society. The more Frankenstein occupies the "charnel houses" of his adopted hometown and removes himself from the company of other students, the deeper he falls into questionable practices that others would not understand. Frankenstein is convinced that his work is valid, but he knows others will not see things the same way: the novel makes the reader question whether the creature is the monstrous thing, or if it is Frankenstein himself who is the monster for having behaved so unnaturally in attempting to create life. 

Dr. Jekyll, too, condemns himself to a life of isolation, but in his case, the "monster" is part of himself. There is no question as to whether he or the creation is the evil element: the suggestion is that, by conducting his unnatural experiments, Jekyll has let loose the buried immoral part of himself that, perhaps, exists in all humans. As Mr. Hyde continues to commit increasingly depraved crimes, Jekyll must sink further into isolation, reaching a point where he cannot control the emergence of the beast within. Like other late Victorian works, such as Wilde's Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explores fin-de-siecle concerns about immorality and criminal degeneracy as potentially only hovering below the surface, awaiting any moment to escape and wreak havoc.