Comments on Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Hi, class, please feel free to respond to any (or all) of the questions posted below.

1) Throughout Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, everyone who encounters Hyde finds it difficult to describe his looks. Why do you think author Robert Louis Stevenson avoids having the characters provide a precise visual description of Hyde?

2) In the section, “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case” in the Norton (49-62), Henry Jekyll writes of  the “…thorough and primitive duality of man,” which causes him to explore that duality through his scientific experiments: “Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness of a life of study I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and well considered, but growing towards the elderly man, the incoherency of my life was growing daily more unwelcome, It was on this side that y new power tempted me until I fell into slavery. I had to but drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde” (52). In an essay, find passages to compare the repressed and dry life of Dr. Jekyll with the exciting and unhallowed pleasures of Edward Hyde. Why, in the final analysis, do you think Edward Hyde triumphed of Jekyll?

3) Some critics view Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as exposing anxieties in the British Empire, with the main conflict as symbolic of threats regarding race, class, sexuality (including homosexuality), Darwinism, and immigration at the end of the 19th Century. Find and analyze one or more passages within the story and write an essay to support or refute such claims.