Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
In our two-part discussion about Robert Louis Stevenson’s most famous work, we addressed many issues not only specifically about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but also about Victorian society, our attitudes towards good and evil, etc.
One of the discussion prompts asked you to consider a scholarly assessment of the novel’s themes. Some of you did respond to this topic, but since there were many parts to the quotation, there is still more we could tease out.
Look again at this portion of the Jenni Calder quote given earlier:
“The point about Jekyll is not that he is a moral and decent man, but that he has always been leading a double life. And he is leading a double life because he has aimed so high. He wanted respect, honour and distinction, to be highly regarded in society, and thus felt that he had to conceal any irregularities in his life.”
Within the Stevenson lectures, you read a bit about the ways in which late Victorian society indulged in vices (gentlemen’s clubs, prostitution) while adopting a very moralistic and perhaps even holier-than-thou attitude (covering piano legs with velvet so that bare limbs would not be exposed to public view?!) towards anything that did not exactly conform to their standards.
So, it’s possible that a normal ordinary human being—like Dr. Jekyll, who might have had both good and evil, moral and immoral, aspects within one individual—essentially “felt that he had to conceal any irregularities in his life,” especially if he wanted success and respect in his moralistic Victorian society.
But, on the other hand, whether we’re dealing with hypocritical Victorian England or other—more “freewheeling”—periods before and after the Victorian period, what happens when we completely split off and separate two competing aspects of our personalities? (Doesn’t this sort of remind you of Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” possibly? And what happens there?)
Discussion Prompt 1: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Consider the above section, and respond with a FULL paragraph on the following critical analytical question, providing specific details and textual evidence when possible. You may, in this case, also respond with your own personal thoughts on this topic even if it’s not completely tied to the text itself.
To what extent is Stevenson suggesting that the tragedy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde one that is brought about more by the specific cultural contexts of a hypocritical Victorian English society or more generally an issue applicable to the notion of good and evil being inextricably mingled together in the human form and psyche?
Hound of the Baskervilles
Letters and journals again?!
This class, being “World of Fiction,” dealt quite a bit early on about the transition into the NOVEL form and the earliest formats with which this newest genre of literature popularized itself starting mostly in the 18th century.
With the first novel that we studied (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in 1818)—though by no means the first novel ever produced!—we talked about the importance of how LETTERS of Captain Walton to his sister create the FRAME within which the autobiographical recounting of Victor Frankenstein and also the narrative of his Creature (and within it, the story of the De Lacey family) all thrive.
And, of course, since then, we have talked about how other letters (the two that end Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for example) and other frames (that ambiguous one for Turn of the Screw) operate within the world of fiction.
But surely, Hound of the Baskervilles is a murder mystery, published almost a hundred years (in 1901-2) AFTER the first novel we studied—and almost two hundred years after the first notable novels were produced in early 1700s. We must have moved beyond LETTERS and JOURNALS and DIARY ENTRIES of the early novel formats, right? Wrong!
Specifically in Chapter 8, 9, and 10, we have a self-conscious and very aware move on Doyle’s part to cast this novel back into the realm of letters and journals.
Discussion Prompt 2: Hound of the Baskervilles
How do letters and journals operate within Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous work? To what extent are these genres/formats (letters and journals) explicitly necessary or useful to the recounting of this particular tale? What is GAINED, or LOST for that matter, by self-consciously adopting these methods to tell the story for those middle chapters?
In a way, this topic is one that asks you to consider the FORM and the way it relates to CONTENT, how the technical aspects of the way the novel unfolds itself could enlighten the way we understand and receive the thematic aspects of it as well.
Here are the texts for reference:
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. London: Dover Thrift
Editions. 1991. Print.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskervilles. New York: Penguin Putnam. 2001.