An interesting parallel can be observed between the control that Mr. Hyde exerts over Dr. Jekyll and the restrictive nature of the Victorian society in which Robert Louis Stevenson lived and wrote. In both situations, notions of morality and goodness are challenged by the complexity of human nature and the potential of all humans to commit evil.
In the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, control is a force for evil. Hyde is able to blackmail Jekyll because Jekyll, like most of his compatriots at this time in English history, is highly protective of his admirably spotless reputation. The relationship between the two exemplifies the importance of appearances to people who lived during the Victorian age, both in England (where Queen Victoria ruled) and abroad. During this time, this focus on outward appearances meant that societal regard for order trumped truth and reality, offering corrupt characters plenty of opportunities to take advantage of others and their mistakes, thanks to the fact that all humans have the potential to make errors in judgment and behavior.
The control that Mr. Hyde has over Dr. Jekyll is a literary expression of the control that an individual's dark side has over his or her better qualities. In this novel, Stevenson acknowledges a deeply worrying truth about the two-sided nature of humans, a truth that suggests humans are less in control of themselves than rigid Victorians might feel comfortable acknowledging.
Dr. Jekyll created Mr. Hyde because he wanted to be able to control himself more effectively. He realized, long ago, "that man is not truly one, but truly two," morally speaking. Jekyll wanted to keep his good reputation as an academic, but he also felt pulled in another direction by his sinister or lewd impulses, urges not sanctioned by society. If he could distill that unacceptable part of himself into a separate being, he could more effectively control it by banishing it from his life forever. He says,
If each [side], I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.
In other words, Jekyll found that he could not control his socially unacceptable impulses well enough to protect himself, and so he tried to invent a way of ridding himself of those impulses completely. He could not achieve mastery of himself by way of his own willpower because he was essentially attempting to repress a completely normal part of being a human: the desire to break rules. His experiment was the result of his desire for ultimate control over himself, but it fails. In attempting to gain control, Jekyll actually loses it when Hyde becomes stronger. This suggests two ideas: first, that there is something fundamentally human about the struggle to control our socially unacceptable influences, and, second, that our desire to break the rules of society may ultimately be stronger than our desire to abide by them, that we will always find a way to break the rules because it is simply a part of human nature. Human nature simply cannot be completely controlled.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.