As a classic Victorian novel, Robert Louis StevensonÆs The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is often touted as the embodiment of the dual Victorian personalityùrepressed and proper on one hand, and evil and illicitly unleashed on the other. The constrictive Victorian decorum tended to produce extremes in behavior in some people as a reaction to the uncomfortable confines of its endless rules and formality, precipitating denouements where the proper but very repressed person suddenly lost the ability to keep concealing his dark side and began indulging it. Although The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is fiction, it represents a number of real-life Victorian murder cases such as those ascribed to Jack the Ripper, where seemingly proper English gentleman went amok and became cold-blooded murderers.
Although it is clear that Victorian values and societal pressures helped to forge this unique subset of murderersùas well as the mystery novels that feature themùit is my contention that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde lends itself to examination as a timeless and universal story, equally as valid independent of its Victorian setting as it is representative. To illustrate my point, I will examine the novel from a fresh historical perspective and demonstrate how it can be seen as representative of a completely different period just as easily as it can embody Victorian England. In essence, the setting is merely the trappings of the novel, since it is really an analysis of the human personality.
One of the eeriest statements in the novel is Dr. JekyllÆs assertion that ôI can be rid of Mr. Hyde at any pointö (1). This is the classic subterfuge of the person locked in inescapable emotional or psychological bondage that he or she is completely incapable of evading. The addict says, ôI can quit whenever I want;ö the lovesick lover says, ôI donÆt need her/him;ö and the multiple-pers
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