Explore the Significance of the Character Edward Hyde and the Way he is perceived by Readers in Dr

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Explore the Significance of the Character Edward Hyde and the Way he is perceived by Readers in Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde

In 1859, when the book was written class and religion was very important to the Victorians. People were given more respect if they were higher class. Hyde represents a very low class and doesn’t have a lot of admiration from other people. Hyde has a house in Soho and always uses the back door leading to Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory because Jekyll is ashamed of him and doesn’t want anyone to connect Hyde to himself because he does not want to damage his reputation. The front door symbolises that this is what he wants people to think of him, that’s why he does not use it with Hyde because he is seen as a monster.

Hyde would be seen by the Victorian audience as evil and devilish, he is described as ‘a gust of devilish fury’, and people would be scared of him because of his deformity and the way he looks. Dr. Jekyll is upper class and if anyone found out that he was associated with Mr Hyde, who was the lowest of the lower class then he would lose all his respect he had gained.

Jekyll creates Hyde because he wants to fulfil his needs to be wrong and do things that he couldn’t do as his normal self. He was fond of things that society didn’t approve of and was tired of hiding in his real personality. This suggests that the class system in Victorian was very wide; there were strict rules for upper class and hardly any rules for the lower class.

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It was immoral for Jekyll to create Hyde for his own enjoyment and to satisfy his curiosity because people aren’t meant to change the way they are born and bought up. He shouldn’t hide the fact that he wants to be different and should either be one or the other, not both. He abuses his scientific knowledge to make this happen, the readers perceive Hyde as a scientific mistake or something that shouldn’t have happened.

The genre of the novel can vary between everyone because it has many genres. A lot of people view it as a mystery ...

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