The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a novella written by Scotsman Robert Louis Stevenson, reveals the two contradictory faces of Victorian culture - while the Victorian period is often marked by a regression to rather medieval social mores, there is always a very seedy underbelly to any "polite society". The story also functions as a critique of scientific progress.
As is obvious to most, Dr. Jekyll is meant to represent the traditional gentleman scholar in Victorian society. Polite, sociable, and intelligent, Dr. Jekyll was the very picture of a modern man for the period. This image persists until we gain a peak into his darker side. Jekyll is a man who craves liberation from the social rigor of Victorian London, something that he is incapable of achieving on his own. He creates a potion to become the man he wishes to be all the time (not unlike how we drink alcohol to become more outgoing versions of ourselves). The creature he unleashes is full of all the dark thoughts that every person puts away in themselves on a daily basis; rage, lust, a desire for amorality. Quite deliberately on the author's part, these things leave him unsatisfied. By overindulging in these things, he destroys himself.
That destruction was a clear moral lesson on the part of Stevenson. He understood that thinking the right thoughts all the time is impossible, something which most of his peers might not. However, he did not shy away from the notion that a man, full of hubris and with a lack of self control, would ultimately be his own destroyer.
That idea ties into the overall mode prevalent at the time. While many celebrated the advent of new technology that might improve their lives, many thinkers of the period wondered if the merits of these new ideas outweighed their risks. Jekyll, like Frankenstein, clearly becomes too involved in his research and the power that it gives him to recognize his own impending doom. Stevenson wants us to think that maybe all of these new ideas aren't all they're cracked up to be.
1. What would you say the ultimate moral of the story is? Is there one? Is there more than one?
I don't think that there is really a moral of the story. I think that is was written more just to express the duality in human nature as you kind of talked about above. I liked how you connected your ideas back to the time period it was written in though.
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