Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was my favorite assigned reading of the semester, because it not only kept me entertained through the suspense and well-crafted story line, but it also made me think beyond the framework of the plot. The notion of human duality is fascinating to me, as it allows us to explore the personality that society sees, and also the personality that we may keep hidden behind closed doors. Throughout the text, I found examples of our Classic Categories of moral decision-making as seen in the Victorian time period and Jekyll’s tortured decision to keep his monster at bay.
As discussed in the literary criticisms in the back of the book, Robert Louis Stevenson lived during the Victorian era. The Victorian Era was marked by an age of extreme piousness. Men and women of this time were overly concerned with upholding perfect moral standards, and thus followed social rules and codes of conduct that they believed helped them attain that perfection. I believe that virtue ethics is perfectly displayed in this time period, due to the characters acting in ways that they believe demonstrated the virtues that were important to their society. For example, when Mr. Utterson begins to grow in curiosity and seeks to open the clause of Dr. Jekyll’s will that states “only open in the case of my disappearance,” Mr. Utterson shuts the will inside his safe to ensure that he upholds the virtue of honesty.
When examining Dr. Jekyll’s great moral struggle between giving into his primitive urge to transform into Mr. Hyde, and remaining his morally upstanding self, we see a classic example of consequentialist ethics. Every time Dr. Jekyll mixes up his transformative potion, he must weight the potential consequences of Mr. Hyde being released, or Dr. Jekyll being contained and repressed far too long. Even when Mr. Hyde begins to blend over into Dr. Jekyll’s original form, Dr. Jekyll decides that the potential consequence of Mr. Hyde being allowed unlimited control of his body causes him to decide that the best course of action is to sequester himself to avoid the murderous rampage that Mr. Hyde is capable of.
Besides the obvious connection to moral decision-making, what really intrigued me about this story was its connection to sexuality. During the course of the novel, there is not a single woman that plays a role of any importance. In addition, there are several subtle references to sexual activity in the night when Hyde is released onto the streets. In my opinion, I believe that Hyde could have been portrayed as a homosexual man who was trying to fight his urges due to the social expectations of the Victorian time period. Could Stevenson have been projecting his struggles as a Victorian male into the character of Hyde, or am I reading too far into a literary criticism?