tendency to run away which coincides with the tendency to remain” (Doubles 1987). In my presentation, I provide close readings of key passages from the novella that are indicative of the genres historical concerns — religion, morality, and fate, among others. I also examine how Stevenson then uses the double to expose and interrogate a range of cultural problems in Victorian London.