The sources that influenced the writer and characters
1.1 The effect of society on the writers Robert (Louis Stevenson and Mary Shelley).
Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a classic example of Victorian English fiction. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is also a great novel of literal mastery where we see a creature is put to observe his creator but not to live his own life. It is also considered as a part of the Victorian English literature and based on European background. In both the novels, we see the authors to have dealt with individualism with bit of twist. This twisted individualism, is referred as dualism in psychology. It is a psychological disorder, known as the dualism. Dualism commonly indicates the mind and body dualism or refers to the idea that the mind and body are separate, which means it has been between two opposing characteristics of a single person.
In both the plot we see the main character to be desirous of inventing something of such magnanimous scale to become world’s leading scientist and innovator. Their works lead them to gore consequences but cannot make them stop or holding their work. Rather, in both instances of the novels, we see the main characters to encounter lots of horrifying incidents that denote immoral stands of them. Puzzled by the immoral experiments outcome, both Dr. Jekyll and Frankenstein had to meet tragic death. But their death was necessary for the authors to construct their underlying message behind their works. In the following section we shall be comparing, analyzing and reviewing these works to understand what and which messages each of these authors attempted to deliver to their contemporary readers through reflecting the time and the society.
إقرأ أيضا:طريقة عمل بحث جامعيThe work of R L Stevenson is unique not only in terms of its story plot but also for the time it represents and the characteristics of the people, the readers he has related with his work. Stevenson, who was raised with Calvinist upbringing, was religiously influenced from his mother and motivated to become an engineer like his father. Stevenson bridged between strong religious beliefs and scientific thinking of engineering. This is two utter bipolarity of Stevenson’s personal life and living. After his studies Stevenson extensively travelled into Europe and most of his earlier writing were based on adventure. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came in 1886 and showed that Stevenson was still under the influence of Calvinist upbringing. He posed strong interests in analyzing the characteristics and natures of evil. (Rosenberger, 2013)
At the Victorian age, the Calvinist practices involved total deprivation, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of saints. At that time the Londoners were greatly influenced by religious practices and beliefs and their daily life was greatly a demonstration of their religious participation. The Victorian England was free from violence, expression of emotion and sexual appetite in the public places. Everything was sober, dignifying and morale. When this actually would make one happy for the people for not committing any crime and living a saintly life – R L Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a throwback to that society. Stevenson showed that human’s being good and bad are natural and one cannot skip and escape from his or her own naturalness.
إقرأ أيضا:معنى الصراع التنظيمي أو النزاع التنظيميLife in the Victorian England was too artificial, formal and based on public perception that undermined the individual differences and set expression of individualistic as a taboo. Being too cultured and civilized, the British people, would be losing its might to the rest of the world. With his work he showed that if people try to pretend, act and be what they are originally not, then they are the living dead soul. The very end of Dr. Jekyll is reflective of the fact. Stevenson did not admire the Victorian social system of London at that time and believed that it was a dead society which is running from itself, running to hide itself from its true identity and ultimately will have to accept tragedy. Stevenson greatly remained successful in delivering his message to his audience.
On the other hand, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus is another great novel and English classic written in letter form. The work surrounded on the urge and desire to know the god or creator of the creature and a commentary reconciliation of personal perceptions and believes. It involved several acceptance and approval of thoughtful discourses and remained firm in presenting the message that in order to understand god it is not necessary to go by the dogmatic structure of the religious beliefs. Enlightenment of god can also be received through spiritual development and through humanistic development. Self-realization is at the heart of the answer for the question that seeks the true identity of God and his creation.
إقرأ أيضا:الخطوات الأربع لتركيز أفضلIn addition to that, It is important to realize that Shelley strongly rebuts the common misconception that poetry is mimicry of nature that sets its sights on amusing readers or making them happy. Instead, he accentuates that a genuine poem is just like a spring from which knowledge, rationale and pleasure pour out. Hence, it can be concluded that composing a poem is not as shallow as Plato alleged. It requires considerable amount of subtlety, genius, inspiration and imagination which endorse the fact that it is not an image of an image or a duplication of a copy. (MOHAMMADI, 2019, p.117-120 )
Frankenstein, the main character of the novel, was a young university student, poised by questions relating to god and his creature, started a secret life. In his secret life, he gathered as much knowledge as he could and started stealing body parts. When wanted to give life back to those body parts. And during the search process, he gathered different body parts from different places and used electricity to make them living. But his study did not give him result. He understood of committing an error. The creature turned ghastly and went beyond Frankenstein’s control. At a point the creature leaves Frankenstein’s laboratory. Frankenstein finds him back in Geneva and strangely, he was accused of causing death to his younger brother, by a maid. The maid detailed that it was Frankenstein who killed his younger brother and even Frankenstein have found his creature in the murder place.
Frankenstein got very angry and tried to prosecute the young maid for the murder. Then we see Frankenstein to be wandering at mountain and confronting his own creation. The creature unfolds the story of murder. According to the creature, after leaving the laboratory it went by the countryside and realized that his appearance is frightening to people. So, the creature started traveling by night and eventually learnt to read and speak. At his voyage he took shelter at a poor farmer house and helped them in whatever way he could as a kind gesture to them. Being sympathetic to the poor farmer, the creature becomes his friend. But once all the clan men of the poor farmer returned and saw the creature by the farmer, they all left the farmer. The creature was so angry with the incident that he put fire on the farm. Then on his way to Geneva, the creature attempted to save a drowning child but his appearance again made people to frighten. He remained as a cause of horror to all the people.
At the end of telling his story the creature explained that Frankenstein made him so lonely that he needs a mate to remain happy. The creature agreed to leave the kind human once and forever if he gets a mate. Frankenstein returns by promising that he will make a mate for him. But due to unavoidable courses of the story plot, he could not end up making one. This thing agitates him again and the creature returns to kill Frankenstein’s bride, his sister and others on Frankenstein’s wedding night. Frankenstein realizing the intention of his creature, decides to kill it by himself and starts to hunt it back to the North pole. But he could not make it as the creature returned on the boat and expressed his remorse and sets its build his own funeral.
Mary Shelley takes on the role of the monster in this novel, not its creature; As she – just like the beast – found herself in this world alone, without a mother, then she was abandoned by her father, and she was rejected by society and friends. Perhaps Shelley wrote this novel to turn around her father’s sympathy by explaining the consequences of the abandonment of the creators to their creatures, as well as the abandonment of the fathers to their children as if she were saying to him: “I am lost, lost, torn like this monster, my father.” As the beast did – if their parents abandoned them. Shelly has taken in her novel, according to the vision of Charlotte Gordon, describing all social outcasts, threatening the society that they will turn on them, and destroy them, as a monster did.
Shelley, who was fully aware that her society wanted women to marry and have children, not to write novels telling about deformed monsters and mad scientists, wrote this novel to express herself through it, and every woman who crossed the limits set by society. As a result, she became a lonely outcast. This novel, whose fame lies not only in being the first science fiction novel, but in being a first-class psychological horror story, we will notice the absence of any female characters influencing the events, and that men are the main drivers of events; Which may make you feel that Shelly only wanted to say that the complete absence of the role of women in society will make it a society full of errors, but you definitely will not be able to pass a feeling of sympathy and compassion, leaving it to leak to you towards the monster of Mary Shelley rejected by its maker.
1.2 The Romantic literature and Gothic tradition in Frankenstein:
In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley harmoniously combines features of Romantic literature and the Gothic tradition when describing various themes such as nature, the supernatural, and the Romantic hero. Coming from a family of authors, and being a married to the acclaimed Romantic poet Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley’s Romantic ideas are projected throughout the progression of the plot of Frankenstein. However, although Frankenstein does not rigidly conform to the typical Gothic novel, the Gothic genre in Frankenstein is very present and compliments the Romantic elements, giving the novel a unique place in literary canon.
Features of the Gothic novel are extremely prominent in Frankenstein, notably at the point where Victor forms his monster, conjuring a sense of horror and revulsion. In collecting dead limbs for his monster, Victor nonchalantly states: “Darkness had no effect upon fancy: and a churchyard was to me merely a receptacle of bodies…” (Shelley 52). The way in which he is so unaffected by the haunting, repulsive nature of his task emphasizes the horror and contributes to the Gothic element in the novel, as naturally the reader would find this horrifying, and more frightening that just a “mere receptacle of bodies.” The motif if the graveyard, is especially significant to the historical context of Frankenstein, as Shelley was writing at a time where graverobbers would steal freshly buried bodies to dissect and examine for medical purposes, which is perhaps where she drew inspiration from for her gruesome character.
Also, having lived near a graveyard herself, Shelley is perhaps reflecting her own ideas, and feelings of normalcy surrounding death; being all too familiar (Richardson, 11). The victorious truth is the true reality about the hideous method of creating his monster, accentuates the Gothic horror and suspense surrounding the creation of the monster. The monster itself is a Gothic creature in the sense that characters in the Gothic novel tend to merge the finite and supernatural, which is exactly Shelley’s intent in her portrayal of Victor’s monster. The monster is human like in appearance and rationale, yet frightfully superhuman at the same time: “His limbs were in proportion…his yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath, his hair was of a lustrous black.” (Shelley, 58)
The monster’s appearance is strikingly human yet simultaneously supernatural and frightening: “its jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks”(Shelley 62). The imagery of its human organs, such as arteries, with distortions, “black lips” (58) conjures fear and horror toward the human-like monster. Yet, although appearing human-like, its supernatural traits create an even stronger sense of horror, notably when the monster faces a gunshot, takes a bullet, and yet continues on his travels. After being “inflamed by pain” (143) from being shot, “the ball had entered my shoulder…I know not whether it remained there or passed through,” (144) the monster is able to continue on his pursuit of revenge.
The euphemism of “ball” to describe the bullet from the monster’s perspective, illustrates the supernatural side of the monster, amplifying its Gothic identity. A bullet which kills human is merely a “ball” in its shoulder because it is invincible. This simultaneous mortal yet supernatural contrast of the monster increases fear of its very being, in line with the Gothic tradition. However, the monster is not solely a representation of the Gothic, and in fact also displays poignant themes of Romanticism; with the monster being the Romantic hero. The characteristics of the Romantic movement are its rebellion from society, its focus on the individual and the oppressed, and expression of emotion. Frankenstein’s monster is the representation of the alienated of society, those who are sidelined and not given a voice.
Through the monster’s struggle to survive whilst being shunned, Shelley speaks out against the rejection of the unconventional, rejected members of society which elicits sympathy. This notion of being shunned and marginalized, reaches its peak in the novel when the monster begs Victor to understand his irreconcilable plight, living alone, cast aside because of his inability to integrate. The monster is surprisingly rational: “I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?” (Shelley 147). Despite the murders the monster has committed, Shelley evokes sympathy from the reader, and the use of rhetorical questions continuously used by the monster, “Cursed cursed creator! Why did I live?” (Shelley 138) gives the monster a strong stance against his creator. The sympathy and intense emotion expressed by the monster here, is symbolic of the Romantics (Montweiler 52).
Normally, we hate being made to sense humility. Almost no one desires to get to know his/her triviality and unimportance nor do we want anyone to jog our memory on how minor and low-ranking we are. Assuredly we get affronted and resentful. Sublime connotes uplifted, immense and high-reaching. In modern use though, it implies a very pleasant thing; for instance, a sublime glass of champagne, a sublime plate of scrambled eggs with truffles, etc. Lyotard (1994, p. 52) maintains that “it might be said that in the sublime feeling, thinking becomes impatient, despairing, disinterested in attaining the ends of freedom by means of nature”.
Unquestionably, Romantic writers were particularly fond of nature. For them, the elements of Mother Nature such as streams, plains, canyons, etc. were sources of exaltation, admiration, peril, fascination, achievability and even consternation leading to their experience of sublime; that is why the notion of sublime is of a paramount significance for the Romantics.
Given that, they assert that upon encountering natural surroundings, a sense of fear and majesty overwhelms the onlooker right away which is not easy to express and make it understood. Perhaps the reason why Romantic poets overvalued nature was that it was too intricate to be expressed or discovered through reason or based upon human’s intellectual faculties. Thus they resorted to sublime which was beyond the scope of human wisdom and theoretical knowledge. According to Brady (2013, p.107), “the Romantic Sublime extends Kantian ideas, bringing out the metaphysical dimension in ways that reveal connections between concrete particulars and an expanded sense of the self beyond the individual”.
To clarify, once we see a gigantic waterfall, it gives us a sense of might, captivation, liveliness, dread and praise. In other words, sublime is the output of the combination between nature and arousal of strong feelings. It goes without saying that the Romantics’ use of sublime was a reaction against the Enlightenment emphasis on science and reason. As a matter of fact, sublime needs to be practiced and learned by oneself. Romantic poets unanimously underscored the individual experience of the observer since it is different from one person or scene to another.
As Gunderson (2015, p. 85) puts forth, “the sublime spectator beholds a spectacle as bright as if the noon-day sun shone on it: the death of everything. Men, lands, Mountains, Seas: everything will be destroyed”. A case in point is when one sets off to experience harmony, order and peace in nature once by hiking the very large hills and once via going on voyage by himself. In fact, sublime is a sheer personal emotion which can by no means be put into words. According to Shelley, only poetry can express it. It should also be pointed out that sublime causes the beholder to touch a sense of nothingness before the nature. Vallins (2003, p. 95) conceives that “Coleridge described the Sublime as contradistinguished from the beautiful.
Beauty consisted in the relation of parts to the whole. The sublime was an image of which you neither see the wholeness, nor the parts”. In the meantime, Coleridge stressed the annihilative aspect, drive and vigor that we occasionally get from the sublime nature; as well as folks’ debility before nature, all of which form in us a sense of sublime. End of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century were coincided with a wide variety of social, cultural and political metamorphoses which provoked and expanded a different understanding of sublime way beyond the tangible nature.
As postulated by Bloom (2010, p.5), “First and foremost, the sublime is a certain kind of linguistic event, a mode of discourse that breaks down the differences and involves a merger between speaker (or writer) and hearer (or reader)”. Sublime is considered as one of the most splendid qualities in literature. It deals with grandeur of a physical shape, thought, emotion as well as spirit. The contemporary definition of sublime is manifested in the form of linguistic excellence and phraseology; also it does provoke ecstasy. It is generally assumed that a piece of literature builds up quite a reputation for its literary devices, stylistic elements, diction, musicality, thought, etc., nevertheless, sublime, I suppose, acts as a driving force and impetus to picture the moral, emotional and imaginative aspects of a literary man’s work.
As a way of illustration, an ever-widening gap amongst social classes, the ostentatious facilities of the privileged families with mansions, lands and cultivated fields, early technological and philosophical advancements and finally increasingly exacerbating political conditions awoke people and made them look around themselves with astonishment, reverence and apprehension once more, but this time quite differently which turned a new chapter as for the novel comprehension of sublime. Then again, Vallins (2003, p.7) argues that “as Coleridge himself puts it in a comparison of the beautiful and sublime, No object of Sense is sublime in itself; but only as far as I make it a symbol of some idea”. Then again, for Romantics, solely a prodigious mentality is capable of generating sublime and it can entice brilliant deliberation; it has the power to brighten every single entity just the way fire boltdoes.
Moreover, it occurs quite instantly and demonstrates the individual’s total power in that particular instant. Romantic poets also hold that sublime is a learnable concept, that is to say it has nothing to do with intrinsic traits of man. Additionally, they state that pure and genuine sublimity neglects its interlocutors’ interests, lifestyle, attitudes and dialect; instead, it does inspire them to be overcome by happiness and fascination. Likewise, Stokes (2011, p. 144) suggests that “the sublime is the point when a form (in some cases, like the metaphysical lyrics, the world itself) can no longer be perceived with gradation, part, whole and distinction, but only as boundlessness and all-ness”. For Romantic writers, sublime is such a strong stimulus that can raise human spirit, levitate his thoughts and moderate his strong desires.
On the other hand, sublimity can lend to using appropriate poetic terms, literary devices, decoration of style of speech and even glamorizing syntactic texture. With the arrival of the 19th century and rather to the end of the Romantic period, sublime roughly became people’s everyday issue. Back then, art was on the verge of flourishing whose nobleness was not assessable and in some sense, it turned into something daunting which appealed to the public because up until then, people’s lifestyle was of a routine and monotonous trend of the same old the some old; however, with the advent of revolutions that went above, the concept of sublimity was coined and emerged which later became a fundamental and principal term employed by the Romantics.
In summary, as reported by Frey (2010, p. 136), “in rewriting the Romantic Sublime, Austen replaces the vision that the Romantics usually accord to imagination with tenderness”. What is more, the driving force behind sublime was a particular type of force that could be reinforced by imagination. This imagination is not supposed to create only positive feelings like pleasure, excitement, expansion of supreme human emotions, etc., but it also has the power to generate adverse feelings such as horror, bad dream or experience, disgust, and so on. Besides, Edmond Burke as well elaborated on sublime spelling it out as a peculiar sense merged with amazement and dismay which will be discussed in the following. With respect to beauty, Silverman & Aylesworth (1990, p. 112) maintain that “The beautiful achieves a conformity to the law of the judgment in its freedom in the regular and well-proportioned play of the faculties of imagination and understanding, whereas the sublime achieves it in the relation between imagination and reason”.
It is said that the Romantic definition of art is of two major qualities: beautiful and the sublime. As for beautiful, there are a wide range of views as to what makes something beautiful. Many of these traditions converge on the idea of beauty as a positive or pleasurable thing. Hedonists, for example, might contend that various entities and phenomena become stunning because they delight or please people. Taking a conventional understanding of beauty into account, one may declare that an object can be called charming due to its accurate and consistent array of constituent components. A case in point could be a dulcet tune which has the potential to create joy and bliss because of its harmony. In other words, the parts are arranged in such a way that they are sound or proper into a whole. In addition, still others equate beauty to love, but generally the commonality between these conceptions could be the fact that beauty is of an affirmative essence no matter via delight or its interconnection with passion. Some people claim that it is through unity.
Nevertheless, there are some conceptions that attribute beauty to something other than these. But this is kind of a general and more common view. Regarding sublime, on the other hand, just as there are cornucopias of views as to what beauty is, conceptions of the sublime are quite varied as well. Unlike the beautiful which is merely positive and pleasurable, the sublime is not only an intermixture of good or pleasing, but of bad or menacing. ( MOHAMMADI, 2019, p.117-120 )
Another Romantic facet to the novel, is the depiction of nature, when Victor retreats to the mountains in Geneva to find solace after the deaths on his account. Although in a “painful state of mind” (Shelley 76), Victor finds comfort as “[he] contemplated the lake: the waters were placid: all around was calm; and the snowy mountains, the ‘palaces of nature’, were not changed” (Shelley 76). Throughout his tremendous inner suffering, Shelley infuses the Romantic appreciation of nature being sublime and transcendent which is evident with Victor marvelling at nature to find restoration and protection.
The intricate punctuation, and series of colons emphasises the Romantic feature as it creates small pauses, which illustrates Victor’s wonderment, slowly taking in his sublime, natural surroundings. Shelley in fact makes a direct reference to Lord Byron’s poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “palaces of nature”, which is an expression of how the grand mountains and nature as a whole have the all the answers to the world’s unknowns, and are the gatekeepers of truth. Shelley is known to have been well acquainted with Lord Byron, and hence influenced by his Romantic ideas. The Romantic movement being a reaction to industrialisation, and its focus on nature is extremely prevalent here as Victor is really tuning in the natural world, a higher source, to find comfort, highlighting the novel’s Romantic stance.
Nature, however, is not solely portrayed Romantically in Frankenstein, and in fact the weather is manipulated by Shelley as pathetic fallacy to express the dark, evil atmosphere after Victor has realised that his monster was responsible for the initial murder of the story; of William: “The thunder ceased, but the rain still continued and the scene was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness.” (Shelley 78). Although retreating to the magnificence of the Alps, Shelley infuses the Gothic genre with pathetic fallacy to emphasise how a guilt-ridden Victor has become. The thunder perhaps represents his panic after discovering that the culprit was the monster, however, after the thunder ceases, and “an impenetrable darkness” falls, which is Shelley alluding to a heavy haunting guilt that falls upon Victor because of the death(s) he has caused, which is an inescapable and “impenetrable” reality. Moreover, being that pathetic fallacy is a feature of the Gothic novel, the darkness could be interpreted as foreshadowing the future evils that Victor’s monster will commit, and how Victor has lost all control by creating this supernatural monster, which accelerates the suspense.
Overall, it is the fusion of the Romantic and the Gothic genres that makes Frankenstein unique. The monster itself is multi-faceted, and can be viewed as a malevolent Gothic character, yet with a broader understanding of the historical context, and its Romantic context, being that Mary Shelley was inspired by Lord Byron, and being the husband of the Romantic poet Percy Shelley, it is clear that Frankenstein is not privy to one genre and is a combination of both. The expression of nature which in itself is a notorious feature of the Romantic movement, is also portrayed with an element of Gothicism. Shelley manages to juxtapose the Romantic beauty with Gothic horror, fear against sympathy in order to highlight the complex nature of humankind and its judgment and its societal errors.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are rightly regarded as a novella that belongs to a late revival of the Gothic genre. Yet, we must specifically place the novella in the ‘decadent Gothic’ of the 1890s. The Gothic explores the horrors that human beings have to be faced with and how they face them. One of the outstanding features of the Gothic that we find in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the usage of the figure of the Doppelgänger. The word Doppelgänger is originally a German term which the literal translation corresponds to ”double – goer”. The Doppelgänger is a shadow self of a human being, usually believed to be in the form of a ghost or a spirit. Yet the tradition also recognizes the Doppelgänger as a double of a living person, one who is subject to the same conditions as the original human being.
Mr. Hyde has mostly been considered a counterpart of Jekyll. However, they are both physically and morally different. This is also in line with a Victorian fascination with ghosts and phantoms since they are largely the result of mental emanations or projections. Indeed, Hyde is not recognized as a human being but as a creature resulting from an experiment. When analyzing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, we must inevitably consider the idea of Hyde as Jekyll’s Doppelgänger according to the Gothic tradition, following the critics who have agreed that the core Gothic theme of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the Doppelgänger.
However, when moving out from the Gothic tradition in analyzing the novella, the creature might be considered as the result of a scientific experiment. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde can be entirely read as a record of a scientific experiment where Hyde is not a Doppelgänger but a result, a consequence or even a failure of an empiric endeavour. The Gothic tradition of the novel is not being denied but kept aside in order to focus on the scientific dimension of the novel. This allows us to explain the psychological level of the novel and how the anxiety of the fin de siècle was captured in literature. We should consider then that the figure of the Doppelgänger in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is more of a metaphor for the double nature of man than a real portrayal of two separate individuals that are biologically the same.
It means that Gothic background of the novella is the ideal setting for recounting the story of a ‘strange case’. The society in which the story plot unfolds and the tensions between science and religion does not make it easier for the scientist to rely solely on a single line on enquiry. Moreover, the blurred boundaries between science and the supernatural (or ‘uncanny’) in the 19th century prevent Dr Jekyll from finding an accurate, specific and scientific answer for his strange transformation into Mr. Hyde.
1.3 The Id, Ego, and Superego in R L Stevenson novel’s according to Freudian concepts:
The issues raised in the novel find resonance with the Freudian concepts of instincts, life and death instincts, and the structural theory of the mind propounded by Freud. Freud defined instincts variously but most cogently as “a concept that is on the frontier between the mental and somatic, as the psychical representative of the stimuli originating from and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demands made upon the mind for work in the consequence with its connections with the body.”
Freud developed the theory of instincts in relation to the concept of libido and the consequent foundation of the psychosexual phases of development. However, aggression as a component of the libidinal drives became increasingly important and could not be ignored. It was therefore elevated to the status of a separate instinct. It was further realized that humans were neither exclusively nor essentially good.
Freud introduced his final theory of life and death instincts in 1920. Freud postulated that the death instinct is a dominant tendency of all organisms and their cells to return to a state of inanimateness. The death instinct represented the aggressive instincts and Freud later separated the libidinal and aggressive instincts from the ego and located them in a vital stratum of the mind which is independent of the ego. This line of thought led to the further differentiation of the psyche as per the “Structural Theory” into the id, ego, and superego.
The characters in the novel manifest characteristics of the structural theory of the mind. Mr. Hyde would seem easily recognizable as the id, seeking instant gratification, having an aggressive instinct, and having no moral or social mores that need be followed. He takes pleasure in violence and similar to the death instinct ultimately leads to his own destruction. Dr. Jekyll is then the ego; he is conscious and rational, and is dominated by social principles.
He has a difficult time juggling between the demands of the id, represented by Mr. Hyde, and the superego as represented by the proclaimed and implicit morals of Victorian society which prided itself on refinement. Also, it is shocked by the seeming nonchalance with which Edward Hyde indulges in his debaucheries.
In the novel, Dr. Jekyll gives in to his impulses and after initial pleasure soon cannot control their power. Rather than let Mr. Hyde go free and realizing that Hyde needs Jekyll to exist, he decides to end his own life. Furthermore, by labelling Mr. Hyde as a “troglodyte”, Stevenson seems to make a comment on the theories of evolution and that he considered Hyde that is savage, uncivilized, and given to passion: poorly evolved. Edward Hyde represents a regression to an earlier, less civilized, and more violent phase of human development.
Literature is a wide field in which it includes many genres, subjects and styles. A literature work can consist of many subtitles, also, such as historical and scientific knowledge as well as critic, satire and etc. Many of the literature works that we assume as successful in fact deal with more than only one subtext. Either a historical reference or a scientific knowledge has been placed in it.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is mentioned sub texted works. Robert Louis Stevenson witness Freud’s life and studies and they make use of his theories in their successful works. Freud’s personality theory in which includes three drives of our conscious is obviously observed in both works.
Sigmund Freud worked over psychoanalysis during his life and separated the human consciousness into three drives which are controlling and shaping our behaviours from birth to death. Freud believed that personality has three structures; the id, the ego and the superego.
“Superficially, Freud’s functional discrimination seems to repeat Plato’s. The id is the agency of bodily desires, the ego the mediating function, and the super-ego has the care of moral prohibitions.”(Rieff173) The id is Freudian structure of personality that consists of instincts, which are an individual’s reservoir of psychic energy. We are born with the id and it remains within the unconsciousness. It functions according to pleasure principle in that it seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize any discomfort. It is illogical and in search of only pleasure without thought to what is practical, safe or moral.
The ego, unlike the id, functions according to the reality principle and life and during the toddlerhood, particularly during toilet training; children come to realize that they are individuals. The ego is called the executive branch of personality because it uses reasoning to make decisions. The id and the ego have no morality. They never take into account whether something is right or wrong.
The last and moral part of the psyche is the superego. We begin to learn about the rules, norms and values of society at the age of five of six and the children internalize these rules to form the superego with functions as a very strict conscience. “The superego corresponds in many respects to conscience and from it are derived religion, morality and a social sense.”
In a healthy person, Freud asserts that the ego is the strongest one so that it can satisfy the needs of id, not upset the superego and still take into consideration the reality of every situation. It is not an easy job by any means, since if the id gets too strong, impulses and self-gratification take over the person’s life and if the superego becomes too strong, the person would be driven by rigid morals and be unbending in his or her interactions with the world.
The case of the characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson’s book can be shown as examples to somehow excessiveness of Freudian personality theory. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Stevenson’s sayings; Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me.
The two characters of the novella are but one; one body two conflicting characters, the good and evil as we can count as the representatives of the id and superego according to the theory of Freud. While Dr. Jekyll is behaving totally with his superego that has all the values of society, Mr. Hyde represents the id, evil unleashed and transforms him into his evil side, Edward Hyde. Dr. Jekyll holds in his cruel emotions and is a friendly person but when he turns into Mr. Hyde, he becomes a demon and lets out all his emotions. Dr. Jekyll who seems to have total control over himself is the representative of superego, but when he drinks potion voluntarily, he turns into Mr. Hyde, the id, who is a cruel person.
Conclusion
From rationalistic view, the literatures of Victorian era, started to get dominated by romanticism. Mysticism, arts, social values, religion started to take over contemporary thoughts of the thinkers of that time. Most of the literary works at that time were closed to daily life, served moral purpose, followed idealism and dealt with great ideals. They aimed at presenting a large social world filled with classes and stratifications. Most of the novels, as a result, were realistic and tried to place individual in the greater context of the contemporary society. In our discussion we find both the works from Stevenson and Shelley to pursue a protagonist search for fulfilling individuals, emblematic condition.
However, both of the authors wanted to entertain their readers and they remained successful. With numbers of exception, both of the novels attempted to drive social advancement in different forms. When we relate these reflections from both the works to the Victorian period lifestyle of common men, we see that societies of England were very much stratified. The differences between rich and poor were vivid. Rich people, like the major characters in both of the novels, lived their lives where poor people were easily integrated.
Poor people’s life was filled with hardship as seen that they were even quick objects of accusations to crime and criminal activities. Victimizing a poor was easier. Both of the novels depicted that within the stratified social classes, people were highly integrated. Few had many children. Victorians believed that rich people have a gifted life while poor people must work in their house for the food. Religion dominated Victorians to a great extent. Attending church is a social phenomenon. (Knudsen, 2012) (Romero, 2013)
At the time entire Europe was going under expulsive changes that dominated the thought of common people so deeply that they preferred to move to living style that is utterly platonic, saintly. But this was making them hide from their true identity. As a result, the society turned non-progressive which very much intrigued the authors and as a result of their observation, the said novels been produced. The reflections were not only entertaining but remained dominated with enlightening realization for readers of the time.
At the end of the discussion, review and analysis presented in above, between the R L Stevenson’s The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Merry Shelley’s Frankenstein; it can only be said that both the author remained successful in identifying the critical issues, contradictions and conflicts within the individual people and as a group in the society through carefully detailing the life, living and the time. At the time entire Europe was going under expulsive changes that dominated the thought of common people so deeply that they preferred to move to living style that is utterly platonic, saintly. But this was making them hide from their true identity. As a result the society turned non-progressive which very much intrigued the authors and as a result of their observation, the said novels been produced. The reflections were not only entertaining but remained dominated with enlightening realization for readers of the time.
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