o The Duality of Human Nature

- Jekyll’s tragedy originates from his belief that a clear limit can be drawn between good and evil, whilst at the heart of humanity lies a knot binding both polarities, often amalgamating them to the extent of a blurred distinction. - He was obliged to kill for the first time so that he would be forever purged of the same desire to kill ever again. In this respect, murder was supposed to be a form of catharsis, the coffin for Jekyll’s manifestation of evil through Hyde. - When he first drank the potion, Jekyll was driven by dark urges such as ambition and pride which led to the emergence of Hyde. It follows that, had the scientist begun the experiment with pure motives, an angelic being would have come to the fore.

THE DUALITY OF HUMAN NATURE

The notion of the “double” was extensively explored during the 19th century, distinctly in German literary discussions of the doppelgänger. The theme was made explicit in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Double (1846), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s classic Frankenstein (1818), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), along with The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), and The Invisible Man (1897) by H.G. Wells.

In philosophy, dualism indicates that the universe contains two radically different kinds of substances which are matter and spirit, or body and mind.23 In this perspective, the ancient Greeks differentiated tremendously the soul and the body as the dictum states: “The body is a tomb.” Therefore, evil was the ramification of an infinite soul trapped in a finite body. Alternately, Descartes described the mind solely as a substance that thinks and matter merely as an extended substance. In this scheme, the psyche is inestimable and thus not open to either understanding or intervention.24

23 Hart WD. Dualism. In: Guttenplan S, editor. A companion to the philosophy of mind. Oxford: Blackwell; 1996. pp. 265–7. 24 Robinson H. Dualism. In: Stich S, Warfield T, editors. The Blackwell guide to philosophy of mind. Oxford: Blackwell; 2003. pp. 85–101.

The types of dualities included in the novel are as follows:

Physical Duality Jekyll vs Hyde

Moral Duality Good vs Evil

Social Duality Public appearance vs Private reality Epistemological Duality Knowing too much vs Knowing enough

In Stevenson’s novel, the protagonist intervenes in his “normal” mental processes and unbinds Mr. Hyde. This persona’s countenance implies “Satan's signature” and has a body that is “something troglodytic”. 25 Not only is the psyche manifested as a process that can be altered by tangible methods, but also that such modification involves a change in the physical appearance.

It is not the chemical or the experiment that is responsible for the emergence of Hyde’s evil, but rather, it is Jekyll’s flawed human nature and repressed impulses that pushed him toward picking the dark side. “This is me, as I take it, was because all humans beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil” (108). Dr. Jekyll grows frustrated with the idea that separating the two forces is absurd. As he carries on with his transformations, Jekyll explains that when he is Hyde, it feels normal, almost as if he enjoyed that version of himself. He states: “Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde” (114-115).

Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” each struggling for mastery. Once unleashed, Hyde slowly overrules, until Jekyll ceases to exist. Both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were real; they both were the same, only opposites.

Human beings possess both kindness and maliciousness, honesty and corruption, and so on. Even though the proportion of each opposing trait vary

25 Stevenson RL. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) New York: Bantam Books; 1981.