DJMH Vs. Podg During The Victorian Era

Fallu Ndow Mrs. Moore English II Inth B7 28 March 2024 DJMH vs PoDG During the Victorian Era, many works addressed the common theme of identity. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is a detective novel that follows the story of a man who investigates strange occurrences related to his old friend. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is about a man who casts away his morals in exchange for eternal beauty. Both stories address the duality of human nature and show how humans are made up of different sides that can conflict with one another and how an attempt to isolate these different aspects of your identity will only lead to your self-detriment. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde conveys this idea

Jekyll is shown to be a “smooth-faced man of fifty”(3), who is marked with “capacity and kindness”(3). He is described as a good-looking kind person who is meant to represent the good in the story as we often associate things that look good with objectively correct and morally right things. This is contrasted by Mr. Hyde, as he is described as “pale and dwarfish”(2) while giving “an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation”(2). Mr. Hyde is dwarfish and ugly, showing that he is the embodiment of Dr. Jekyll’s immoral side as he is as morally twisted as his own face. This is all brought together when looking at Theresa Adams’ article “The strangely mobile Mr. Hyde.” In this article, Theresa compares Dr. Jekyll’s character as a whole to Victorian London. She talks about “the prevalence of mixed spaces”(8) that form when the “impoverished East and wealthy West”(4) parts of London intersect. By comparing Jekyll to these mixed spaces she shows how he is an amalgamation of two personalities that despite their differences could coexist. But when he tries to separate them to become more east or west end, he ends up only destroying himself and completely losing his

Dorian is portrayed to be pure and beautiful, showing the good side of Dorian that everyone views as perfect and couldn’t harm anyone. In addition, more is learned about Dorian’s spiritual well-being through his portrait as it has a “hideous face”(13) and causes anyone who looks at it to contract a feeling of “disgust and loathing”(13). This portrait acts as a window towards Dorian’s soul as despite appearing perfect on the outside, on the inside Dorian has become morally twisted and lives for his desires. The collapse of Dorian’s soul is further exemplified by Brian Aubrey’s “Critical Essay on ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’.” As he explains, Dorian wanted “to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul”(2) but instead cures his senses but corrupts his soul. The corruption of Dorian’s soul as a result of the influence of his friend Henry and Dorian being blessed with eternal beauty because of Basil resulted in a divergence between Dorian’s mind and soul which caused him to go down a path that led to his destruction, just like