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Duality and the divided self in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — theme analysis

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde · Robert Louis Stevenson · Set text on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) — not on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) · Grade 9 Notes

In one sentence. The novella's most famous idea — that a person contains two natures — is stated by Jekyll as a theory ('truly two') and then tested by everything else in the book: the house with two doors, the city with two faces, the friend who is two friends.

This study ends with Robert Louis Stevenson. Build your reading of duality and the divided self in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, teach it, then defend it against Robert Louis Stevenson.

How duality and the divided self works in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Jekyll's Chapter 10 thesis is that man is 'not truly one, but truly two', and his experiment tries to house each nature in a separate body. But the book keeps complicating the neat division. Hyde is younger and smaller, not opposite; Jekyll admits the first sight of him gave 'a leap of welcome'; and Jekyll the 'good' self was already living 'a profound duplicity of life' before the drug existed. Duality, in other words, is not good versus evil. It is the respectable self versus the concealed one, and the concealment is part of the respectable self.

“This, too, was myself.” — Jekyll, Chapter 10, Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

The four words that refuse the comfortable split. Hyde is not an invader but a part of Jekyll seen for the first time without disguise.

Methods: short sentence · mirror motif

Stevenson builds duality into setting. Jekyll's house has a handsome front on a square of 'ancient, handsome houses' and, round the back, the windowless laboratory with the blistered door on a bystreet. Enfield and Utterson do not at first realise these are the same building. The architecture is the novella's argument in brick: one property, two faces, joined by a passage most visitors never see.

Context that changes the reading. Stevenson knew Edinburgh's double life — the orderly New Town and the crowded Old Town — and the story of Deacon William Brodie, a respected cabinetmaker and councillor by day and a burglar by night, hanged in 1788; he co-wrote a play about him with W. E. Henley. Duality was, for him, a social fact before it was a scientific fantasy.

Another reading. Readers who stress Jekyll's own hint that man may be 'a mere polity' of many selves argue that the novella finally rejects the two-part model it is famous for: the binary is Jekyll's simplification, and the truth is messier.

Use this in an essay. Frame: 'Jekyll's theory is that man is truly two; Stevenson's novella suggests instead that the second self is made by the effort to hide it.'

The characters who carry duality and the divided self

An essay on duality and the divided self is built from the characters. Each line below is from that character's own study — follow it for the full analysis.

  • Dr Henry Jekyll — Jekyll is the theory ('truly two'); show how the novel complicates it with 'This, too, was myself' and the 'polity' of selves.
  • Edward Hyde — Hyde is the second self given a body; use his size and youth to argue that he is a part of Jekyll, not his opposite.

More duality and the divided self quotations, from the The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde quote bank

Each is analysed in full — speaker, scene, techniques, structure, context and essay use — on the The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde key quotes page; the line here is what the words are doing.

“a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty”

Narrator · Chapter 3, Dr Jekyll Was Quite at Ease

The respectable surface: size, polish and age. Full analysis →

“the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.”

Jekyll · Chapter 3, Dr Jekyll Was Quite at Ease

Jekyll's confidence that he controls Hyde. Full analysis →

“I am very low, Utterson”

Jekyll · Chapter 7, Incident at the Window

His last words to his friend before the change at the window. Full analysis →

“I concealed my pleasures”

Jekyll · Chapter 10, Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

The root of the double life is concealment. Full analysis →

“a profound duplicity of life”

Jekyll · Chapter 10, Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

He was already living two lives. Full analysis →

“man is not truly one, but truly two.”

Jekyll · Chapter 10, Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

His theory of the divided self. Full analysis →

“I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self”

Jekyll · Chapter 10, Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

Hyde is gradually replacing Jekyll as the dominant self. Full analysis →

“pale and dwarfish”

Narrator · Chapter 2, Search for Mr Hyde

Small and sickly, not monstrous. Full analysis →

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Teach it — Explain your reading of duality and the divided self in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Ember, an AI pupil who has not made one, and answer the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  2. Defend it — Hold your reading of duality and the divided self in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde against Robert Louis Stevenson in a short, structured debate marked against descriptors you can read first.
  3. Then the exam — exam-style practice, marked on Incandio.

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