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In this essay I will analyse the principles of duality within the novella, The Strange Case of Dr
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Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
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However, as we begin to discuss these dualities we can see these may not be as apparent as

Commented [LF1]: Italicise titles of books, plays, poetry
collections
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Commented [LF2]: Place a comma in here after this word

they seem
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The final duality I intend to discuss is that of addiction versus compulsion and how
we see this reflected in the title character(s)
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Arguably the most obvious duality in the novella is good versus evil, and this is evident when
analysing the character of Dr
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Jekyll, whom we initially presume to be a man of rational

Commented [LF4]: Insert the word ‘whom’ after Jekyll
here
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18)
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13)
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Later we discover that Jekyll in fact is suffering with
an obsession; trying to extricate the side of his personality he would deem to be dark or
immoral in its desires
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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
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67)
Thus he embarks upon a series of scientific experiments in the hope of finding a way to
separate these two sides of his personality
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The reader never learns, for example, of Dr
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Jekyll with patients
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Jekyll
is never observed conducting experiments, however misdirected they may be
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Jekyll in his laboratory are devoted to his
obsession with mixing the drug that gives him a release from his psychological
torture
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Jekyll is successful at least in changing his appearance to allow for the creation of an alter
ego which he names, “Edward Hyde”
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Hyde was only ever a visual representation of Jekyll’s ‘shadow’ self
and was never a functioning, thinking individual independent of Jekyll
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Hyde is not other than Jekyll; he is
Jekyll
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255)
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Observing this behaviour in Jekyll, we can
see that firstly he was very uneasy with the duplicity of his nature; something however we all
possess
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Jekyll
could not accept his darker side and became so obsessed by it he devoted all of his time in
attempting to use science to eradicate it
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However, Stevenson blurs the lines between the
two by embodying both principles within the one character
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Commented [LF8]: Interesting argument

Religion and science in most senses are quite conflicting of one another in principle, making
this duality a complex inclusion to the story
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Young
tells us that, “The most dramatic confrontation between religion and science occurred in the
nineteenth century, and the Christian community remains uneasy about the problem of "man's
place in nature" which became so acute in the Darwinian debate
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In
continuation of this Fyfe tells us that British men of science, particularly geologists, were also
making discoveries which threatened the literal meaning of Genesis
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We can see
Stevenson’s concern with this shift in attitudes when we look at the creation of Hyde
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Contrastingly,
we also see Stevenson reflecting science in a negative light, suggesting that science alone is
not enough to create solutions to problems and that it has many limitations and is not fully
reliable
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69)
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73)
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69) and that he was
concerned about the strength of the evil side of himself which he had tried to extricate but
instead made more prevalent than before
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Gothic writers such as Stevenson punish the
characters who, like Dr
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(Smith, 2012)
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duality; Jekyll, tortured by his own natural confliction of character, attempts to use science as
a way of modifying the divine creation of man
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The assumption I make of the inclusion of this theme in the tale is that
Stevenson wanted to cause a controversial topic of interest in hopes it would provoke the
Victorian population to rethink scientific reliance and abandonment of faith
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Although the actions of Hyde
seem to be fairly compulsive and uncontrolled, in chapter 4 Hyde appeared to “listen with an
ill-contained impatience” and then, “all of a sudden he broke out into a great flame of anger”,
(Stevenson, 2010, pp
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It would be fair to say that along with stating the obvious
limitations of science, Stevenson also shows the progression to scientific dependence
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61)
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63)
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64)
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Whether Jekyll was addicted to the potion itself could be up for interpretation but I
feel through careful consideration of the novella that Jekyll was most certainly addicted to the

Commented [LF10]: Excellent argument

separation of his psychological conflictions and any means which would have allowed for this
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(Stevenson, 2010, pp
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Even the disarray of the theatre’s appearance shows us how Jekyll
may have been losing grasp of his composure
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He was an addict in the sense that he could focus his attention to nothing else
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Hartney explains that some signs of addiction include withdrawal, occupational roles being
jeopardized, the person becoming preoccupied with the addiction, spending a lot of time on
planning, engaging in, and recovering from the addictive behaviour, difficulty cutting down or
controlling the addictive behaviour, repeated unexplained outings, often with a sense of
urgency or secretiveness, changes in social groups, new and unusual friends
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We see examples of nearly all of these behaviours in the story; for example we see Jekyll
spending less time with his friends, Utterson and Lanyon; Lanyon states, “I see little of him
now”
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11)
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42)
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(Stevenson, 2010, pp
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However once again
Jekyll suddenly secludes himself and when after a period of approximately two months has
passed Utterson is again admitted to Jekyll’s home he discovers his friend’s appearance has
changed greatly, stating,
He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face
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(Stevenson, 2010, pp
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All these descriptions of Jekyll’s behaviours (and appearance) allude to the possibility of a
substance dependency
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In summary of this
particular duplicity we can see clearly that Stevenson cleverly depicts both aspects; addiction
and compulsion; within both title characters
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Henry Jeyll, can easily be overcome by addiction
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Stevenson
blurs the lines between several of these creating obvious yet complex duplicities
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Whether
Stevenson did indeed intend to show the limitations of science, or whether he wanted to shock
the Victorian middle and upper classes by creating a Doctor with obvious psychological
confliction and possible substance addiction or whether he wanted solely to depict the duplicity
of man’s nature; I feel he succeeded in doing all of the above

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