Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Dualism

Dualism in Victorian England Victorian England was not a safe place to live. The prevalence of theft, domestic violence, and murder made this location a highly dangerous area, especially for the lower classes. Violent crimes such as these didn’t only occur in the Victorian society, as they are apparent even in today’s modern world. Thus, a question arises, why do people feel the impulses to commit crimes? An interesting idea arose in the Victorian era that was an attempt at answering this question. The idea of dualism proposed that there’s a conflict between two parts of the human mind, good and evil. One part of the mind prefers to be moral and feels an obligation to be respectable, while the other side of the mind longs for freedom. Individuals …show more content…
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was converted into a play that became one of the most demanded in town. A man named Richard Mansfield was given the difficult double-part lead in the play. Three weeks after the adaptation of Stevenson’s work opened, a prostitute was found sadistically butchered in Whitechapel. She was the first victim of the infamous Jack the Ripper. Due to the timing, people inevitably began making associations between Jack the Ripper and the characters of Stevenson’s book. “Many people connected Stevenson’s outwardly respectable Dr Jekyll and the murderous Mr Hyde with the invisible East End killer. The newspapers routinely referred to the murderer as Mr Hyde” (Flanders 1). The similarities between Jack the Ripper and Mr. Hyde were so strong that “One member of the public even sent the police a letter denouncing Mansfield: ‘I should be the Last to think because A man take A dretfull Part he is therefore Bad but when I went to See Mr Mansfield Take the Part of Dr Jekel and Mr Hyde I felt at once that he was the Man Wanted…I do not think there is A man Living So well able to disgise Himself in A moment…’” (Flanders 1). Jack the Ripper was extremely successful at hiding his identity since he was never caught. “Despite countless investigations claiming definitive evidence of the brutal killer's identity, his name and motive are still unkown. The moniker "Jack the Ripper" originates from a letter written by someone who claimed to be the Whitechapel butcher, published at the time of the attacks” (Biography.com Editors 1). Jack the Ripper most likely had a dual identity he used while in the public’s perspective, just like Dr. Jekyll with Mr. Hyde. Though Jack the Ripper and Mr. Hyde are completely separate entities, they share a feature psychologically that drives them to kill. There is a strong association between Jack the Ripper and the lead characters in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

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