The document discusses the theme of the double in three literary works: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jane Eyre, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the double exists within the same person as the two opposing personas of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In Jane Eyre, the double is represented by Bertha Mason, who embodies Jane's suppressed feelings and rage. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian's conscience is represented by the portrait of himself, which reflects his true nature as he commits sins and remains physically young.
The document discusses the theme of the double in three literary works: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jane Eyre, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the double exists within the same person as the two opposing personas of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In Jane Eyre, the double is represented by Bertha Mason, who embodies Jane's suppressed feelings and rage. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian's conscience is represented by the portrait of himself, which reflects his true nature as he commits sins and remains physically young.
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The document discusses the theme of the double in three literary works: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jane Eyre, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the double exists within the same person as the two opposing personas of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In Jane Eyre, the double is represented by Bertha Mason, who embodies Jane's suppressed feelings and rage. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian's conscience is represented by the portrait of himself, which reflects his true nature as he commits sins and remains physically young.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
…DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE: the double in one’s personality One might question whether Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are in fact a single character. Until the end of the novel, the two personas seem nothing alike—the well-liked, respectable doctor and the hideous, depraved Hyde are almost opposite in type and personality. Stevenson uses this marked contrast to make his point: every human being contains opposite forces within him or her, an alter ego that hides behind one's polite facade. Correspondingly, to understand fully the significance of either Jekyll or Hyde, we must ultimately consider the two as constituting one single character. Despite the seeming diametric opposition between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, their relationship in fact involves a complicated dynamic. While it is true that Jekyll largely appears as moral and decent, engaging in charity work and enjoying a reputation as a courteous and genial man, he in fact never fully embodies virtue in the way that Hyde embodies evil. Although Jekyll undertakes his experiments with the intent of purifying his good side from his bad and vice versa, he ends up separating the bad alone, while leaving his former self, his Jekyll-self, as mixed as before. Jekyll succeeds in liberating his darker side, freeing it from the bonds of conscience, yet as Jekyll he never liberates himself from this darkness. Also Jekyll's partial success in his endeavors shows us something more about his personality. Jekyll himself attributes his distorted results to his state of mind when first taking the potion. He says that he was motivated by dark urges such as ambition and pride when he first drank the liquid and that these allowed for the emergence of Hyde. He seems to imply that, had he entered the experiment with pure motives, an angelic being would have emerged. However, one must consider the subsequent events in the novel before acquitting Jekyll of any blame. For, once released, Hyde gradually comes to dominate both personas, until Jekyll takes Hyde’s shape more often than his own. Indeed, by the very end of the novel, Jekyll himself no longer exists and only Hyde remains. Hyde seems to possess a force more powerful than Jekyll originally believed. The fact that Hyde, rather than some beatific creature, emerged from Jekyll’s experiments seems more than a chance event, subject to an arbitrary state of mind. Rather, Jekyll’s drinking of the potion seems almost to have afforded Hyde the opportunity to assert himself. It is as if Hyde, but no comparable virtuous essence, was lying in wait. This dominance of Hyde—first as a latent force within Jekyll, then as a tyrannical external force subverting Jekyll—holds various implications for our understanding of human nature. We begin to wonder whether any aspect of human nature in fact stands as a counter to an individual’s Hyde-like side. We may recall that Hyde is described as resembling a primitive creature; perhaps Hyde is actually the original, authentic nature of man, which has been repressed but not destroyed by the accumulated weight of civilization, conscience, and societal norms. Perhaps man doesn’t have two natures but rather a single, primitive, amoral one that remains just barely constrained by the bonds of civilization. Moreover, the novel suggests that once those bonds are broken, it becomes impossible to reestablish them; the genie cannot be put back into the bottle, and eventually Hyde will permanently replace Jekyll—as he finally does. Even in Victorian England—which considered itself the height of Western civilization—Stevenson suggests that the dark, instinctual side of man remains strong enough to destroy anyone who, like Jekyll, proves foolish enough to unleash it. …JANE EYRE: the double in one’s feelings While in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the double exist in the same person, in Jane Eyre it is represented by another person, completely different from the protagonist, yet deeply connected with her: Bertha Mason. Bertha Mason is a complex presence in the novel. She impedes Jane’s happiness, but she also catalyses the growth of Jane’s self-understanding. In fact she can be seen as a manifestation of Jane’s subconscious feelings—specifically, of her rage against oppressive social and gender norms. Jane declares her love for Rochester, but she also secretly fears marriage to him and feels the need to rage against the imprisonment it could become for her. Jane never manifests this fear or anger, but Bertha does. Thus Bertha tears up the bridal veil, and it is Bertha’s existence that indeed stops the wedding from going forth. And, when Thornfield comes to represent a state of servitude and submission for Jane, Bertha burns it to the ground. Throughout the novel, Jane describes her inner spirit as fiery, her inner landscape as a “ridge of lighted heath” (Chapter 4). Bertha seems to be the outward manifestation of Jane’s interior fire. Bertha expresses the feelings that Jane must keep in check, according to the conventions of Victorian society. We can find an example of the duality of Jane’s feelings near the end of chapter 27: “Feeling . . . clamoured wildly. <<Oh, comply>> it said. << . . . soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? Or who will be injured by what you do? >> Still indomitable was the reply: <<I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation. . . . They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.>> ” In this quotation, Jane asserts her strong sense of moral integrity over and against her intense immediate feelings. Rochester has been trying to convince her to stay with him despite the fact that he is still legally married to Bertha Mason. His argument almost persuades Jane: Rochester is the first person who has ever truly loved her. Yet she knows that staying with him would mean compromising herself, because she would be Rochester’s mistress rather than his wife. Not only would she lose her self-respect, she would probably lose Rochester’s, too, in the end. Thus Jane asserts her worth and her ability to love herself regardless of how others treat her. Jane’s allusions to her “madness” and “insanity” bring out the parallel between Jane and Bertha Mason. It shows us that Bertha is a double for Jane, who embodies what Jane feels within, something that, if externalized, makes her look “mad”. …THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: the double in one’s conscience The theme of the double in The picture of Dorian Gray, unlike the novels analyzed before, is represented by an object. The picture of Dorian Gray, “the most magical of mirrors,” shows Dorian the physical burdens of age and sin from which he has been spared. For a time, Dorian sets his conscience aside and lives his life according to a single goal: achieving pleasure. His painted image, however, asserts itself as his conscience and hounds him with the knowledge of his crimes: there he sees the cruelty he showed to Sibyl Vane and the blood he spilled killing Basil Hallward. But there are also other symbols that show us the contrasting relationship between Dorian’s appearance and soul, the duality between his beauty and his dirty conscience. The colour white Dorian’s trajectory from figure of innocence to figure of degradation can be charted by Wilde’s use of the colour white. White usually connotes innocence and blankness, as it does when Dorian is first introduced. It is, in fact, “the white purity” of Dorian’s boyhood that Lord Henry finds so captivating. Basil invokes whiteness when he learns that Dorian has sacrificed his innocence. But the days of Dorian’s innocence are over. It is a quality he now escapes from, and, when he orders flowers, he demands “as few white ones as possible.” When the colour appears again, in the form of James Vane’s face—“like a white handkerchief”—peering in through a window, it has been transformed from the colour of innocence to the colour of death. It is this threatening pall that makes Dorian long, at the novel’s end, for his “rose-white boyhood,” but the hope is in vain, and he proves unable to wash away the stains of his sins. The opium dens The opium dens, located in a remote and derelict section of London, represent the sordid state of Dorian’s mind. He flees to them at a crucial moment. After killing Basil, Dorian seeks to forget the awfulness of his crimes by losing consciousness in a drug-induced stupor. Although he has a canister of opium in his home, he leaves the safety of his neat and proper parlor to travel to the dark dens that reflect the degradation of his soul. James Vane James Vane is less a believable character than an embodiment of Dorian’s tortured conscience. As Sibyl’s brother, he is a rather flat caricature of the avenging relative. Still, Wilde saw him as essential to the story, adding his character during his revision of 1891. Appearing at the dock and later at Dorian’s country estate, James has an almost spectral quality. Like the ghost of Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, who warns Scrooge of the sins he will have to face, James appears with his white face to goad Dorian into accepting responsibility for the crimes he has committed.