the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde essay

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Books — The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Essays on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

What makes a good the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde essay topics.

When it comes to writing an essay on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , choosing the right topic is crucial. A good essay topic should be thought-provoking, unique, and analytical. It should also allow for in-depth exploration of the themes, characters, and symbolism in the novel. To brainstorm and choose an essay topic, start by considering the themes and motifs present in the book. Think about the duality of human nature, the concept of good and evil, and the consequences of scientific experimentation. Consider the characters and their motivations, as well as the setting and its significance. A good essay topic should also allow for critical analysis and interpretation, so look for topics that are open to interpretation and analysis.

When choosing a topic, consider What Makes a Good essay topic. A good topic should be specific and focused, allowing for a deep exploration of the subject matter. It should also be relevant and timely, addressing current issues and concerns. Additionally, a good essay topic should be original and unique, offering a fresh perspective on the novel. Finally, a good topic should be interesting and engaging, both for the writer and the reader. By considering these factors, you can brainstorm and choose an essay topic that is both compelling and intellectually stimulating.

Best The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Essay Topics

• The duality of human nature in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The motif of secrecy and concealment in the novel
• The consequences of scientific experimentation in the Victorian era
• The significance of the setting in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The representation of good and evil in the novel
• The theme of addiction and self-destruction in the novel
• The role of women in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The symbolism of the potion in the novel
• The theme of transformation and identity in the novel
• The portrayal of mental illness in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The impact of social class on the characters in the novel
• The motif of repression and liberation in the novel
• The concept of morality and ethics in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The theme of control and power in the novel
• The significance of the title in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The representation of masculinity in the novel
• The motif of duality in the character of Mr. Hyde
• The theme of guilt and remorse in the novel
• The portrayal of violence and aggression in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The significance of the ending in the novel

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde essay topics Prompts

• Imagine you are Dr. Jekyll and write a journal entry detailing the moments before you first transform into Mr. Hyde.
• Write a character analysis of Mr. Hyde, exploring his motivations and actions throughout the novel.
• Compare and contrast the characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, examining their similarities and differences.
• Analyze the role of the setting in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , focusing on its significance to the plot and themes of the novel.
• Create an alternate ending for the novel, exploring how the story would have unfolded if certain events had transpired differently.

When it comes to choosing The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde essay topics, it's important to consider the themes, characters, and symbolism present in the novel. By brainstorming and selecting a topic that is specific, relevant, and original, you can create an essay that is engaging and thought-provoking. Whether you choose to explore the duality of human nature, analyze the characters, or examine the role of the setting, there are plenty of creative and compelling topics to choose from when writing about The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde .

Analysis of Jekyll and Hyde Duality in Stevenson's Novel

How utterson is presented in jekyll and hyde, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

Perfect Good Vs The Ultimate Bad

Analysis of the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, the theme of deception in stevenson’s the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: through the lens of sigmund freud, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

The Duality of Human Nature in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Conformity and repression in the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, darwin and freud in "the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde" and "the stolen bacillus", presence of silence and language limitations in robert louis stevenson's novel, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

A Review of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

The wall between the superior and inferior in dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, dr. jekyll and victor frankenstein: creating the monstrocities, the problem of evil in mary shelley’s frankenstein and robert stevenson’s the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, hope and tragedy: ideas of evolution in the imagination of two popular fiction writers, language liberation in the picture of dorian gray and the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, the fiction of stevenson and mccullers: stylistic peculiarities, r. l. stevenson: the analysis of eternal issues, appearance and personality: duality of human nature in 'dr jekyll and mr. hyde', jekyll and mr hyde moral.

5 January 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson

Novella; Psychological Thriller, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Gothic, Science Fiction

Gabriel John Utterson, Dr. Henry Jekyll/Mr. Edward Hyde, Richard Enfield, Dr. Hastie Lanyon, Mr. Poole, Inspector Newcomen, Sir Danvers Carew, MP, Maid

1. Stevenson, R. L. (2012). The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-with other short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson (Fantasy and Horror Classics). https://www.scribd.com/book/377905117/Strange-Case-of-Dr-Jekyll-and-Mr-Hyde-Other-Stories Read Books Ltd. 2. Clunas, A. (1994). Comely External Utterance: Reading Space in" The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". The Journal of Narrative Technique, 24(3), 173-189. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/30225414) 3. Mills, K. (2004). The Stain on the Mirror: Pauline Reflections in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Christianity & Literature, 53(3), 337-348. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014833310405300303) 4. Goh, R. B. (1999). Textual Hyde and Seek:" Gentility," Narrative Play and Proscription in Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Journal of Narrative Theory, 29(2), 158-183. (https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/38/article/375823/summary) 5. Buzwell, G. (2014). Man is not truly one, but truly two’: duality in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The British Library. (https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/duality-in-robert-louis-stevensons-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde) 6. Maynard, K. K. (2000). The Perils and Pleasures of Professionalism in Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and Other Fictions. The European Legacy, 5(3), 365-384. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713665493?journalCode=cele20) 7. Dury, R. (2005). Strange Language of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. https://www.academia.edu/11373763/Strange_Language_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde_Journal_of_Stevenson_Studies_2_2005_33_50  Journal of Stevenson Studies, 2, 33-50. 8. Stevenson, R. L., & Glasser, B. (2018). Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In Medicine and Literature (pp. 105-118). CRC Press. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9781315375670-8/strange-case-dr-jekyll-mr-hyde-robert-louis-stevenson-brian-glasser)

Relevant topics

• Bartleby The Scrivener
• All Summer in a Day
• The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
• American Born Chinese
• Between The World and Me
• Animal Farm
• A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
• Alice in Wonderland

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Bibliography

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › British Literature › Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 7, 2022

Longman, Green, and Company published Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886 as a “shilling shocker.” Stevenson reputedly developed the storyline from a dream he had about a man forced into a cabinet after ingesting a potion that would convert him into a brutal monster. The composition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde began in September 1885, and the final draft was submitted for publication later that same year. Unlike most 19th century literary works, Stevenson’s manuscript was released in book form instead of being serialized in a popular magazine. The publishers withheld its release until January 1886 because booksellers had already placed their Christmas stock. Within six months, Stevenson’s novella sold more than 40,000 copies in England and America.

Dr. Jekyll (right) and Mr. Hyde, both as portrayed by Fredric March in Rouben Mamoulian’s film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde debates the conflict between good and evil and the correlation among bourgeois values, urban violence, and class structure. Dr. Jekyll is a seemingly placid character whose often-debated scientific research has nonetheless gained him respect amid his peers. The potion that Jekyll develops causes an unexplainable transformation into the violent Mr. Hyde. The Mr. Hyde alter-ego may represent an uncontrollable subconscious desire driven by anger and frustration toward an oppressive English class structure. Hyde’s numerous rampages include trampling a young girl and murdering the prominent English politician Sir Danvers. Although Jekyll prefers living the life of “the elderly and discontent doctor” (84), he cannot control his urge for “the liberty, the comparative youth, the light steps, leaping impulses, and secret pleasures” that the Hyde persona offers him. Dr. Jekyll’s desired liberty is perhaps caused by the restricted lifestyle that bourgeois cultural codes imposed on English society. Several Victorian social critics maintained that inner-city London dwellers were a debased life form living in junglelike conditions analogous to those in Africa. In 1890, William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, claimed that England needed rescuing from its continually degenerating condition since its citizens were gradually turning into “[a] population trodden with drink, steeped in vice, [and] eaten up by every social and physical malady” (quoted in Stevenson, 183). Stevenson’s text describes how hidden desires have always existed in a seemingly perverted civilization.

Literary critics have stressed that Stevenson’s success in the “shilling shocker” market both helped and hindered his career. The rapid success of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde led Henry James to remark that Stevenson’s novella was at first too popular a work to be comfortably called a masterpiece. Henry James was not questioning Stevenson’s talent as a writer but rather was noting that the book’s quick popularity defined it as a story that was easily accessible to the mass public.

Playwright Richard Mansfield produced a stage version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1888. Shortly after Mansfield’s play opened, several East End London prostitutes were murdered by a serial killer nicknamed Jack the Ripper. English newspapers initially termed the slayer the “Whitechapel murderer” and “Leather Apron” before settling on “Jack the Ripper.” Reporters based their stories on the possible correlation between the killings and Mansfield’s theatrical representation of violence. Mansfield’s play was eventually closed because such parallels made it seem as though Jack the Ripper was mimicking the violence depicted in Mansfield’s play, marking the first time that the concept of Mr. Hyde was used in reference to sequential crime sprees. Reports from the Daily Telegraph further damaged the profits for Mansfield’s play by stating that “there is no taste for horror” (17) on the London stage. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains a significant canonical text that uses its patchwork narrative to explore the conflation of reality and fictional representation that most postmodern writers still examine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Caler, Jenni. The Robert Louis Stevenson Companion. Edinburgh: P. Harris, 1980. James, Henry. “Robert Louis Stevenson.” Reprinted in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, edited by Martin A. Danahay, 140–141. Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Literary Texts, 1999. Rose, Brian A. Jekyll and Hyde Adapted: Dramatizations of Cultural Anxiety. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996. Saposnik, Irving S. “The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” In The Definitive Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Companion, edited by Harry M. Geduld, 108–117. New York: Garland Publishing, 1983. Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Edited by Martin A. Danahay, 29–91. Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Literary Texts, 1999.

Share this:

Categories: British Literature , Literature , Short Story

Tags: Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Appreciation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Criticism of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Analysis , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde essays , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde guide , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde plot , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Summary , Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde themes , Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Guide of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Notes of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Plot of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde analysis , Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde summary , Story of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Structure of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Summary of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Themes of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Related Articles

You must be logged in to post a comment.

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.

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Type your email…

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction

Legacy and adaptations

• Why is Robert Louis Stevenson important?
• What was Robert Louis Stevenson’s occupation?
• Was Robert Louis Stevenson married?

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Internet Archive - "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde"
• RLS Website - Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886
• The Victorian web - Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• National Center for Biotechnology Information - Pubmed Central - A study in dualism: The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Literary Devices - Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
• Toronto Metropolitan University Pressbooks - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Lit2Go - "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"
• University of Oxford - Great Writers Inspire - Gothic Elements in 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Recent News

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , novella by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , published in 1886. The names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , the two alter egos of the main character, have become shorthand for the exhibition of wildly contradictory behaviour, especially between private and public selves.

The tale—told largely from the perspective of Mr. Gabriel John Utterson, a London lawyer and friend of Dr. Henry Jekyll—begins quietly, with an urbane conversation between Utterson and his friend Mr. Richard Enfield. The latter tells how, returning home in the early hours of the morning, he witnessed a “horrible” incident: a small girl, running across the street, was trampled by a man named Mr. Edward Hyde, who left her screaming on the ground. After being caught, Hyde, who has a face that inspires loathing, agreed to pay the child’s family, and he retrieved from a dilapidated building a check from the account of a respected man. Enfield assumes that Hyde is blackmailing that man, whom Utterson knows to be his client Jekyll.

Utterson has in his files a will in which Jekyll bequeaths everything to Hyde. Troubled, the lawyer visits Dr. Hastie Lanyon, a longtime friend of both Jekyll and Utterson. Lanyon says that he has seen little of Jekyll for more than 10 years, since Jekyll had gotten involved with “unscientific balderdash,” and that he does not know Hyde. Utterson waylays Hyde at the old building and introduces himself and then goes around to Jekyll’s house (the neglected building is a laboratory belonging to the house), only to learn from the butler , Poole, that Jekyll is not at home and that his servants have orders to obey Hyde.

Almost a year later a maid witnesses Hyde beating to death a prominent gentleman who is also a client of Utterson’s. Utterson leads the police to Hyde’s home. Though he is absent, evidence of his guilt is clear. Utterson goes to see if Jekyll is harbouring Hyde, and Jekyll gives Utterson a letter from Hyde, in which Hyde declares that he will be able to escape. However, Utterson’s clerk notices that Jekyll and Hyde appear to have the same handwriting. Jekyll seems healthier and happier over the next few months but later starts refusing visitors. Utterson visits a dying Lanyon, who gives Utterson a document to be opened only after Jekyll’s death or disappearance. Weeks later, Poole requests that Utterson come to Jekyll’s home, as he is fearful that Hyde has murdered Jekyll. When Poole and Utterson break into the laboratory office, they find Hyde’s body on the floor and three documents for Utterson from Jekyll.

Lanyon’s and Jekyll’s documents reveal that Jekyll had secretly developed a potion to allow him to separate the good and evil aspects of his personality. He was thereby able at will to change into his increasingly dominant evil counterpart, Mr. Hyde. While the respectable doctor initially had no difficulty in returning from his rabid personality, he soon found himself slipping into Mr. Hyde without recourse to his drug. He temporarily stopped using his potion, but, when he tried it again, Mr. Hyde committed murder. After that, it took a vast amount of potion to keep him from spontaneously becoming Mr. Hyde. Unable to make any more of the drug because of an unknown but apparently crucial impurity in the original supply, Jekyll soon ran out of the drug. Indeed, he took the last of it to write a confession before becoming Hyde permanently.

The notion of the “double” was widely popular in the 19th century, especially in German literary discussions of the doppelgänger . Fyodor Dostoyevsky ’s The Double (1846) dealt with this very subject, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ’s classic Frankenstein tale (1818) can be read in this light. The theme was explored explicitly by Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and by H.G. Wells in both The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and The Invisible Man (1897). In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Stevenson suggested that the human propensities for good and evil are not necessarily present in equal measure. Hyde is quite a bit smaller than Jekyll, perhaps indicating that evil is only a small portion of Jekyll’s total personality but one that may express itself in forceful, violent ways. The story has long been interpreted as a representation of the Victorians’ bifurcated self. Jekyll is in every way a gentleman, but just beneath the surface lie baser desires that remain unspoken; he is the very personification of the dichotomy between outward gentility and inward lust. Stevenson’s tale took on new resonance two years after publication with the grisly murders perpetrated by Jack the Ripper in 1888, when the psychological phenomenon that Stevenson explored was invoked to explain a new and specifically urban form of sexual savagery.

An adaptation of the tale for the stage was first performed in 1887, with Richard Mansfield as Jekyll and Hyde, and several popular films highlighted the novella’s horrific aspects, from a 1920 version starring John Barrymore to a 1971 B-movie , Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde , featuring a female alter ego. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), starring Fredric March , and a later adaptation starring Spencer Tracy (1941) were also notable. Stevenson’s story continued to inspire adaptations into the 21st century. It also spurred debate over whether its main character exhibits dissociative identity disorder , a form of psychosis , or some other psychopathology.