‘Licking the Chops of Memory’

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is hierarchical in its very title—alphabetically Hyde precedes Jekyll, but Jekyll’s superior education and culture are associated with social status whereas Hyde’s ‘Mr.’ is a courtesy title often hedged in with demonic or animalistic terms. But despite the division insisted on in the title, Jekyll’s wilful complicity in the fate that overtakes him is suggested in a series of clues, ranging from his symbolic association with vivisection to the ostentatious exclusion of a female voice (typically the source of spiritual guidance or inspiration in Victorian fiction). As Hyde engages in an ascending scale of brutal acts, beginning with the assault of a child, the middle-class male peer group attempts to exculpate or protect Jekyll from association with this rebarbative and criminal figure. But following the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, the climactic discovery of Hyde’s body provides the final evidence against Jekyll himself—in rejecting the possibility of religious salvation, he has deliberately chosen the evil that his final statement presents as the ‘assault’ of an ungovernable temptation

Advertising · Art · Courtesy · Media studies · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Temptation · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Textual Hyde and Seek

  Robbie B H Goh•Journal of Narrative Theory•1999

  Añadir item

• Character Crisis

  Open Access•Benjamin D O’Dell•Victorian Literature and Culture•2012

  Añadir item

• Robert Louis Stevenson's Evolutionary Wordsworth

  Open Access•Trenton B Olsen•Victorian Literature and Culture•2016

  Añadir item

• Jekyll and Hyde, Inc

  Open Access•Kristen Guest•Victorian Literature and Culture•2016

  Añadir item

• Dr. Jekyll's Two Bodies

  Martin A Danahay, Martin Danahay•Nineteenth Century Contexts•2013

  Añadir item