Jennet Hyde Character Analysis

To be considered a monstrous character, it takes a little more than pure blood and gore. To be considered a monstrous character, there is an almost formulaic pattern that must be followed in order to have the true attributes of a monster. The characteristics that these monsters share or differ in can determine their true nature. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Susan Hill’s “The Woman in Black,” and Friedrich Durrenmatt’s “The Visit,” each piece has its own style but the underlying characteristics add up to the same types of themes in the pieces that are similar in their nature. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” a …show more content…
Described in her ghostly form as “suffering from some wasting disease, for not only was she extremely pale...but the skin…was tauntly stretched and stained across her bones…and her eyes seemed sunken back into her head,” (Hill, “The Woman in Black” 44-45) Jennet is a monster straight from nightmares. By the end of the book, it is discovered that she has come back to haunt because of the death of her child. After having a child out of wedlock, Jennet had to give it up to her sister to take care of and after some time apart Jennet worked her way back into the child’s life and planned on taking it away from the house. After watching her child die helplessly, hearing every scream, Jennet eventually succumbed to disease, she came back to haunt the house and the town. Due to her despair and anger, she kills one of the town’s children every year. The main themes in this book are revenge and holding onto the past. Jennet could not get past the accident and the loss of her child, causing her own death and the death of other children by her own hands. If she had forgiven her sister and moved past her grief, she may have led a better