Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 –1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet and a travel writer. He wrote a novella ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ that was first published in 1886. The book was a very successful one – it was an instant success. The novel is about the duality of human nature. There is an animal hidden inside the man – the evil side of our self. The human soul has been portrayed as the battleground of the good and the evil. The novel is an insight into the working of the subconscious mind.
The following is a paragraph quoted from the novel itself:
“It was a fine ... day.... I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. . . . I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde.”
He also writes: “All human beings ... are commingled out of good and evil.”
Jekyll in this novel asserts “Man is not truly one, but truly two”. Indeed he has voiced here a truth, which we might not accept about ourselves. No matter how honest and truthful we are, we have two sides of our personality. The case of hypocrites is another matter. But even according to psychology there is a difference between the individual and the group behaviour of a student. We see the violent behavior of a mob. But the same individuals when considered one at a time won’t behave in the same way as they did when in a mob. These are the two aspects of the human personality, according to psychology. Jekyll has portrayed the duality of human soul - good and evil - in the novel taking the help from science.
The following is a paragraph quoted from the novel itself:
“It was a fine ... day.... I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. . . . I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde.”
He also writes: “All human beings ... are commingled out of good and evil.”
Jekyll in this novel asserts “Man is not truly one, but truly two”. Indeed he has voiced here a truth, which we might not accept about ourselves. No matter how honest and truthful we are, we have two sides of our personality. The case of hypocrites is another matter. But even according to psychology there is a difference between the individual and the group behaviour of a student. We see the violent behavior of a mob. But the same individuals when considered one at a time won’t behave in the same way as they did when in a mob. These are the two aspects of the human personality, according to psychology. Jekyll has portrayed the duality of human soul - good and evil - in the novel taking the help from science.
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