thesis for dr jekyll and mr hyde

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Full Analysis and Themes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The story for Jekyll and Hyde famously came to Robert Louis Stevenson in a dream, and according to Stevenson’s stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson wrote the first draft of the novella in just three days, before promptly throwing it onto the fire when his wife criticised it. Stevenson then rewrote it from scratch, taking ten days this time, and the novella was promptly published in January 1886.

The story is part detective-story or mystery, part Gothic horror, and part science fiction, so it’s worth analysing how Stevenson fuses these different elements.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: analysis

Now it’s time for some words of analysis about Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic 1886 novella. However, perhaps ‘analyses’ (plural) would be more accurate, since there never could be one monolithic meaning of a story so ripe with allegory and suggestive symbolism.

Like another novella that was near-contemporary with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , and possibly influenced by it ( H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine ), the symbols often point in several different directions at once.

Any attempt to reduce Stevenson’s story of doubling to a moral fable about drugs or drink, or a tale about homosexuality, is destined to lose sight of the very thing which makes the novella so relevant to so many people: its multifaceted quality. So here are some (and they are only some) of the many interpretations of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which have been put forward in the last 120 years or so.

A psychoanalytic or proto-psychoanalytic analysis

In this interpretation, Jekyll is the ego and Hyde the id (in Freud’s later terminology). The ego is the self in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, while the id is the set of primal drives found in our unconscious: the urge to kill, or do inappropriate sexual things, for instance.

Several of Robert Louis Stevenson’s essays, such as ‘A Chapter on Dreams’ (1888), prefigure some of Freud’s later ideas; and there was increasing interest in the workings of the human mind towards the end of the nineteenth century (two leading journals in the field, Brain and Mind , had both been founded in the 1870s).

The psychoanalytic interpretation is a popular one with many readers of Jekyll and Hyde , and since the novella is clearly about repression of some sort, one can make a psychoanalytic interpretation – an analysis grounded in psychoanalysis, if you like – quite convincingly.

It might be significant, reading the story from a post-Freudian perspective, that Hyde is described as childlike at several points: does he embody Jekyll’s – and, indeed, man’s – deep desire to return to a time before responsibility and full maturity, when one was freer to act on impulse? Early infancy is the formative period for much Freudian psychoanalysis.

Recall the empty middle-class scenes at the beginning of the book: Utterson and Enfield on their joyless Sunday walks, for instance. Hyde attacks father-figures (Sir Danvers Carew, the MP whom he murders, is a white-haired old gentleman), which would fall in line with Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex and Jekyll’s desire to return to a time before adult life with its responsibilities and disappointments.

However, one fly in the Oedipal ointment is that Hyde also attacks a young girl – almost the complete opposite of the ‘old man’ or father figure embodied by Danvers Carew.

Nevertheless, psychoanalytic readings of the novella have been popular for some time, and it’s worth remembering that the idea for the book came to Stevenson in a dream. Observe, also, the presence of dreams and dreamlike scenes in the novel itself, such as when Jekyll remarks that he ‘received Lanyon’s condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed’.

An anti-alcohol morality tale?

Alternatively, a different interpretation: we might analyse these dreamlike aspects of the novel in another way and see the novel as being about alcoholism and temperance , subjects which were being fiercely debated at the time Stevenson was writing.

Here, then, the ‘transforming draught’ which Jekyll concocts represents alcohol, and Jekyll, upon imbibing the draught, becomes a violent, unpredictable person unknown even to himself. (This reading has been most thoroughly explored in Thomas L. Reed’s 2006 study The Transforming Draught .)

Note how often wine crops up in this short book: it turns up first of all in the second sentence of the novella, when Utterson is found sipping it, and Hyde, we learn, has a closet ‘filled with wine’. Might the continual presence of wine be a clue that we are all Hydes waiting to happen? Note how the opening paragraph informs us that Utterson drinks gin when he is alone.

This thesis – that the novella is about alcohol and temperance – is intriguing, but has been contested by critics such as Julia Reid for being too speculative and reductionist: see her review of The Transforming Draught in The Review of English Studies , 2007.

The ‘drugs’ interpretation

Similarly, the idea that the ‘draught’ is a metaphor for some other drug, whether opium or cocaine . Scholars are unsure as to whether Stevenson was on drugs when he wrote the book: some accounts say Stevenson used cocaine to finish the manuscript; others say he took ergot, which is the substance from which LSD was later synthesised. Some say he was too sick to be taking anything.

You could purchase cocaine and opium from your local chemist in 1880s London (indeed, another invention of 1886, Coca-Cola, originally contained cocaine, as the drink’s name still testifies: don’t worry, it doesn’t any more).

This is essentially a development of the previous interpretation concerning alcohol, and arguably has similar limitations in being too restrictive an interpretation. However, note the way that Jekyll, in his ‘full statement’ becomes reliant on the ‘draught’ or ‘salt’ towards the end.

A religious analysis

As such, the story has immediate links with the story Stevenson would write sixty years later. Stevenson was an atheist who managed to escape the constrictive religion of his parents, but he remained haunted by Calvinistic doctrines for the rest of his life, and much of his work can be seen as an attempt to grapple with these issues which had affected and afflicted him so much as a child.

The sexuality interpretation

Some critics have interpreted Jekyll and Hyde in light of late nineteenth-century attitudes to sexuality : note the almost total absence of women from the story, barring the odd maid and ‘old hag’, and that hapless girl trampled underfoot by Hyde.

Some critics have suggested that the idea of blackmail for homosexual acts lurks behind the story, and the novella itself mentions this when Enfield tells Utterson that he refers to the house of Mr Hyde as ‘Black Mail House’ as a consequence of the girl-trampling scene in the street.

As such, the novella becomes an allegory for the double life lived by many homosexual Victorian men, who had to hide (or Hyde ) their illicit liaisons from their friends and families. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote to his friend Robert Bridges that the girl-trampling incident early on in the narrative was ‘perhaps a convention: he was thinking of something unsuitable for fiction’.

Some have interpreted this statement – by Hopkins, himself a repressed homosexual – as a reference to homosexual activity in late Victorian London.

Consider in this connection the fact that Hyde enters Jekyll’s house through the ‘back way’ – even, at one point ‘the back passage’. 1885, the year Stevenson wrote the book, was the year of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment ), which criminalised acts of ‘gross indecency’ between men (this was the act which, ten years later, would put Oscar Wilde in gaol).

However, we should be wary of reading the text as about ‘homosexual panic’, since, as Harry Cocks points out, homosexuality was frequently ‘named openly, publicly and repeatedly’ in nineteenth-century criminal courts. But then could fiction for a mass audience as readily name such things?

A Darwinian analysis

Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species , which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection, had been published in 1859, when Stevenson was still a child. In this reading, Hyde represents the primal, animal origin of modern, civilised man.

Consider here the repeated uses of the word ‘apelike’ in relation to Hyde, suggesting he is an atavistic throwback to an earlier, more primitive species of man than Homo sapiens . This reading incorporates theories of something called ‘devolution’, an idea (now discredited) which suggested that life forms could actually evolve backwards into more primitive forms.

This is also linked with late Victorian fears concerning degeneration and decadence among the human race. Is Jekyll’s statement that he ‘bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul’ an allusion to Charles Darwin’s famous phrase from the end of The Descent of Man (1871), ‘man […] bears […] the indelible stamp of his lowly origin’?

In his story ‘Olalla’, another tale of the double which Stevenson published in 1885, he writes: ‘Man has risen; if he has sprung from the brutes he can descend to the same level again’.

This Darwinian analysis of Jekyll and Hyde could incorporate elements of the sexual which the previous interpretation also touches upon, but would view the novel as a portrayal of man’s – and we mean specifically man ’s here – repression of the darker, violent, primitive side of his nature associated with rape, pillage, conquest, and murder.

This looks back to a psychoanalytic reading, with the ‘id’ being the home of primal sexual desire and lust. The girl-tramping scene may take on another significance here: it’s a ‘girl’ rather than a boy because it symbolises Hyde’s animalistic desire to conquer and brutalise someone of the opposite, not the same, sex.

There have been many critical readings of the novella in relation to sex and sexuality, but it’s important to point out that Stevenson denied that the novella was about sexuality (see below).

A study in hypocrisy?

Or perhaps not: perhaps there is something in the idea that hypocrisy is the novella’s theme , as Stevenson himself suggested in a letter of November 1887 to John Paul Bocock, editor of the New York Sun : ‘The harm was in Jekyll,’ Stevenson wrote, ‘because he was a hypocrite – not because he was fond of women; he says so himself; but people are so filled full of folly and inverted lust, that they can think of nothing but sexuality. The Hypocrite let out the beast’.

This analysis of Jekyll and Hyde sees the two sides to Jekyll’s personality as a portrayal of the dualistic nature of Victorian society, where you must be respectable and civilised on the outside, while all the time harbouring an inward lust, violence, and desire which you have to bring under control.

This was a popular theme for many late nineteenth-century writers – witness not only Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray but also the double lives of Jack and Algernon in Wilde’s comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). This is a more open-ended interpretation, and the novella does appear to be about repression of some sort.

In this respect, this interpretation is similar to the psychoanalytic reading proposed above, but it also tallies with Stevenson’s own assertion that the story is about hypocrisy. Everyone in this book is masking their private thoughts or desires from others.

Note how even the police officer, Inspector Newcomen, when he learns of the murder of the MP, goes from being horrified one moment to excited the next, as ‘the next moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition’. He can barely contain his glee. The maid who answers the door at Hyde’s rooms has ‘an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent’.

From these clues, we can also posit a reading of the novel which sees it as about the class structure of late nineteenth-century Britain, where Jekyll represents the comfortable middle class and Hyde is the repressed – or, indeed, oppressed – working-class figure.

Note here, however, how Hyde is repeatedly described as a ‘gentleman’ by those who see him, and that he attacks Danvers Carew with a ‘cane’, rather than, say, a club (though it is reported, tellingly, that he ‘clubbed’ Carew to death with it).

A scientific interpretation

The reference to the evil maid with excellent manners places Jekyll’s own duality at the extreme end of a continuum, where everyone is putting on a respectable and acceptable mask which hides or conceals the evil truth lurking behind it. So we might see Jekyll’s scientific experiment as merely a physical embodiment of what everyone does.

This leads some critics to ask, then, whether the novella about the misuse of science . Or is the ‘tincture’ merely a scientific, chemical composition because a magical draught or elixir would be unbelievable to an 1880s reader? Arthur Machen, an author who was much influenced by Stevenson and especially by Jekyll and Hyde , made this point in a letter of 1894, when he grumbled:

In these days the supernatural per se is entirely incredible; to believe, we must link our wonders to some scientific or pseudo-scientific fact, or basis, or method. Thus we do not believe in ‘ghosts’ but in telepathy, not in ‘witch-craft’ but in hypnotism. If Mr Stevenson had written his great masterpiece about 1590-1650, Dr Jekyll would have made a compact with the devil. In 1886 Dr Jekyll sends to the Bond Street chemists for some rare drugs.

This is worth pondering: the use of the ‘draught’ lends the story an air of scientific authenticity, which makes the story a form of science fiction rather than fantasy: the tincture which Jekyll drinks is not magical, merely a chemical potion of some vaguely defined sort. But to say that the story is actually about the dangers of misusing science could be a leap too far.

We run the risk of confusing the numerous film adaptations of the book with the book itself: we immediately picture wild-haired soot-faced scientists causing explosions and mixing up potions in a dark laboratory, but in fact this is not really what the story is about , merely the means through which the real meat of the story – the transformation of Jekyll into Hyde – is effected.

It’s only once this split has been achieved that the real story, about the dark side of man’s nature which he represses, comes to light. (Compare Frankenstein here .)

All of these interpretations of Jekyll and Hyde can be – and have been – proposed, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the popularity of Stevenson’s tale may lie in the very polyvalent and ambiguous nature of the text, the fact that it exists as a symbol without a key, a riddle without a definitive answer.

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Home › British Literature › Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 7, 2022

Longman, Green, and Company published Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886 as a “shilling shocker.” Stevenson reputedly developed the storyline from a dream he had about a man forced into a cabinet after ingesting a potion that would convert him into a brutal monster. The composition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde began in September 1885, and the final draft was submitted for publication later that same year. Unlike most 19th century literary works, Stevenson’s manuscript was released in book form instead of being serialized in a popular magazine. The publishers withheld its release until January 1886 because booksellers had already placed their Christmas stock. Within six months, Stevenson’s novella sold more than 40,000 copies in England and America.

Dr. Jekyll (right) and Mr. Hyde, both as portrayed by Fredric March in Rouben Mamoulian’s film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde debates the conflict between good and evil and the correlation among bourgeois values, urban violence, and class structure. Dr. Jekyll is a seemingly placid character whose often-debated scientific research has nonetheless gained him respect amid his peers. The potion that Jekyll develops causes an unexplainable transformation into the violent Mr. Hyde. The Mr. Hyde alter-ego may represent an uncontrollable subconscious desire driven by anger and frustration toward an oppressive English class structure. Hyde’s numerous rampages include trampling a young girl and murdering the prominent English politician Sir Danvers. Although Jekyll prefers living the life of “the elderly and discontent doctor” (84), he cannot control his urge for “the liberty, the comparative youth, the light steps, leaping impulses, and secret pleasures” that the Hyde persona offers him. Dr. Jekyll’s desired liberty is perhaps caused by the restricted lifestyle that bourgeois cultural codes imposed on English society. Several Victorian social critics maintained that inner-city London dwellers were a debased life form living in junglelike conditions analogous to those in Africa. In 1890, William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, claimed that England needed rescuing from its continually degenerating condition since its citizens were gradually turning into “[a] population trodden with drink, steeped in vice, [and] eaten up by every social and physical malady” (quoted in Stevenson, 183). Stevenson’s text describes how hidden desires have always existed in a seemingly perverted civilization.

Literary critics have stressed that Stevenson’s success in the “shilling shocker” market both helped and hindered his career. The rapid success of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde led Henry James to remark that Stevenson’s novella was at first too popular a work to be comfortably called a masterpiece. Henry James was not questioning Stevenson’s talent as a writer but rather was noting that the book’s quick popularity defined it as a story that was easily accessible to the mass public.

Playwright Richard Mansfield produced a stage version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1888. Shortly after Mansfield’s play opened, several East End London prostitutes were murdered by a serial killer nicknamed Jack the Ripper. English newspapers initially termed the slayer the “Whitechapel murderer” and “Leather Apron” before settling on “Jack the Ripper.” Reporters based their stories on the possible correlation between the killings and Mansfield’s theatrical representation of violence. Mansfield’s play was eventually closed because such parallels made it seem as though Jack the Ripper was mimicking the violence depicted in Mansfield’s play, marking the first time that the concept of Mr. Hyde was used in reference to sequential crime sprees. Reports from the Daily Telegraph further damaged the profits for Mansfield’s play by stating that “there is no taste for horror” (17) on the London stage. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains a significant canonical text that uses its patchwork narrative to explore the conflation of reality and fictional representation that most postmodern writers still examine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Caler, Jenni. The Robert Louis Stevenson Companion. Edinburgh: P. Harris, 1980. James, Henry. “Robert Louis Stevenson.” Reprinted in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, edited by Martin A. Danahay, 140–141. Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Literary Texts, 1999. Rose, Brian A. Jekyll and Hyde Adapted: Dramatizations of Cultural Anxiety. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996. Saposnik, Irving S. “The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” In The Definitive Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Companion, edited by Harry M. Geduld, 108–117. New York: Garland Publishing, 1983. Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Edited by Martin A. Danahay, 29–91. Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Literary Texts, 1999.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — Duality in “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

Analysis of Jekyll and Hyde Duality in Stevenson's Novel

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• Edley, N., & Wetherell, M. (2001). Jekyll and Hyde: Men's constructions of feminism and feminists. Feminism & Psychology, 11(4), 439-457. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0959353501011004002)
• Doane, J., & Hodges, D. (1989, October). Demonic Disturbances of Sexual Identity: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr/s Hyde. In NOVEL: a Forum on Fiction (Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 63-74). Duke University Press.(https://www.jstor.org/stable/1345579)
• Rose, B. A. (1996). Jekyll and Hyde Adapted: Dramatizations of Cultural Anxiety (No. 66). Greenwood Publishing Group. (https://www.worldcat.org/title/jekyll-and-hyde-adapted-dramatizations-of-cultural-anxiety/oclc/32921958)
• Becchio, C., Sartori, L., Bulgheroni, M., & Castiello, U. (2008). The case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: a kinematic study on social intention. Consciousness and cognition, 17(3), 557-564. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810007000207)
• Lacey, N. (2010). Psychologising Jekyll, demonising Hyde: The strange case of criminal responsibility. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 4, 109-133. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11572-010-9091-8)

Should follow an “upside down” triangle format, meaning, the writer should start off broad and introduce the text and author or topic being discussed, and then get more specific to the thesis statement.

Cornerstone of the essay, presenting the central argument that will be elaborated upon and supported with evidence and analysis throughout the rest of the paper.

The topic sentence serves as the main point or focus of a paragraph in an essay, summarizing the key idea that will be discussed in that paragraph.

The body of each paragraph builds an argument in support of the topic sentence, citing information from sources as evidence.

After each piece of evidence is provided, the author should explain HOW and WHY the evidence supports the claim.

Should follow a right side up triangle format, meaning, specifics should be mentioned first such as restating the thesis, and then get more broad about the topic at hand. Lastly, leave the reader with something to think about and ponder once they are done reading.

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Human Character in «The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde» Essay

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Introduction

Historical context, characterization of the protagonist, film comparison, works cited.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is an investigation into the duality in human character. The novel demonstrates the duality in personality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde through the conflict between the good and evil side of human personality.

Dr. Jekyll, a scientist, brews a potion that he tests on himself and brings out the duality in his personality in the form of evil Mr. Hyde. Initially, the emergence of the ‘Other’ in the form of Hyde is harmless, but soon it transforms into murderous chaos. This essay discusses the novel in three different perspectives.

The first thesis is based on the historical context of the novel and I believe that the novel by Stevenson is a resonance of the frustration of many Victorian intellectuals of the stifling social norms that prevented self-expression.

The second thesis is that in the novel, the protagonist in the form of Mr. Hyde is described through narration. The third thesis is that the 2006 film adaption of the novel by John Carl Buechler there are major deviation from the novel in form of the theme, subplots, and the characters .

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a representation of the society in London during the Victorian era, which was the milieu for the novel. In the novel Stevenson, pens down the frustration that Victorian England felt at the early nineteenth century. Initially, the potion made by Jekyll helps him to transform himself from one persona to another at will.

However, as the dosage increases, the ‘Other’ in form of Hyde becomes all-consuming. The initial desire to change into a more daring, revolting, maverick person is an expression of the Victorian frustration with the laid rules and norms of Victorian society. This is in a way is the personification of the Victorian men.

The transformation of Jekyll to Hyde allows the former to do things that the polite society would consider scandalous. The potion that Jekyll takes is a metaphor for opium addiction prevalent in London in late-Victorian era. It was the desire to break the bondage of a constructed behaving pattern of the Victorian era that Jekyll looked for a way of expression of his suppressed, baser animal instincts.

In the Victorian era, there was a pressure to behave in a certain way at the cost of suppression of the instinctive, baser elements of man. Therefore, Jekyll was the personification of the frustration of Stevenson and many others of his time.

Hyde was an escape for Jekyll (as opium was for many Victorian men) to shed the garb of discipline and conforming to a more instinctive, passionate, and unpredictable character. Therefore, the novel can rightfully be dubbed as a fable of Victorian anxieties.

The protagonist in Stevenson’s novel is the scientist cum devil Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. In most part of the novel, the character of both Jekyll and Hyde is developed through narrative description in speeches of other characters like Mr. Utterson or through description in letters or narration of by the author. The character of Jekyll is introduced in the novel through the description of a certain Mr. Enfield:

He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. … He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. he’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way.

Hyde are known to the reader through the narration of the other characters of the novel viz. Mr. Utterson, Poole (Jekyll’s butler), Dr. Laylon, Mr. Enfield, Dr. Jekyll and others. Their description of Hyde brings forth the man the readers are encountering. The most important narrations that describe Hyde are the letter of Dr. Laylon and the full statement of Dr. Jekyll which forms the last two chapters if the novel.

Therefore, Stevenson actually does not introduce or develop the character of Hyde who is created through the perceptions of the other characters of the novel.

It is the perception of the other characters that the reader gets the picture of Hyde to be short, evil looking, having a cruel countenance, responsible for all the crimes enacted in the novel. Therefore, the novel follows a narrative style of characterization of its protagonist Mr. Hyde.

This section presents a comparison of Stevenson’s novel and a 2006 film adaptation of the story. On watching the movie, it is apparent that the movie is an adaptation of Stevenson’s novel but only to the extent that the theme of duality of human character and the name of a few of the characters such as Utterson, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and Dr. Laylon.

The movie is set in modern times and Dr. Jekyll still shown as a scientist, works on a high-tech bioscience research. Dr. Jekyll in the movie had developed a remedy to cure a rare heart disease in high primates. However, intentionally (like Stevenson’s Jekyll) tests the potion on himself. The experiment has similar results in the modern Jekyll and the evil Hyde emerges.

The adaptation is similar this far, but a few tenets of the Stevenson’s novel are re-sculpted. For instance, all the main characters in Stevenson’s novel were bachelors (for example Utterson, Jekyll, and Laylon). However, in this film, Jekyll is a married man and the story of the murders by Hyde revolving around the café of Jekyll’s wife. Utterson in the film is a police officer instead of a lawyer and is a woman.

However, the biggest deviation that the movie shows is the murders committed by Hyde. In the movie, Hyde is shown to attack young women. He does not only murder them but sexually abuses them before committing murder. This is a definitive deviation from the novel as all the murder victims in Stevenson’s novel were old and distinguished men (for example Carew and Sir Danvers).

The gothic element of the novel is played down in the movie which is set in a modern American town with young and beautiful characters with little dark or weirdness around. The gloomy setting of the novel set in the mists of winter in London is missing in the movie.

For someone who watches the movie without reading Stevenson’s novel would perceive Jekyll to be a sexually repressive character who invokes an alter ego to give force to his darker instincts. Actually, Stevenson’s novel was not confined to the darker sexual desires of man but to the darker side of the soul of human being.

The essay traces the true character of the novel by Stevenson. It shows the historical significance of the novel in showing the repressive frustration among Victorian men and shows that the novel uses a narrative style in characterization of its protagonist.

A comparison with a 2006 movie shows that modern adaption of the novel has deviated largely in subplot and characterization. Overall, Stevenson’s novel helps the readers today to identify the presence of duality in human personality and the need to understand it and use it positively rather than giving it free reign.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . London: Harper Collins, 1895. Print.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . Dir. John Carl Buechler. Perf. Tony Todd. 2006. DVD.

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IvyPanda. (2019, June 4). Human Character in «The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde». https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/

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IvyPanda . (2019) 'Human Character in «The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde»'. 4 June.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Human Character in «The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde»." June 4, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/.

1. IvyPanda . "Human Character in «The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde»." June 4, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Human Character in «The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde»." June 4, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/.

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert louis stevenson.

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde creates a tension between the world of reason and science and the world of the supernatural, and seems to suggest the limits of reason in its inability to understand or cope with the supernatural phenomena that take place. Jekyll confesses at the end of the novel that he has been fascinated by the duality of man and has taken to both chemical and mystical methods to try to get to the truth. This inclusion of a spiritual side to Jekyll’s philosophy shows his to be a mind unlike those of the lawyers and doctors of his society, who restrict themselves to traditional reason. The result of Jekyll's explorations— Mr. Hyde —is something beyond reason, which shocks and overwhelms the sensitive intellectual dispositions of the other characters and leaves Dr. Jekyll permanently removed from his educated, medical self.

The laboratory is the main setting of the mysterious events in the story, but far from being a place of science and medicine, the lab is deserted and strange, more Gothic than a place of science. In this setting the novel seems to hint at the insufficiency or even obsolescence of science. Jekyll, once a man of science, is leaving all that behind, leaving it unused, as he seeks new, unknown knowledge and truth. Jekyll's goals frighten and disgust the men of science, such as Lanyon, with whom he used to friends. Lanyon, in fact, is so shocked, overwhelmed, and unable to process what Jekyll has done that he dies soon after learning of it. He can’t bear the destruction of his stable, rational worldview. Utterson, meanwhile, is also unable to comprehend what is going on between Jekyll and Hyde—he thinks the relationship something criminal but comprehensible, such as blackmail—until the truth is revealed to him.

Hyde is described, quite literally, as being beyond rational description—his most noticeable trait is an unexplainable air of evil or deformity, which can neither be described concretely nor ascribed to any medical cause. This idea of deformity, both of the body and of the mind, fuels the power of the supernatural over the natural. And behind all the action of Jekyll and Hyde in the novel, a fear lurks for all the characters –the threat of madness and the threat of a new world, of new science, new traditions, new disorders that traditional science and reason can't comprehend or deal with.

Science, Reason and the Supernatural ThemeTracker

Science, Reason and the Supernatural Quotes in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others…”

"He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point.”

“He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have estranged Damon and Pythias."

"Poor Harry Jekyll," he thought, "my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace…”

The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes. "I do not care to hear more," said he. "This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop."

And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman.

An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy: but her manners were excellent.

"I have had a shock," he said, "and I shall never recover. It is a question of weeks. Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it; yes, sir, I used to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away."

"O, sir," cried Poole, "do you think I do not know my master after twenty years? Do you think I do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where I saw him every morning of my life? No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr. Jekyll--God knows what it was, but it was never Dr. Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was murder done."

"Lanyon, you remember your vows: what follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors--behold!"

What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer.

With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.

I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde.

I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By robert louis stevenson, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde themes, keeping up appearances.

Much of the dramatic action in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde consists of damage control. In other words, Utterson tirelessly works to prevent his good friend Dr. Jekyll from being dragged into the horrid affairs of Mr. Hyde, and Dr. Jekyll goes to the greatest of lengths to prevent his Hyde identity from being discovered, in order to avoid anyone knowing of his somewhat questionable scientific work and morally despicable behavior. The novel takes place in Victorian England and the main characters are all male members of the British upper class. Enfield, Utterson, Lanyon and Jekyll are all acutely aware of social expectations and the importance of appearance. Even in the first chapter, Enfield is wary of sharing his story of the mysterious door because he abhors gossip, as it destroys reputations. In kind, Utterson refrains from informing the police that Jekyll is a close friend of Hyde's following the murder of Sir Danvers Carew . Rather, to maintain his friend's reputation and protect his public image, Utterson goes to Jekyll directly to discuss the matter.

This issue also arises in the matter of physical appearances, particularly architecture. In the first chapter, we learn that Hyde's mysterious dwelling is run down, neglected, and shabby. In contrast, Jekyll's home is extremely well kept, majestic, rich, and beautiful. Ironically, we eventually learn that the mysterious door is in fact connected to Jekyll's home, albeit a back entrance rarely used. Thus, it becomes clear that although idyllic to the public, even Jekyll's home, parallel to his personality, has a neglected, shabby, and perhaps dangerous portion hidden from view.

The Duality of Human Nature

Clearly, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an examination of the duality of human nature, as most clearly expressed in the revelation that Mr. Hyde is in fact Dr. Jekyll, only transformed into a personification of Jekyll's evil characteristics. Utterson's discovery of Jekyll's astounding work occurs in the final chapter of the novel, after Stevenson has laid the groundwork of evidence for the extreme duality inherent in human nature. We have already witnessed Hyde's powerfully vicious violence and have seen the contrasting kind, gentle, and honorable Dr. Jekyll. In approaching the novel's mystery, Utterson never imagines that Hyde and Jekyll are the same man, as he finds it impossible to reconcile their strikingly different behavior.

In pursuing his scientific experiments and validating his work, Jekyll claims, "man is not truly one, but truly two." Thus, in Jekyll's view, every soul contains elements of both good and evil, but one is always dominant. In Jekyll's case, his good side is dominant, but he knows there is evil inside of him. However, as a respectable member of society and an honorable Victorian gentleman, Jekyll cannot fulfill his evil desires. Thus, he works to develop a way to separate the two parts of his soul and free his evil characteristics. However, as Vladimir Nabokov explains in an introduction to the Signet Classic version of the book, "[Jekyll] is a composite being, a mixture of good and bad...[and] Jekyll is not really transformed into Hyde but projects a concentrate of pure evil that becomes Hyde." Unfortunately, rather than separating and equalizing these forces of good and evil, Jekyll's potion only allows his purely evil side to gain strength. Jekyll is in fact a combination of good and evil, but Hyde is only pure evil. Thus, there is never a way to strengthen or separate Jekyll's pure goodness. Without counterbalancing his evil identity, Jekyll allows Hyde to grow increasingly strong, and eventually take over entirely, perhaps entirely destroying all the pure goodness Jekyll ever had.

Other theorists have argued that perhaps Stevenson concludes that man is not in fact a purely dual being, but is at his heart a primitive being, tamed and civilized by the laws of society. Stevenson does portray Hyde in highly animalistic terms - short, hairy, and like a troglodyte with gnarled hands and a horrific face. In contrast, Jekyll is described in the most gentlemanly terms - tall, refined, polite and honorable, with long elegant fingers and a handsome appearance. Thus, perhaps Jekyll's experiment reduces his being to its most basic form, in which evil runs freely without considering the constraints of society and civilization.

Jekyll and Hyde are not the only examples of duality in the novel. The city of London is also portrayed in contrasting terms, as both a foggy, dreary, nightmarish place, and a well kept, bustling center of commerce. Indeed, just as men have both positive and negative qualities, so does society.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde contains powerfully violent scenes. In each instance, the culprit is Mr. Hyde, and the victim is an innocent. For example, in the first chapter we learn how Mr. Hyde literally trampled a young girl in the street at three in the morning, and later on we learn that Hyde, unprovoked, mercilessly beat Sir Danvers Carew to death. Even worse, we find at the conclusion of the novel that Hyde thoroughly enjoyed committing this violence, and afterwards felt a rush of excitement and satisfaction. Through this imagery of senseless violence against innocent victims, Stevenson expresses the true depravity and pure evil of Hyde.

Interestingly, Hyde's final victims, when he commits suicide just before Utterson and Poole break into his cabinet, are both himself and Jekyll. In this final act, neither victim is innocent. Clearly, Hyde is guilty of a great many crimes, and Jekyll is guilty by proxy as he created Hyde, let him run free, and inhabits the same body as the man. Perhaps in this conclusion, Stevenson is suggesting that to those who promote and commit senseless violence, punishment will come.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde contains very few references to women. In fact, those that are even mentioned are portrayed as weak and unassuming. Even in the descriptions of Hyde's morally depraved behavior, there is no mention of sexual encounters or illicit relationships. In rationalizing this omission, Nabokov reasons, "It has been suggested that Stevenson, 'working as he did under Victorian restrictions,' and not wishing to bring colours into the story alien to its monkish patterns, consciously refrained from placing a painted feminine mask upon the secret pleasure in which Jekyll indulged." Interestingly, none of the major characters are described to have any female relationships. Rather, Lanyon, Enfield, Utterson and Jekyll all appear to be bachelors who through each other's company seek intellectual stimulation and friendship. Some have reasoned that this lack of the female sex suggests, "Jekyll's secret adventures were homosexual practices so common in London behind the Victorian veil."

The first woman we hear about is the young girl running through a London street at three in the morning on her way to fetch a doctor. Hyde the Juggernaut tramples her without a second thought. The girl is immediately victimized and is portrayed as a helpless, passive creature who requires a great many people, Enfield included, to rescue her and avenge the crime.

Next, we meet the maid who witnesses Sir Danvers Carew's murder. She is described quite passively, as she sits gazing out at the moonlight with a care in the world. Upon noticing Sir Danvers Carew (whom she does not recognize from so far off), she watches the man and observes as he meets Hyde on the path. When Hyde begins to pummel the man, the maid loses all sensibility and faints away. Only hours later, at which point there is little hope of catching Hyde, the maid awakens and reports the crime. Quite similar to the little girl, this murder witness proves feeble and passive, and her emotional reaction to Hyde's violence causes a delay in the investigation.

The last woman we meet is one of Jekyll's servants. When Utterson and Poole make their final efforts to save Jekyll from Hyde, who they believe has invaded the house and at the least is holding Jekyll hostage, a female maid is one of the group of servants huddled together in one portion of the house. All are quite afraid, but it is a female servant who bursts into loud sobs, which endanger the entire mission, as Hyde might hear and either flee or prepare to meet his visitors, who were hoping to catch him off guard. Once again, this woman is portrayed as weak and helpless in the face of danger. In an introductory essay to the novel, Nabokov writes, "Excluding two or three vague servant maids, a conventional hag and a faceless little girl running for a doctor, the gentle sex has no part in the action."

Lack of Communication

Throughout the novel, the characters demonstrate an inability to fully express themselves, or choose to withhold highly important information. For example, in the very first chapter, Enfield claims he does not want to share the name of the man who trampled the young girl in order to avoid gossip. However, after finally naming Hyde, he and Utterson end the conversation abruptly, as they feel discussing the topic any further would be inappropriate for all parties involved. Similarly, Utterson withholds relevant information from the police following Sir Danvers Carew's murder by choosing to keep Hyde and Jekyll's relationship secret. These silences reflect the confines of the moral nature of the Victorian era. As earlier noted, the Victorian era placed a great deal of importance on outward appearances. In order to protect themselves and each other against the destruction of respectability, Enfield, Lanyon, Utterson and Jekyll worked to hide or keep secret any piece of information that might mar a reputation.

In another manifestation of silence in the novel, no one who meets Hyde can describe exactly what it is about his appearance or face that makes him seem evil, but all agree that upon meeting or seeing him, they felt a sense of horror. Finally, much of the important details regarding the nature of Jekyll and Hyde are passed on in written form rather than in speech. In a letter written just before his death, Lanyon instructs Utterson not to read the contents until the death or disappearance of Jekyll. Similarly, Jekyll writes his final confession in a letter to Utterson, rather than sharing his secrets in person. Interestingly, none of these letters provide details into the unseen aspects of Hyde's life. The reader never learns what other evil actions Hyde took, and is only left to wonder at the degree of his violence, brutality, and moral depravity. In Utterson's world, where all details of life and law are placed in official documents, language is regaled as a stronghold of rationality and logic. Therefore, perhaps the lack of language or communication between characters and related to Hyde demonstrates that the supernatural occurrences in the novel push the world beyond the logical, and therefore beyond speech.

The Rational vs. The Irrational

In composing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Stevenson walked a fine line between reality and the supernatural. Utterson, through whom the reader perceives the action, is a highly rational, logical man who considers himself to be an upright and honorable citizen of Victorian England. In contrast, the novel's conclusion is highly supernatural, and does not mesh with the grounded nature of the world in which the main characters live. In fact, by developing the very reasoned and rational characters, the effect of the final conclusion and the discovery of Jekyll's horrific work is even more powerful, in that the contrast is so great. Undoubtedly, Stevenson met a great challenge in balancing these two worlds while successfully allowing the supernatural fantastical portion of the novel to be believable. Amazingly, in the short three days during which he wrote the novel, he met this challenge.

In his introduction to the novel, Nabokov analyzes Stevenson's method in balancing the rational and the irrational, and thereby achieving a great artistic achievement. In his view, to make the fantastic details of Jekyll's work believable, Stevenson presents the otherwise unbelievable details of Jekyll's experiments through the highly rational minds of Utterson and Enfield. These two logical men "convey something to the reader of the horror of Hyde, but at the same time they, being neither artists nor scientists...cannot be allowed...to notice details," such as the specific features of Hyde's horrific face. Furthermore, by describing daily life in great detail, Stevenson contrasts the everyday life of London gentlemen with, "unspecified, vague, but ominous allusions to pleasures and dreadful vices somewhere behind the scenes. On the one side there is 'reality'; on the other, 'a nightmare world'."

For the highly rational and socially respected characters, such as Dr. Lanyon , the revelation of Jekyll's work is too much to bear. In fact, Dr. Lanyon dies from the shock he suffered when observing Hyde transform back in to Jekyll. In Lanyon's death, Stevenson seems to be suggesting that it is impossible to truly meld respectable life and morality with Jekyll's work. The two cannot co-exist. In the novel's final moments, rationality proves greater, as Jekyll and Hyde die, and Utterson, the personification of logic and reason, is left to pick up the pieces.

The City of London

The novel begins on a London street that proves to act as central to much of the novel's action. The descriptions of the city vary, from idyllic and majestic to dangerous, mysterious and dark. In Victorian London, the modern city began to powerfully establish itself. In his afterword to the novel, Dan Chaon notes that Stevenson relied on the modern city in order to provide a realistic location in which Hyde could live. Chaon explains, "[Hyde] needs the anonymity of the masses, ad he needs the newly gaslit streets, the flickering nighttime landscape of pubs and brothels and beggards, the urban underworld that would later transform into the world of film noir." Thus, the growing and developing city of London gave Hyde a cloak in which to hide his despicable behavior, and gave him precious anonymous freedom. In this world, Hyde was able to walk through society unnoticed and disregarded by the many strangers who roamed the streets. Without this opportunity for absolute anonymity, Jekyll would never have been able to carry out his experiment. Thus, the bustling, growing and many layered city of London supported Jekyll's work and gave him the freedom to pursue his dual lives.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What is the story of Cain and Abel? What does it mean that Mr. Utterson says he inclines to Cain’s heresy in his dealings with others? Explain why you agree or disagree with this way of dealing with your acquaintances.

In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain murders his brother. In the above line, Utterson is citing his belief that one should stay out of other people's business.

3. Look back at chapter 3 (pg 26) – how has Jekyll changed since then?

Jekyll has become unsure of himself, sickly, faint, and desperate. He is not the self-assured, smooth faced man we met at the dinner party in the third chapter.

Sequence the events that happened in Chapter 8 “The Last Night” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

You can check this out in chapter 8 summary below:

https://www.gradesaver.com/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/study-guide/summary-chapters-7-8

Study Guide for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde study guide contains a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Essays for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Frankenstein
• The Collective Mr. Hyde
• The Limitations of Language in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The Supernatural and Its Discontents in Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
• The Good Mr. Hyde

Lesson Plan for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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E-Text of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde E-Text contains the full text of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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AQA English lit GCSE - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Full unit of work. 15 lessons

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Unit of work

Last updated

12 August 2024

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Detailed 15 lessons on each chapter and character. Recall activities on quotes, context and themes. Quote analysis of key quotes and support for students completing this. Model essays aiming for grade 7+. Sentence starters/guides for essay questions.

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1 hr 10 min

Episode 237: “Best of” Series – “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” Pt. 2, Ep. 106 The Literary Life Podcast

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, we continue our remix of a past discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If you missed last week’s episode, you will want to go back and catch Part 1. Angelina kicks of the book chat with a look at the format of the story and how it keeps us in suspense. Thomas brings up the idea of forbidden knowledge found in this book and the similarities between it and Frankenstein. Some other topics covered in this episode include the dangers of dehumanizing victims of crime, the nature of sin and addiction, the Renaissance idea of the well-ordered man, and the mythic qualities of this story. For a complete booklists and links to everything mentioned in this episode, including ways to connect with our hosts, please visit https://theliterary.life/237.

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Classic Stories: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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Why pro-life candidates are reminding me of Jekyll and Hyde this year

( LifeSiteNews ) — If you think watching America’s elites try to outdo each other in callous disregard for pre-born life was already maddening, try watching from behind bars. Though incarcerated over 9 months now, I’m still able to follow current events. Nearly every week there’s a new story on abortion. Rarely is it good news.

Predictably, the 2024 campaign season is shaping up like the plot of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (which, by the way [plot spoiler] , ended with the part good, part evil Dr. Jekyll, succumbing to his alter ego, the purely evil Mr. Hyde, who then ended both their lives by committing suicide). To me, it looks like we’re once again faced with choosing between a party of shameless, morally bankrupt, yet supremely confident pro-murder radicals and a party of hesitant, morally confused, and inarticulate wannabe diplomats. To put it another way: they advance their position, we apologize for ours.

President Joseph Biden, who by all accounts has never met an abortion he didn’t like or an ethical standard he didn’t sink beneath, has made killing babies a central focus of his campaign. Biden boasts about authorizing doctors to approve abortion drugs remotely, authorizing pharmacies to mail those drugs anywhere in the nation, funding abortion overseas, and trying to expand abortion funding stateside. In February’s state of the union address, he praised women who took the lives of their children and vowed to “make Roe v. Wade the law of the land.”

Meanwhile, former president Donald J. Trump, “the most pro-life president ever,” who did all the normal things pro-life presidents are supposed to do and more, gave us the Supreme Court that finally overturned Roe v. Wade and became the  only  president to ever address the March for Life, now behaves like he regrets ever getting involved. Last year, Trump called Florida’s 6-week abortion ban a “terrible mistake” that was “too harsh,” and this year complained that Arizona’s short lived total abortion ban “went too far,” calling on lawmakers to ” remedy it.” After weeks of toying with the idea of a 15-week national abortion ban that, in his view, “the most powerful people in the pro-life movement” and “the vast majority of Republicans” would support, Trump finally washed his hands of the debate and announced that abortion would be an issue for the states alone to decide.

They advance their position, we apologize for ours (even Trump, who never apologizes for  anything ).

What about those states, then? Glancing at a map of the US, things certainty appear to be improving: a broad swath of states across the South and Midwest now “ban abortion” completely!

Not so fast. Since 2020 the abortion rate has been  increasing .

While the most solidly pro-life states have banned clinical abortion, pro-choice governments are digging in everywhere else. Several legislatures have made abortion a constitutional right, and 7 states have held referendums to do the same. In each case, voters chose death. California pays women to travel there and murder their babies. It may now be more inconvenient to obtain a clinical abortion, but it’s by no means impossible.

Meanwhile, no state bans chemical abortion. Pro-life governments have prohibited the  sale  of abortion pills, but not their use. A pregnant woman who somehow obtains these drugs and uses them to kill her preborn child is immune from prosecution  everywhere .

Since these drugs can kill until the 12th week of pregnancy, the majority of abortions will still take place. Pro-life America has altered  how  babies die, but they still die.

I see this same pattern being repeated everywhere. They advance their position; we apologize for ours.

After the 2022 Dobbs decision, Michigan should have automatically upheld its pre-Roe total abortion ban. Instead, Governor Gretchen Whitmer refused to enforce the law until a state referendum enshrined abortion into Michigan’s constitution! By contrast, in 2023 Virginia Republicans proposed 3 separate pro-life bills, each weaker than the one before: the first, a standard clinical abortion ban, would have permitted moms to kill at home. The second, Governor Glenn Youngkin’s, would have permitted any abortion before 15 weeks, while the third would have allowed all but the most late-term abortions. Each bill went down in defeat, thus demonstrating the futility of compromised legislation.

In the US Congress, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spent 10 months heroically blocking military promotions to protest Biden’s policy of paying for the abortion related travel of female service members. That is, until December 2023 when he inexplicably abandoned the effort (partially due, no doubt, to harassment from fellow Republicans). And just this month in the US Senate, both parties demonstrated a sickening disregard for the image of God with competing bills designed to virtue signal support for IVF procedures.

In April of this year, when the Alabama Supreme Court correctly ruled that embryos created via IVF were legal persons, that state’s Republican dominated legislature hurriedly passed new legislation to protect IVF clinics from prosecution, essentially giving them a license to continue making and destroying tiny human beings in perpetuity.

It’s not like all the news has been bad. I’m encouraged that anti-abortion leaders are finally sounding the alarm on the chemical abortion trade, and that some are willing to castigate Donald Trump for throwing preborn kids under the bus when it suits him. But for every step forward we seem to take one backwards. I don’t know if we’ve made any net progress since the fateful summer of 2022. The truly sad part is that these retreats need not have happened. They were motivated by the irrational terror that protecting the innocent is somehow an embarrassing position to hold that life is a liability.

Witness the guidance issued this March by the National Republican Congressional Committee to Republican candidates seeking election in 2024. Obviously concerned that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, the guidance doesn’t advise Republicans to champion a consistent defense of human life but rather that they highlight Democratic support for those disgusting but less common late-term abortions, express empathy for women and discuss “common sense solutions” (i.e. compromise).

READ: America on the brink: How do we turn around our political and spiritual crisis?

Donald Trump, who has a knack for verbalizing what other politicians only think, pretty much summed it up in September of 2023 when, in an interview with Kristen Walker of “Meet the Press,” he said:

You have to go with your heart. But beyond that you also have to get elected, okay? And if you don’t have the 3 exceptions [rape, incest and the mother’s life], I think it’s very, very hard to get elected.

Trump himself has several times blamed Republican losses in the 2022 midterms on the fact that certain candidates were too strictly anti-abortion, and offended voter sensibilities.

As recently as April he reiterated this point in a campaign video, saying:

Follow your heart on this issue. But remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline.

There you have it. To save the nation and fix the culture, you must win elections (in other words, cultural change is a top-down process). To win elections, you must pander to pro-choice voters. This is nothing new. It’s straight out of the GOP playbook. It’s the campaign strategy followed for 50 years.

Again and again, they advance their position, we apologize for ours.

To someone sitting in prison, hoping their defiance of pro-death policies might inspire their countrymen to forsake cowardice and finally rescue preborn children from the slaughter that daily awaits thousands, all this talk about winning elections can be heartbreaking. Last year, upon learning of Trump’s rather pathetic 15-week national abortion ban idea, and the Susan B. Anthony List’s support for such a measure, my friend Laura Geis, serving a multiple month sentence for taking part in a red rose rescue, wrote:

I’m in a jail cell … screaming to be heard, watching and listening to your rhetoric … [you] playing with the lives of the unborn in a fear driven panic over whether or not we will WIN THE ELECTION. What? This is crazy talk!

I’ve always been an activist, never a professional political strategist. The vicious cycle of appeasement that pro-life candidates and office holders have stuck to for so long makes no sense to me. Yes, I realize that polls report most Americans think abortion should be “legal most of the time.” But I also know that the average pro-choice person has never heard the arguments against abortion, knows almost nothing about fetal development or what abortion does to a human embryo, and has never witnessed anyone suffer or sacrifice anything in defense of preborn children.

When people are finally exposed to the truth (which is, by the way, all on our side), remarkable transformations often occur. During my 15 years of educational activism, I’ve seen minds change right in front of me! I’ve heard testimony by others who, years after speaking to anti-abortion advocates, admitted that the seeds we planted in their hearts eventually blossomed into an appreciation that the crazy Christians were right all along.

It’s impressive enough when this happens individual by individual. What would transpire if a major political party, with unlimited resources at its disposal and the ability to speak to multiple millions at once, was united in presenting a factual, morally consistent, unapologetic stance against baby-killing? Perhaps for a few years that party might lose elections in particularly pro-abortion districts. But eventually, after the other side had worn itself out trying to defend the defenseless, I believe the momentum would shift irreversibly towards truth.

This, however, would require some delayed gratification, and most pro-life politicians are focused on  now . They lack the foresight (or rather, do not care) that taking a hardline stance today will pay dividends tomorrow, and clear the path for greater and greater victories in the future. No, all that matters is  this  election (i.e. their election). And as we’ve been told time and time again, “If we don’t win this year, it’s all over!”

I suppose we should be glad Joe Biden and the Democrats have decided to make baby-killing so central to their campaigns. They’ll force Republicans to address the issue! Whether pro-life politicians react as they’ve usually done, or finally see beyond myopic self-interest, is the big question of 2024. If Jekyll doesn’t stop hiding from Hyde, Hyde will be the death of both of them.

RELATED: Trump, Vance must continue to be criticized for betraying truth on abortion, same-sex ‘marriage’

Jonathan Darnel is an anti-abortion activist incarcerated for participating in a 2020 rescue at a Washington, DC abortion mill. Jonathan’s activism site is GetSeriousChurch.com. To help incarcerated anti-abortion rescuers go to SmashTheFACE.life.

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• Anniston/Gadsden

Asking Eric: My boss behaves like Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde

• Published: Aug. 16, 2024, 2:26 a.m.

Boss yelling at worker. Canva stock image

• R. Eric Thomas

Dear Eric: Ten years ago, my partner and I moved to a new community, befriending a neighbor whose initial kindness impressed us greatly. The neighbor learned of my unemployment and generously enabled me to secure a position with his company.

In a professional setting, however, his was quite literally a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, revealing a persona that was manipulative, back-stabbing and reliably mean-spirited. His profanity-laced tirades routinely reduced colleagues to tears.

After a decade of his tyranny, I accepted a position with another company and soon thereafter retired to another state.

Since then, he has contacted me regularly to say he misses us as neighbors and would like to visit. While working for his company financially empowered us to make future plans previously beyond our means, I lack the ability to prioritize gratitude over memories of the emotional abuse to which he subjected my co-workers and me. My partner suggests I can tolerate anything for a few days. Am I wrong to feel otherwise?

– Conflicted Reunion

Dear Reunion: You tolerated him for a decade; don’t spend another second with him.

You’re grateful for his help in getting the job, you did the work in that job and so the pay isn’t part of a neighborly favor. That transaction is done.

I can’t help but think that his needling about a visit is also part of that Mr. Hyde side he has. I mean, it’s got you feeling bad, hasn’t it? That’s what bullies do.

You can tell him “You were a jerk at work and that’s why we can’t be friends” or you can simply decline and move on. Probably better to let a sleeping Hyde lie.

Stories by R. Eric Thomas

• Asking Eric: Finding a balance between work, life and love
• Asking Eric: Difficult friend wants to lunch too much
• Asking Eric: Beach house gatherings adding up expenses
• Asking Eric: Bad boss is also a bad volunteer, co-workers fear
• Asking Eric: Son’s family doesn’t clean up behind themselves

Read more Asking Eric and other advice columns.

Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com .

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