Dr. Jekyll's Two Bodies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12154159 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martin A Danahay (Brock University, corresponding author), Martin Danahay |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 23-40 |
| Publication date | 2013-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Nineteenth Century Contexts (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0890-5495 • E-ISSN: 1477-2663 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/08905495.2013.770616 |
| OpenAlex | W2005817140 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 13 |
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Ian Hacking, in analyzing the case for the existence of multiple personality disorder, used the title "Two Souls in One Body;" my title reflects the idea of "one soul in two bodies." While Stevenson may not have meant a physical "body," he does elsewhere argue that it is the task of narrative to give ideas "body and blood in the story" ("A Gossip on Romance," 134) showing a persistent equation of texts and bodies in his mind. Harriet Ritvo in the Animal Estate has noted the confluence of Victorian class and animals. See also Cyndy Hendershot's The Animal Within. The locus classicus for meditations on the identity and clothing is of course Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, with its famous definition of the dandy as a "Clothes-wearing Man...he lives to dress" (197). Anxieties about class and clothing have a long pedigree, dating back to "sumptuary laws" in the Elizabethan period. Men were of course interested in fashion nonetheless. In his striking phrase, Christopher Breward refers to men as "hidden consumers." The opposition between "manliness" and consumerism was not uniform or even. As Kuchta notes in The Three-Piece Suit, some radical commentators argued that "manliness was not incompatible with conspicuous consumption." (145) There was, however, difficulty in distinguishing between "productive consumption" and "wasteful luxury" in the economy of manliness. In using the term "uneven" I am echoing Poovey's thesis about the uneven development of gender ideologies in the Victorian period. For more on the Great Masculine Renunciation see Kuchta, 162-72. It is of course possible to read Jekyll and Hyde within the context of multiple anxieties, not just clothing, because Mr. Hyde is a "meaning machine" as Halberstam has argued; it is this complexity of reference that makes the story so fascinating. Michel Foucault presented this thesis in his History of Sexuality, especially "We Other Victorians." Nabokov was the first to suggest a homoerotic reading of Jekyll and Hyde; Showalter gives an extended analysis of the text in the context of the Labouchère amendment in her chapter "Dr. Jekyll's Closet" in Sexual Anarchy (105-14). While Farr's article sounds like it is a homoerotic reading, it actually reads "boy loving" as a reaction against the feminized domestic space. In his endearingly incoherent way Buchanan is making an astute comment on growing Victorian commodity fetishism. Peter Bailey has referred to this process as the "sexualisation of everyday life" in the final decades of the nineteenth century (167) in an analysis that corroborates Buchanan. Grace Moore also links horror and Jekyll's "bodily sensations" but in terms of masturbation or "self abuse." She also draws a comparison between Utterson as "self-denying" and Jekyll who acts on his desires (153). London was not only a "sensual trap" but as a "monster city" was a rich site for horror, as Dryden argues in her The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles (74-109). For Mighall's term "somatic" in this article I will substitute the concept of the "social body" outlined in Poovey's Making a Social Body (1-24). Lisa Butler also places the story in the context of temperance movements. These terms are linked by Foucault's use of "governmentality" as form of consciousness modeled on government of both the political and the private body. See Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. Moore claims that the hairiness marks the hand as that of a masturbator (155). Dury in his article on "The Hand of Hyde" places this quotation in a rich context of allusions to hands in other texts, noting how this scene registers anxiety about class, the non-human and the coherence of identity (101-16). See also Wexman for the racial anxieties encoded in Mr. Hyde's body. Schulz makes another appearance in Victorian visual culture later in the century thanks to Darwin, who used photographs of his performance in writing the Expression of Emotion as Jonathan Smith notes (220). Prodger's description of the Schultz portfolio makes it clear that it is based on the performance that Hutton reviewed (106). By contrast William Archer in Masks or Faces? raises no controversial questions preferring instead to classify actors according to whether they are "emotionalist" or "anti-emotionalist" and focusing on the "willing suspension of disbelief" in treating an actor performing a part as a real person. There is also a contrast between younger and older which makes this a father/son relationship, as Simmons notes (56). This is the central thesis of Bourdieu's Distinction. See also his analysis of photography in class terms in Photography: A Middle-Brow Art
Aestheticism · Aesthetics · Art · Clothing · Consumerism · Dandy · Ideology · Idiot · Literature · Narrative · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Soul · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.3 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |