According to the Oxford dictionary, corruption is the dishonest or fraudulent act by those in power and the action and effect of making someone or something morally depraved. One of the more prominent features of Gothic Literature is the depiction of moral decay within the human mind. The concept of the Gothic genre is to question whether humans are born with corruption or it is wielded onto them, this can be seen with the contrasts between Stevenson’s ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, the pilgrims in ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ and Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. More frequently perhaps, the novels and poetry demonstrate a depiction of the attraction to evil and to the unmasking of the more horrific aspects of human nature that we are sometimes drawn to.
Corruption in Stevenson’s ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ is retained by the serum which the character Dr …show more content…
“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.” [Stevenson] Stevenson shows that a character can only be ‘good’ or ‘evil’ at one given time, and explores in a heightened fashion the battles played out in which we choose as a member of society to allow. As academic scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedwick explains, a primary feature of the Gothic genre is that the self is “massively blocked off from something to which it ought normally to access” Stevenson allows Dr Jekyll to enter a state of mind that shouldn’t be retrieved, which results in considerable corruption and ultimately death. "The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll.” [Stevenson] The two cannot coexist as a character can only be moral or immoral and because of that, the character Dr Jekyll has to kill his counterpart Mr Hyde. As a result, in light of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’s end, it seems that contrastingly in Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ Van Helsing profits, rather than suffers, at the use of dual morality.
Corruption in Stevenson’s ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ is retained by the serum which the character Dr …show more content…
“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.” [Stevenson] Stevenson shows that a character can only be ‘good’ or ‘evil’ at one given time, and explores in a heightened fashion the battles played out in which we choose as a member of society to allow. As academic scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedwick explains, a primary feature of the Gothic genre is that the self is “massively blocked off from something to which it ought normally to access” Stevenson allows Dr Jekyll to enter a state of mind that shouldn’t be retrieved, which results in considerable corruption and ultimately death. "The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll.” [Stevenson] The two cannot coexist as a character can only be moral or immoral and because of that, the character Dr Jekyll has to kill his counterpart Mr Hyde. As a result, in light of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’s end, it seems that contrastingly in Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ Van Helsing profits, rather than suffers, at the use of dual morality.