Gothic literature has seen a variety of characters with unstable and deteriorating mental states, often illustrated by a descent into madness. This can begin and end with anything, but in the cases of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, this fall begins with desire and ends with a complete change in identity on the part of the main character. The two novels have some key differences, mainly in specific character motivations - Henry Jekyll is driven mad and corrupted by his desire to act in ways that are immoral and unbecoming of someone of his status, while Dorian Gray is a man who is ultimately altered by his longing for eternal pleasure and beauty. Neither man …show more content…
Further into his letter to Utterson, Jekyll details how Hyde was dissatisfied with the situation, writing, "he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded" (63). However, both entities - Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde - are both referred to in the third person, indicating that Jekyll does not identify with either man anymore. Over the course of the ordeal, Jekyll had become so corrupted by Hyde - and more importantly, his own unsavory desires - that he lost his entire sense of self. While The Picture of Dorian Gray touches on the subject of addiction, that is not what the story is about, instead telling of the desire for hedonism. Dorian Gray is a man who is easily affected by the people and environment around him, a fact proven by his inclination to the self-indulgent philosophy of Lord Henry. Bryan Aubrey explains in his essay that, "even though Dorian has few original thoughts in his head, he still manages to think in lofty terms about the new Hedonism leading to the birth of a new spirituality, dominated by an instinct for beauty," with the phrase "few original thoughts" denoting influence and "dominated by an instinct for beauty" defining the ideology that lead to Dorian's