How does Stevenson portray the duality of man in ‘The

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’?

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a book that ideas are based on the writer, Robert Stevenson’s,
conception of the duality of humanity, which is the main theme for this book. It is based on
a man who is able to separate his good side, Dr Jekyll, and his evil side, Mr Hyde, into two
different people, although you do not find out it is one man till the last chapter. So we are
able to confront the theory of duality of man’s nature after we have witnessed all the events
that took place in the novel, including some of the horrible crimes Hyde committed and the
way he eclipsed Dr Jekyll’s character. I think Stevenson wanted to show us in this book that
man can be good and bad and he showed us this in many different ways. I think this gives an
effect to the readers that evil and good are in everyone including the people reading the
novel.
Stevenson shows us in the book that Mr Hyde is the pure evil version of Dr Jekyll and
man in general. I think Stevenson tries to tell us in this book that every human being has a
good side and an evil side. Most people’s good side is more powerful than the evil side but
with Dr Jekyll his evil side took control of him and his good side was overpowered by the evil
in him. In the book, Stevenson uses the quote; “man is not truly one, but truly two”. This
goes back to Stevenson thinking that there are always two separate people in one. Everyone
has a good and bad side. This was his theory on man and he was able to portray that theory
in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson also imagines that the human soul has a battlefield
where an ‘angel’ and a ‘fiend’ sight each other for control. This made Dr Jekyll want to
separate the ‘angel’ and the ‘fiend’ so he could do all the things he wanted to do that were
seen in the Victorian time as bad but yet still be seen as a good person. Dr Jekyll was able to
do this with his ‘potion’ but soon the ‘fiend’ overpowered the ‘angel’ until the ‘angel’ was
no more. I think the reason Stevenson was so strong on the view that every man had an
‘angel’ and a ‘fiend’ was because of the way his society was. I believe that Stevenson felt
very repressed in society trying to always choose the ‘angel’ instead of the ‘fiend’ but he
knew that he, just like Dr. Jekyll, wanted to show a bit more of his ‘fiend’ side.

I think Stevenson based the book in the Victorian era because it was the century
where your behaviour was what people would judge you on. Mr Hyde did not follow any of
these rules and that is why he was seen as pure evil. If something was frowned upon during
the era most people would not commit this ‘sin’ in public but instead would do it in private.
However Mr Hyde was not afraid to commit these ‘sins’ in public and that is why everyone
was so quick to judge him. An example of this was the prostitute house. This house was
frowned upon in society and anyone who associated themselves with the girls in the house
were also frowned upon. Mr Hyde lived in an area with these houses so was associated with
the prostitute house, so he was looked down upon by many Victorians including Mr
Utterson and Mr Enfield.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde live near each other but in 2 completely different areas. Mr
Hyde lives in the worst part of Soho, London in a prostitute house. The area is quite dirty
and is seen as a corrupted area in London. Dr Jekyll lives quite close to Mr Hyde but his
house and area is the total opposite of Mr Hyde’s. His area is posh, nice, clean and very
sophisticated area just like Dr Jekyll. Hyde seems at oddly at home and comfortable in the
prostitute house/urban scenery. All these observations suggest that maybe civilization also
has its dark side.
In Dr Jekyll’s house there are two entrances to the house. One is through the front,
which is the lovely, pleasant entrance and is where Dr Jekyll comes through to enter the
house. The other door to enter the house is at the back and is seen as the more dirty and
loathed side and is where Mr Hyde enters the house. These entrances portray Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde’s as people. Dr Jekyll comes through the nice, good entrance which is taken care of
and looks beautiful and presentable which represents how Dr Jekyll is while the back door
which Hyde comes from is described as dirty entrance which is not looked after well and is
not very presentable. This description of the entrance represents how Stevenson and
characters in the book saw Mr Hyde. I think Stevenson used this metaphor to describe Jekyll
and Hyde to put the effect on people that may look presentable but might not actually be. I
think he wanted to show that just because someone looks a certain way does not mean that
they are like the way they look. Dr Jekyll looked polite and very pleasant but in real fact he
was a mad scientist with an evil alter ego.
Dr Jekyll has a laboratory in the back of his house, which is described as ‘a certain
sinister block of building … bore in every feature the marks of profound and sordid
negligence’. Stevenson makes Dr Jekyll’s lab seem like its decaying and neglected to give
the back of the house a more horror feel. The lab symbolizes the corrupt and perverse Mr
Hyde in the way they are both presented. While the main house which is respectable and
prosperous-looking symbolizes the way Dr Jekyll is presented. Moreover there is a
connection between the two buildings which corresponds to the connection between Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Even though they are two different looking buildings they are one in the
same. Many of the Victorians such as Mr Utterson were not be able to see the similarities
between the two buildings just like they were unable to see that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were
the same man.
In the novel, Stevenson describes Hyde as someone who is almost ‘animalistic’. He
uses such adjectives and adverbs like ‘repulsively ugly’, ‘deformed’, ‘small’, ‘shrunken’ and
‘hairy’ man who conducts himself according to instinct rather than reason to describe Hyde.
His physical ugliness and deformity symbolizes his moral hideous ethics. Stevenson made
Hyde ugly in the time of the Victorian era because people with deformity were looked upon
as sub-human and were made a mockery out off. Additionally, I think Hyde’s small figure
represents the fact that, as Jekyll’s dark side, he has been repressed for years in Jekyll and
was prevented from growing and flourishing. Moreover Utterson describes Hyde as a
‘troglodyte’ which is someone who acts like a caveman/animal. Hyde was described as an
‘animal’ because of some of the horrible acts he committed. One of the major acts was
when he stomped on a little girl while walking down the street. This made Hyde to be sub-
human as he had no emotions over what he did. It is not human for someone to push
someone to the floor and not even care or think to help them up. He has no morality and is
then seen as a ‘animal’. Another act he committed was when Hyde violently murdered Mr
Carew. Hyde was said to have had an encounter with Mr Carew, where he offered Hyde a
polite greeting and then Hyde turned on him with a stick and beat him to death. This crime
shows the extent of Hyde’s capability for evilness. He is seen to be a mindless, vicious man
after the murder of Mr Carew. The fact that Hyde brutally murders these harmless people,
who have done nothing wrong and nothing bad to provoke him, shows us the extreme
immorality of Dr Jekyll’s dark side. However it would be hard to say Mr Hyde is an animal
because no animal takes such delight in crime. He seems to commit these violent acts
against innocent citizens for no reason except the joy of it. This is something no animal
would do. This is manifested through the way Hyde dominates Jekyll to the point that Jekyll
has to kill himself. Perhaps the reason why Hyde got stronger might have been because he
was so repressed for too long and finally when he was let out he decided he did not want to
go back in. Dr Freud was the first physiologist who showed and proved the ideas that being
repressed can lead to dramatic issues. This links back to how Hyde was able to over power
Jekyll. The fact that Jekyll repressed his more evil/dangerous side for so long killed him in
the end. I think Stevenson wanted to show us that holding back our evil side or anger could
result to the destruction of us.
Just like most Victorians Stevenson was heavily influenced by his Christian religion.
This faith and belief caused a lot of repression in his community. It made it hard to do stuff
that was seen as “wrong” and most people would end up miserable because of it. Most of
the world is religious so most people would be repressed. The Victorians were very religious
and it influenced their everyday life.

I believe in this novel Stevenson is trying to show us that there is a good and bad side
of every human being. One of those sides is superior to the other and everybody can act in a
animalistic behaviour if they let the bad become superior to the good. Human nature will
always have two sides fighting for power. Stevenson ends the book with the readers asking
themselves questions about humanity and do we all have a little bit of evil in us.