Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Double Analysis

The theme of doubling was a common literary device in the late Victorian literature and still is. Through the figure of the double the author can show different facets of his main characters to make his novel more complex on a psychological level. In the Victorian period, identity was an important topic due to the fact that people had problems to know and accept their own identity and to find themselves. That is why especially misguided and covered identities became significant in this novel. The authors of this period used this identity theme in an imaginative way since usually the villains were depicted as a darker and unmoral human being. In the contrary to the villains, the heroes have more virtuous characteristics, like rationality and …show more content…
The novel deals with the two main characters Jekyll and Hyde who are opponent characters in their characteristics but identical regarding the identity. The villain of this story is Mr Hyde, he is the evil alter-ego of Dr Jekyll, a well-known and accepted member of society. At some point in the story Dr Jekyll confesses that he has a dark part in his soul which is acting evilly and also influences his good side: ‘Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame.’ This admission is very crucial for the story, due to the fact that Jekyll admits that his well-known and accepted identity as Dr Jekyll is just a façade. The question at this point is if it is possible to forgive Jekyll for his acting even though his identity did not do anything evil. If the readers decide that he can be indeed forgiven, than one could say that Hyde as a person does not count as an independent person but just as a small part of another who ca be seen as good regarding is moral