As I was reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I found the notion of good versus evil quite interesting. Actually, it was particularly the idea of both good and evil residing in a single person that got me thinking about the duality of human nature. Are we born good? Are we born evil? Or are we born both? When Dr. Jekyll sees himself for the first time in the mirror as the deformed and decayed Edward Hyde, he expresses a feeling of relief: “And yet I looked at upon the ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This too was myself. It seemed natural and human” (81). Relief of finally being able to do the things he would not have otherwise done, as laws are to be respected in order to maintain social order. The importance of maintaining an honorable reputation is also made clear throughout the book. However, all falls into pieces when Hyde is actually seen committing a murderous act, thus becoming a hunted criminal. Dr. Jekyll loses control over his transformations, and keeps changing back into Mr. Hyde, causing him to withdraw himself from society.
Dr. Jekyll is obviously the “good” side of himself, and Hyde is his alternate evil ego whom he has kept restrained for the most part of his existence. Does this mean that Dr. Jekyll was born good, but turns bad, or was he always struggling with both personas to finally let his evil side take over at the end?
Anyhow, I was reading an article from the Daily Mail, and there was this one passage that got my attention. The article mentions the 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau speaking about the total absence of “fundamental perversity in the human heart” (Daily Mail) and that society is what leads humans to commit evil deeds. This immediately got me thinking of the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who only craved for love and affection, but only ended up being abandoned by his creator, Victor Frankenstein, and violently rejected by society. This forced seclusion from the human society sparked a feeling of hatred in his soul, which caused him to murder several people that were close to Victor, all in the name of revenge. Thus, the creature initially had a good and genuine soul, which society twisted into something evil and vengeful.
