Essay about "the strang case of cr jecky and mr hyde"

Barth María Pía
Literatura Inglesa y su Didáctica 2
Unit 1

3) Write an essay (250-300 words) on the way the theme of
duality is presented and dealt with in “The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll andMr. Hyde “.

Levels of duality in “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde “.

The underlying duality is the Victorian social duality. In the literature from this period, we see a duality ordouble standard, between the concerns of individual and national success. The counter pressure to the disintegration of the moral side of English society was the Crown’s emphasis on moral purity thatso epitomizes Victorian life, an image that fails however to show the underlying social duality between decay and pursuit of purity. This is the social and cultural background to Stevenson’s Dr Jekylland Mr Hyde.

Within the text there are many dualities that Stevenson develops and explores. The primary one, of course, is the within between Dr Jekyll that manifests itself in the dramaticduality between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This is a struggle between good and evil, virtuous impulses and base impulses, humanity and inhumanity. Dr Jekyll, ostensibly an honourable public servant through thegood of medicine, struggles with darker impulses that he wants separate from his nobler impulses, he actively wishes to create a duality of his inner psychology. Once this desire is manifest, thegreatest duality occurs in the persons of the Dr.’s self, rendered unconscious, therefore belying the possibility of effective manifestation of dual tendencies, and Mr. Hyde’s self, a self whicheventually overpowers Dr. Jekyll’s self, further belying the possibility of the manifestation of independent dual tendencies.

Another level of duality is embodied in Mr. Utterson himself and reinforced inhis relationship with Mr. Enfield. Stevenson’s description of Utterson sounds, upon an informed second reading, a lot like a description Mr. Hyde with the exception that Utterson had something...