personas have different appearances and different personalities. They are so different that they are essential opposites of each other. Their opposite nature develops the idea of having two opposite sides to oneself.

Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair.

Dr. Jekyll recognizes Hyde as an evil being. For the most part, Jekyll hates Hyde.

I, who sicken and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.

This quote is interesting because Jekyll admits that he pities Hyde. It also shows that Hyde recognizes the power Jekyll has by being able to commit suicide, therefore killing Hyde as well.

Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde, but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered.

Jekyll separates himself from Hyde and puts the blame all on Hyde. He then tries to "undo the evil."

By the time this short novel was first published in 1886, Queen Victoria had been on the throne of England for nearly fifty years and the codes of Victorian morality had been well established.  Victorian morality is generally understood to refer to values that require sexual restraint, a lack of patience with crime and criminality, and austere and rigorous behavior in general.  However, while people purported to conduct themselves according to such rules, immorality and sordid behavior lurked beneath the surface.  For example, a gentleman might be the model of Victorian morality while he is observed by others, hiding the fact that he visits prostitutes and employs children in a disgusting and dangerous factory when no one is looking.  Rather than grapple with his less-than-moral urges, urges that would render him socially unacceptable, Dr. Jekyll decides it would be easier to simply distill and remove the part of him that longed to indulge in immoral behaviors.  In one person, he embodies the problem with Victorian morality: it led to hypocrisy because human beings cannot be all good all the time -- our nature is dual.  Pretending that we are only good leads to deception and dissembling, both of which prove the point that we are, by nature, rebellious when presented with rules that require us to defy that nature. 

Historically, Stevenson wrote during the Victorian period, the imperialistic reign of Queen Victoria. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reflects the duality that was inherent in London life--indeed in all England's large cities--and revealed in the religious and philosophical ideas prevalent in England at the time, which, in some regards, produced the social dualities arising from the crushing incursion of country people to the cities (and complicated by the startling advances in technology and science, such as geological studies and Darwinism). The incursion of country people came in an effort to reclaim the sources of income they had lost because of industrialization, which made handlooms and spinning wheels obsolete.

The historical conditions of life in London that affected Stevenson's story included living conditions for the upper classes and the poor classes. The upper classes were focused on cushioning life with home-comforts and with pronounced divisions between who thought and did what, for instance, who worked and who didn’t; who was educated where and who wasn’t. Part of this insularization involved elaborate and strictly enforced modes of etiquette--a breach could cause gossip, social shunning, even irreparable scandal.

The lower classes had been forced from "cottage" industries in textiles and foods, and such, into cites where they focused on trying to survive the conditions in teeming "row houses." It was these living conditions, housing 80 percent of England’s population, that caused sanitation related diseases like cholera and typhus. How people lived was a dramatic testament to the duality that surfaced in the Victorian period

The middle and upper classes emotionally and psychologically shut the existence of the struggling teeming thousands out from their minds and focused on extreme moral certitude (i.e., following rigid moral ideas), etiquette, and religious form. The extremity of these moral and religious ideologies was the result of the newly sprung teachings of Benthamism and evangelicalism, another indication of the historical duality influencing Stevenson's writing.

Benthamism was, in brief, a hedonistic philosophy for the modern Victorian person. It taught that self-interest was a person greatest good and that happiness came through the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. As eNotes points out, this philosophy obliterated the concept of moral conscience and the impulses of compassion, charitableness, mercy, kindness self-sacrifice, generosity, and love. Ironically, if there is no true moral conscience, there must be rigid moral rules of conduct and etiquette to impose an artificial order over the true order inspired by conscience and a philosophy of virtue.

The dualistic contrast to this was the new religious ideology of evangelicalism. This focused on a continual self-examination to search for spiritual and moral imperfections and for the moment-by-moment condition of the spiritual soul. This again was a necessary substitute for true spirituality and moral conscience. The reflection of these dualistic historical, cultural, scientific, and ideological conditions are all evident in the thematic dualism of Jekyll and Hyde.

The novel speaks to a condition in which human beings are shown to struggle within both dualities of being in the world.  Dr. Jekyll understands this aspect of his own being in the world:  "With every day, and for both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed ... that man is not truly one, but truly two ... I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens."  For Jekyll, consciousness is understanding that there is an intrinsic division within the consciousness of man.  The elements of construction collides with that of destruction.  

The novel's statement about the duality of man exists in this point.  Consciousness exists in understanding that there is not one singular construction of humanity.  Rather, there are different aspects to the personality of the individual that has to be understood.  The duality of man is one that plagues individuals because social construction tells a different narrative.  Jekyll's desire to understand this aspect of his own being embodies the struggle that the modern individual undertakes.  The understanding of self is one in which multiple visions of the self have to be embraced and fully grasped.  It is in this where complexity exists in the modern predicament for the duality of man creates human beings as complex creatures.

The underlying duality is Victorian social duality. The transformation of English society realized in the rise of a new type of middle class as a result of industrialization led to a resultant transformation that was realized by increased crime, violence and immorality of all kinds due to the absence of the governing constraints of small communities that had censured behavior and encouraged religious and moral deportment. The counterpressure to this disintegration of the moral side of English society was the Crown's emphasis on moral purity that so epitomizes Victorian life, an image that fails however to show the underlying social duality between decay and pursuit of purity. This is the social and cultural background to Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Within the text there are many dualities that Stevenson develops and explores. The primary one, of course, is the duality within Dr. Jekyll that manifests itself in the dramatic duality between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Who should have stayed hidden, eh?). This is a struggle between good and evil, virtuous impulses and base impulses, humanity and inhumanity. Dr. Jekyll, ostensibly an honorable public servant through the good of medicine, struggles with darker impulses that he wants separate from his nobler impulses: He actively wishes to create a duality of his inner psychology. Once this desire is manifest, the greatest duality occurs in the persons of the Dr.'s self, rendered unconscious, therefore belying the possibility of effective manifestation of dual tendencies, and Mr. Hyde's self, a self which eventually overpowers Dr. Jekyll's self, further belying the possibility of the manifestation of independent dual tendencies.

Dr. Jekyll's name represents another level of duality. "Jekyll" is an imperfect rhyme with "jackal," an individual who "performs dishonest or base deeds as the follower or accomplice of another" (Random House Dictionary on Dictionary.com). This is perhaps the saddest duality of all because even while Dr. Jekyll had un-experimented integrity of self and humanity, his name indicates that he was already--and seemingly always had been--the "handmaid," so to speak, of that which was base and dishonest, which is confirmed by his own reasons for undergoing the experiments. This raises a question about the nature of humanity: is there within each person a possibility for choosing between humanity and inhumanity or is it only present in some, and if some, then whom?

This leads to another level of duality that is embodied in Mr. Utterson himself and reinforced in his relationship with Mr. Enfield. Stevenson's description of Utterson sounds, upon an informed second reading, a lot like a description of Mr. Hyde (albeit at Hyde's best...) with the exception that Utterson had something eminently human, "a beacon," shinning from his eyes, which sets him far apart from Hyde, the embodiment of inhumanity. Utterson is Stevenson's contrast to Hyde. Similarly, the relationship between Utterson and Enfield, who is another one with Utterson's traits plus sociability and adventuresomeness, underscores through this doubling of dark characteristics that humanity may dwell within dark natures, dramatizing the duality of humanity versus inhumanity.

Other dualities are the thematic issues of the dual aspects of freedom: Hyde's freedom versus Utterson's and Enfield's freedom; and the duality of integrity versus transformation, which dovetails with the freedom theme.

One of the most notable themes in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is the duality of human nature. There are many possible topics related to this theme for you to explore and debate in your essay. Here are a few suggestions.

Consider the physical descriptions of the two titular characters: Dr. Jekyll is a typical, fully developed man, and Mr. Hyde is unusually small in size and has a strange, almost deformed appearance. What do you suppose is the reason for this physical contrast? How does Stevenson communicate the theme of dualism in human nature through his physical descriptions of these two characters?

Consider the physical descriptions of Dr. Jekyll’s and Mr. Hyde’s respective dwellings: Dr. Jekyll lives in a nice house that has a “great air of wealth and comfort.” Mr. Hyde lives in the decrepit laboratory that is attached to the back of Dr. Jekyll’s home. How do these dwellings reflect the characteristics of their inhabitants? In what ways do these homes and their differences connect to the overarching theme of the dualism in human nature?

Consider the aspect and nature of one’s dark side: Do you believe it is possible to control the dark aspects of one’s personality? Based on the story and its conclusion, what do you think Stevenson’s answer to this question would be?

Consider the spectrum of good and evil in this story: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde represent two extremes: good and evil, respectively. Are there characters in the story who occupy the middle ground between the two opposing forces? If so, who are they, and how do they demonstrate qualities of both good and evil?

The following are some text-based, debatable essay questions for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

1. Dr. Lanyon says of Dr. Jekyll "He began to go wrong, wrong in mind..." How did Dr. Jekyll go wrong, morally and intellectually?

2. Examine Dr. Henry Jekyll's statement of the case, particularly his initial estimate of his own character. To what extent does he corroborate the views of Utterson and Lanyon? Which of them is the most reliable narrator, and why?

3. In popular illustrations and film versions of the book, Mr. Hyde is sometimes shown as a hirsute monster. The way he is depicted in the book is quite different, prompting Utterson himself to ask a question: "God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent?" What does Stevenson have to say about the way in which Hyde's evil nature becomes clear to those who encounter him?

4. Both Utterson and Lanyon express a distaste for the "fanciful." What does this mean, and how far does the author appear to share their view?