The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
In Defense of Mr. Hyde
In 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and entered literary history. The novel’s juxtaposition between good and evil and its exploration of the duality of man have been imitated and parodied countless times since its publication. On the one hand Stevenson offers up Dr. Henry Jekyll, “a large, well-made, man of fifty” (Stevenson 18), philanthropic and well loved, and on the other there is Mr. Edward Hyde, “pale and dwarfish” (15), who “gave the impression of deformity without any nameable malformation” (16). They have been interpreted as two sides to the same coin for centuries; the constant struggle between good and evil. The portrait Stevenson paints, however, cannot be placed …show more content…
Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde should not be examined as the precursor to the horror novel but the forerunner to the existentialist movement popularized in the …show more content…
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is severely distorted. The only testimonies Robert Louis Stevenson offers from after Hyde’s rise to sentience are provided by Henry Jekyll, a man who’s entire reputation is on the line, and a maid servant who is “romantically given” (Stevenson 22). In his essay “Who is Hyde?” Jerome Charyn describes Henry Jekyll as “that common literary pest, the unreliable narrator that tells us ‘everything,’ his wickedest thoughts, but who’s earnestness is a form of evasion” (Charyn 4). Jekyll deliberately distorts and omits information in his confession to Mr. Utterson, admitting “with a greedy gusto, [I] projected and shared in the pleasures of Hyde” (Stevenson 75) but within the same document hypocritically falling back to say still “it was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone that was guilty” (71). The maid who relates the Carew murder displays two major biases in her portrayal of the events: the first being a sensationalist bias, or “favoring the exceptional over the ordinary... [including] emphasizing, distorting, or fabricating exceptional news to boost appeal” (Edward 52) and the second being one of selective perception, “the tendency for expectations to affect perception” (17). Observing the scene from her second story window she describes Sir Danvers Carew, a man she has never seen before, as “an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair” (Stevenson 23) and instantly assumed him innocent, proclaiming his
In 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and entered literary history. The novel’s juxtaposition between good and evil and its exploration of the duality of man have been imitated and parodied countless times since its publication. On the one hand Stevenson offers up Dr. Henry Jekyll, “a large, well-made, man of fifty” (Stevenson 18), philanthropic and well loved, and on the other there is Mr. Edward Hyde, “pale and dwarfish” (15), who “gave the impression of deformity without any nameable malformation” (16). They have been interpreted as two sides to the same coin for centuries; the constant struggle between good and evil. The portrait Stevenson paints, however, cannot be placed …show more content…
Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde should not be examined as the precursor to the horror novel but the forerunner to the existentialist movement popularized in the …show more content…
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is severely distorted. The only testimonies Robert Louis Stevenson offers from after Hyde’s rise to sentience are provided by Henry Jekyll, a man who’s entire reputation is on the line, and a maid servant who is “romantically given” (Stevenson 22). In his essay “Who is Hyde?” Jerome Charyn describes Henry Jekyll as “that common literary pest, the unreliable narrator that tells us ‘everything,’ his wickedest thoughts, but who’s earnestness is a form of evasion” (Charyn 4). Jekyll deliberately distorts and omits information in his confession to Mr. Utterson, admitting “with a greedy gusto, [I] projected and shared in the pleasures of Hyde” (Stevenson 75) but within the same document hypocritically falling back to say still “it was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone that was guilty” (71). The maid who relates the Carew murder displays two major biases in her portrayal of the events: the first being a sensationalist bias, or “favoring the exceptional over the ordinary... [including] emphasizing, distorting, or fabricating exceptional news to boost appeal” (Edward 52) and the second being one of selective perception, “the tendency for expectations to affect perception” (17). Observing the scene from her second story window she describes Sir Danvers Carew, a man she has never seen before, as “an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair” (Stevenson 23) and instantly assumed him innocent, proclaiming his