Dr Jekyll and Hyde

Dr Jekyll and Hyde

1. THE OTHER

   • Psychology
     • the body and the mind as a source of horror
     • Explanation for socially unacceptable or abnormal behaviour
     • Late 19th Century
     • Demonic posession
   • Duality
     • Second self
     • Alter ego or alternative personality
     • Doppelganger
     • Paradox of encountering an identical version of yourself - e.g. body snatcher
     • Splitting of the self - one character becomes two, for example, The Incredible Hulk
     • Jekyll describes his life as a 'profound duplicity', himself as a 'double dealer' 'man is not truly one but truly two'
     • Hyde represents Jekyll's secret and repressed desires
     • Hyde's actions: instinctual, sexual, irrational, immoral, violent, urgent and uncivilised
     • Jekyll's actions: professional, polite, rational, moral, measured, civilised
     • Freud - the interaction between the conscious self and the unconscious self
       • Freud - Hyde represents the otherness of the unconscious 'id', which invades the stability of the conscious 'ego'
   • Lacks power but is nevertheless threatening
   • Disrupts the order of things; unfamiliar and unknown
   • Occupies the margins of society - the outsider
   • Degeneration and Atavism
     • Fears about social and biological degeneration
     • Darwinian theories of evolution
     • Examples of degeneration: insanity, criminality, immorality, physical abnormality
     • Hyde possesses atavistic and degenerate qualities
     • Jekyll is progressive and Hyde is regressive
     • Mr Hyde was pale and drawfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice (15)
     • Utterson then continues: 'god bless me the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic'
     • 'Ape like fury'
     • 'masked thing like a monkey'