As this particular story shows, suspense engulfs its entirety, leading analysts, such as Scholar, to suggest the initial intent of Stevenson's novella to pertain to that of a detective's case of fantastic elements (47). However, as the story's popularity showed massive growth over the centuries, the tale evolved into the psychological thriller genre, giving the reader a representation of how personality disorders appeared to the public in the Victorian Era. Stevenson's novella closely resembles the Freudian deduction technique, combining both the sleuth and the analyst to form the psychological thriller aspect of the tale (47). Hyde's deformities do not appear specifically to the people of London, though he seems to derive from an unnatural construction, according to the people's reactions to seeing him in the city. This view of Hyde embodies a direct metaphor for the confusion and judgment by Victorians of those with severe personality disorders, and as Scholar relates, Stevenson's story tells the tale of a psychopath.
Apart from a mere personality disorder, Hyde also represents a direct metaphor for the effects of sin on a person's mental state. According to Sigmund Freud, the human mind constitutes three basic structures. The first of these, the id, groups basic human instincts together, such as hunger or sex drive. Then comes the ego, which structures around the aspects of desire and fulfillment, and the third is the superego, which categorizes how the mind copes with the combining the id and ego through moral ethics. As Tom Hubbard relates, Freud's model of the three structures of the human psyche is essential in understanding the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Hubbard 60). In the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the latter of the two exists without the use of the superego, a characterization trait associated with modern psychopath classification, and therefore lets instincts of freedom and temptation engulf his personality.
Mr. Hyde lives without conscience and, as Theodore Dalrymple asserts, is the epidemiology of evil (Dalrymple 24). Dalrymple elaborates further in his analysis of the novella and discusses the very nature of Jekyll's transformations. As it would appear, with each metamorphosis of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, the alteration back becomes increasingly difficult. Further, as Dr. Jekyll remains Mr. Hyde for extended periods of time, the chemicals that transformed him begin to lose stamina and require larger doses to change the men back into his normal state. This change directly reflects the very nature of sin. Dalrymple asserts the idea if a person practices evil, they will become evil because character is habit.
Society receives a metaphorical stabbing as well in Stevenson's novella, as the views of the gentleman indirectly refer to a figurative mask that every fine man wears to hide his Hyde. Kevin Mills asserts that the story reflects upon the self as an unrecognizable stranger used as a masquerade of sorts (Mills 339). As the story shows, even Henry Jekyll, respected man and practiced medical doctor, secretly holds desires of murder and chaos within the depths of his soul. Jekyll represents the every man of the Victorian Era, who holds the chemicals of desire and temptation within himself but conforms to the gentlemanly perspective of society.
Hyde shows to be an extensive metaphor of the hidden sins of man, while Jekyll symbolizes the mental mask that each man uses to hold each sin in an invisible state from the views of society. As Steven Arata discusses, Jekyll and Hyde appeared to be written in part to critique its very readers for the conformity and secrecy each person engulfs himself in (Arata 195). This critique does not fail to include each individual. In fact, the author mocks his own profession with the embodiment of the criticism of English gentlemen. Ridiculed by the author for its further meeting between separate aspects of society, another intention for criticism by the novella resides in the founding of the Society of Authors in the 1830s (196). Most of Victorian society remains included in the critiques embodied by the writer's use of symbolism.
While The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde contains vast amounts of symbolism of the critiques of mankind, further examination of the story may drive one to characterize Dr. Jekyll as one would in modern society: a victim of bipolar disorder. In current days, the drastic and constant alteration of personality and morals may conclude to the analyst that the victim in fact suffers from a form of this condition. Dr. Jekyll's intoxication of the evil and disfigured Hyde directly identifies with modern society's views of how any occupant of society may lash out in a psychological dysfunction by cause of a medical condition. The novella relates to immense numbers of psychological conditions over the centuries of its publication that still remain in today's world.
by
rhaweth (student)
