Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Analysis

In Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde the classic reading is that the two characters Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde symbolise the struggle between good and evil in each person.Yet, in an age where the view of criminality shift the focus from lower classes to higher classes, created a change in perspective where men's reputation was not as easily kept as it was before. Therefore, another reading of the text is that it exposes the changing late Victorian society in their view of respectability. There were increasingly amounts of reports where respectable men were involved in disreputable or even in criminal events. Hence, when looking at what Hyde represents, this paper views Hyde not as a 'symptom' of the metaphorical illness 'evil' but of the illness of 'impermissible desires' and the increasing difficulty in keeping them private. One must point out that the …show more content…
If Hyde is Jekyll's evil side then Jekyll should be completely good after the seperation. Yet, he does not get a different body or perhaps a slightly altered body as he said that his uncontrolled evil side is one-tenths of his life.3 Jill L. Matus argues that Jekyll does not get “rid...of the Hyde-like parts within....Hyde is part that becomes a person, but Jekyll is still left a man of many parts.”4 Moreover, as they do share the same memory one can argue that Jekyll is responsible for Hyde's actions. He might not be able to control Hyde but he can make the decision to prevent evil events from happening. The one time he tries, his weakness fails him and resulted in the death of Sir Carew. The reader does not know exactly what Hyde is involved in except for the vague incident of him 'trampling' a child (which is seen by some critics as a euphemism for child prostitution5) and the murder of Carew. Except for the latter, Jekyll does not seem to show remorse. In fact, he mentions that at first he did not feel