From a young age Stevenson enjoyed reading and even when at University he would find time between studying and going out to enjoy a good novel. He was influenced by many writers such as William Hazlitt, Sir Thomas Browne, Charles Lamp, Michel de Montaigne and Daniel Defoe and is thought to have tried to mimic their ways of writing in his own novels. A superb role model was Daniel Defoe who is said, by some, to have been one of the initial founders of the English novel, as before his work most fiction was written in plays or poems.
Stevenson brought about the notion of duality through the character of Dr Jekyll and his evil side, Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll was a middle class doctor who was well respected within his working and socialising community. Along with the rest of his class, Jekyll struggled with keeping his ‘bad side’ away from his usual life. By creating My Hyde, Jekyll had the perfect chance to escape from the perfect Doctor that his friends such as Mr Utterson had come to love. Under the guise of Hyde he could go out, break the law by harming and abusing people, and not get punished for it. It was an easy way to let out his anger and not get caught. Unfortunately towards the end of the novel Dr Jekyll’s conscience started to take over, this is Stevenson’s way of showing that it isn’t as simple as it seems. Although the character of Dr Jekyll was Stevenson’s main representation of duality, there were also smaller things within the novel that were important in this concept. In the first chapter of the book Stevenson immediately bring in duality, the setting being in a street which from one end is dark and dingy and lacking in life, and around the corner being well presented, neat and “drove a thriving trade on the week-days.”
Mr Hyde, Dr Jekyll’s evil creation, was the perfect way for Stevenson to let out his own feelings on how repressive the Victorian society was. Not only was Hyde “particularly wicked looking”, but he also acted with little respect for himself or towards others. Instead of acting like the rest of the middle class people, Hyde kept himself to himself and was pretty anti-social, also, he didn’t think about the consequences of his actions until he was transformed yet again back into his usual form or Dr Jekyll. Like an animal, Hyde used his instincts to tell him what to do, and followed them fully. The imagery of Hyde being animal like is portrayed in the sentence of the book on page 21, “Mr Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of breath”, this gives us the impression of Hyde being a snake like creature. Also on page 52 Hyde is described as “crying out like a rat”.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde couldn’t be more different. They may be the same person in one sense but they are two completely individual people in any other. Dr Jekyll, for example, loves to socialise and be around friends, whereas Hyde would rather be cooped up in his home in Soho or wondering the streets, alone, and finding people to victimise. They are also very different in appearance as well as personality, Jekyll is described to be “a large, well made, smooth faced man of fifty” whereas Hyde is described as a “very small gentleman” who is “particularly wicked looking”. Some things about them are similar though, things that would not change whether you are evil or good, like handwriting or their taste in décor.
The worst of Hyde’s crimes was undoubtedly the murder of Sir Danvers Carew. Along with most of the other evil acts in the book, this happened on a foggy night, which also gives the impression of the surroundings being dark, which symbolises evil. On this night Mr Hyde acted entirely on his own, and if Jekyll had known anything of the incident he would have tried to stop it for sure. Dr Jekyll's character is a complete contrast to Hyde’s as shown when he paid off the family with his own money when Hyde trampled an innocent girl to the floor, fair enough this was also so that he did not end up in court but to risk his own name in the cause of Hyde was a brave thing to do, as he could have just stopped himself from turning into Hyde in the future to avoid being imprisoned. The attacks may have been unprovoked but the sheer fact that they were the complete opposite of Hyde might have offended him, the girl he attacked was completely innocent, just happened that they collided completely by accident. And the murder of Sir Danvers may have actually been because he had been so pleasant to him in the street, was it that Hyde was actually jealous of these people and so viciously and brutally hurt them?
The uses of light and dark seem to play a large role in the book of symbolising the good and evil. All of the attacks by Hyde seem to happen in the dark whereas when Jekyll is about there is less of the mist and fog. Later on in the novel Mr Hyde starts to appear in daylight as well, this may be Stevenson’s way of challenging the stereotype that we have of good being linked with daylight and evil being linked with nighttime. Also the use of the way the street is described which Hyde uses to enter Jekyll’s house, this street is mostly described as being dark and dingy which is linked with the fact that it’s the door which is used by Hyde, the evil one of the pair. This door is also like a passage to a new world, from one side it’s an ordinary side street, but through onto the other a laboratory, where amazing transformations take place, is revealed. It could also be thought that Jekyll is evil by even thinking about letting out his dark side, as he is trying to change what God has given him it could be seen as being disrespectful or that he isn’t happy with his chosen role in life.
In the novel, the way the characters speak is symbolic of their particular role in the story. Hyde, for instance, the evil character in the novel, speaks in short sentences, sounding brutal and direct whereas Jekyll is more well spoken and as he speaks it sounds to be softer and more friendly. Even the words that both of them use are different, Jekyll gives the impression of a well-educated man with a larger vocabulary whereas Hyde will just speak how he wants, with shorter words and less of a range. This is yet another way of showing the theme of duality, which is continued throughout the novel.
The use of more than one narrator also ties in with the theme of duality. Being able to understand the story from many of the involved people’s points of view is important to the reader. Setting out each chapter as a complete view from someone else is a good way to make this clear and precise. To do this Stevenson not only had to think about how he felt as he himself was his main influence for Jekyll, but he had to think about how other people would react and how they would interpret what was going on if they didn’t know the full story. The theme of duality doesn’t just have to be about one person having two sides, but in this case is also represented by the fact that there is more than one person involved and affected.
It is not until we have finished reading the novel when we can truly think about what Stevenson has tried to show us about duality. It was not only Dr Jekyll who was given two sides in the novel; both Utterson and Lanyon were also brought into the theme of duality. It seems to completely depend on the environment in which you live and your surroundings as to how much of your good or evil side you can let out without it seeming inappropriate. Stevenson is saying that humans possess both good and evil and it’s up to the individual person how much of their evil side they let out. Hyde may have been a product of the repressive Victorian society but he was also the product of a man who wasn’t happy with being the perfect role model, everyone needs to be able to let out things and if the only way that Jekyll was able to do that was creating what seems like a monster then that was what had to be done. It would be great to be able to let off steam without having to face the consequences and by creating a good and an evil side to one person Stevenson showed that the only way this is possible is to completely change the human ways. It is therefore shown that if we want to release our evil or bad sides we have to take the consequences for our actions.
