“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” tells the story about a man named Mr. Gabriel Utterson and his investigation of his good friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Mr. Edward Hyde. The story is centered upon the themes good vs. evil and repression. The author, Robert Louis Stevenson, spends majority of the story expressing his idea of the quality of man. His idea indicates that every human being has a pure, innocent, good side while having a dark, sinful, evil side hidden. Just like Stevenson mentioning duality of human nature, repression is assuredly a cause for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The story is based in the Victorian era where everything from emotions to desires are repressed.
In the beginning, a strange looking figure of man described as a “damned Juggernaut” by Mr. Enfield to Mr. Utterson is mentioned. (10) Mr. Enfield had recalled seeing the figure and another figure, of a small girl, collide with each other and then all of a sudden, something heinous happens. The man calmly tramples the small girl’s body. It is said he had looked as though he was running from someone or something as if he were in trouble. Later on, the identity of the strange figure appears to be Mr. Edward Hyde. Although he did harm the little girl, it was not done intentionally nor out of spite. It is simply an amoral act. Throughout the story, Mr. Hyde is mentioned repeatedly, constantly acting out amorally. He even beats Sir Danvers Carew to death for absolutely no reason other than the fact that Sir Danvers appeared to be a good man. To give an excuse to this disgusting act of crime, a good reason could be that evilness dislikes goodness. All these wicked things happening all at the hands of Mr. Hyde designate him as the evil side of the two dualities.
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As Stevenson has mentioned, just like there is a wicked evilness in every human, there comes a good and innocent side. The good side in this case is within Dr. Henry Jekyll—the other protagonist of the story and who Mr. Hyde belongs. Dr. Jekyll is a prestigious scientist based in London. Coming from a good family with morals and a great education, he is well respected all around. As mentioned in the novel, Dr. Jekyll is a kindly man but deep down he has desires and pleasures that he has to restrain. “…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 life.” (100)
Not wanting to deal with the repression of the evil side anymore, Dr. Jekyll creates a potion intended to separate the elements of good and evil. The potion is in fact supposed to give rid of the dark side and leave him purely good, but instead it leaves him the pure evil side. Robert Louis Stevenson takes a very fundamental approach to Mr. Hyde and how he behaves. He illustrates Mr. Hyde to possess iniquitous instincts within him.
Repression is a tool, which lets a person administer their actions by force, but cannot forever put an end to the displeasing and indisputable human side of everyone that has the potential for their evil side to show. Dr. Jekyll fails to coexist with his inappropriate desires and thus realizes that these desires are primitive and have more strength than any self-control and in the end has taken over his life.
Closing the novel, in his own words appointed as Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case, Dr. Jekyll describes the unintended effect of repression. “I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.” (118) Dr. Jekyll compares his current state to a drunkard’s, in a way saying that both himself as Mr. Hyde, and a person who is intoxicated, are reduced to a state of animalistic impulses. Neither know why they are doing these abdominal deeds. Dr. Jekyll says his evil side or Mr. Hyde, being repressed for so long, had built-up frustrations that exploded. Dr. Jekyll sees Mr. Hyde’s fury as the logical consequences of Dr. Jekyll’s repression of his evil side.
Robert Louis Stevenson gives light to the theory of the duality of human nature, the good vs evil. In a way, this theory could be compared to the old saying of having a “devil” on one shoulder whispering evil things in your ear to act on while having an “angel” on the other shoulder trying to convince you to do otherwise. As you can detain from the novel, repressing these pleasures or desires that are not exactly morally correct, causes Dr. Henry Jekyll introduce the world to an evil man with no morals, Mr. Edward Hyde. Mr. Hyde is a detestable man who should have never enter the world.
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