How does Henry Jekyll’s full statement of case of the Case resolve the questions which are raised in the novel?
The shilling shocker “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was written in 1889, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and proved to be very controversial at the time. This was particularly because of Stevenson’s use of implying without directly stating controversial about human nature. The novel shocked readers because it suggested that upper class gentlemen could behave in the same way as a lower class ill-mannered man. During the Victorian era social classes were divided, and the wealthy upper class people rarely conversed with the poor. There are various themes that run throughout the novel. For instance the duality of nature – which versus evil. Most of the unanswered questions at the start of the novel are answered in chapter 10.
By the end of the novel the reader would have learnt much about Dr. Jekyll. In the beginning of the final chapter we learn how he was brought up in an upper class environment and had a very comfortable childhood. We also learn that he had high hopes for the future. “I was born in the year 18 to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future”. Jekyll’s character is one who is generally very considering and caring to his fellow man. He describes himself in his early years as being “fond of the respect of the wise and the good of my fellow men”. We the readers also learn in the novel that Jekyll’s character has a weak resistance and is vulnerable to temptation. Jekyll’s interest in the duality of nature derives from his curiosity in the concept of separating good from evil. It is the possibility that of separating these identities that fascinates him. He conveys this to us in chapter 10 when he says: “I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements”. What Jekyll means by the statement “duality of man” is the intuitive and psychological confusing nature of mankind to be twofold – the state of being two qualities.
