What Are The External Influences In Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

Aaron Hada Mrs. Moore English II IntH 28 March, 2024 Evaluation of External Influences within Victorian Literature Everybody gets influenced in life, whether it be from friends, family, or outside circumstances, it is an aspect of life that is unchanging. In the gothic novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr Jekyll, a Victorian Gentleman, partakes in experiments and ends up creating an evil persona of himself named Hyde, Hyde. Hyde eventually starts to take control of Jekyll and commits many crimes due to his evil nature. During the chaos between a detective trying to find the link to all the crimes and Hyde committing more crimes, Jekyll finds himself in internal turmoil as he is trying to control Hyde while keeping his gentle

In Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, the authors argue that external influences can impact identity, eventually leading to an internal conflict. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it is revealed that Jekyll is an upper-class man who is put under immense scrutiny, and because of this, he is not able to conduct the experiments he desires and puts a part of himself in a mental hole. However, with the help of his experiments, he is able to split himself in two. As Jekyll reminisces about the beginning of his troubles in his full statement, “Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me(49),” describing how even at a young age the pressures and expectations of him coming from wealth and predicted to become a great man, had caused his inner turmoil, leading him to already begin the process of splitting himself up

In 'Jekyll and Hyde': Bernard O'Keeffe considers the enduring appeal of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel and different ways of interpreting the duality that lies at its heart, O'Keeffe explains “Being a respectable and an ambitious man, Jekyll felt the need to keep such 'pleasures' hidden, and it was with 'a deeper trench than in the majority of men' that he divided 'those provinces of good and ill that divide and compound man's dual nature'.” Just like how in Jekyll, outside influences impacted Jekyll’s mental, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Henry’s influence leads Dorian down a hedonistic, anxious path. After first hearing Henry’s slippery words, Dorian describes “had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses(chap3 pg13),” showing the extent to which Henry’s words had an impact on