Monsters Without Morality: Representation of The Internal Conflicts and The Paradoxical Nature of The Human Psyche in Stevenson’s Jekyll-Hyde and Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray
Abstract:
In the book The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, William James talks about the “divided self” – the heterogenous personality which has found its way into one body. Human beings are social animals and as members living in a society, one must abide by certain rules and norms. People who fail to do so, and are chastised by the society and they are punished. Being able to comply with the norms is considered good, and being unable to do so is considered bad or evil. Often the two are looked at as two opposing terms, unable to exist together. But evil is inherent in society which is made up of the apparently contradictory binaries of good and evil. So why should human beings, who make up the society, be an exception? The societal norms make humans grow conscience, which makes them conscious about right and wrong. But a person might not always choose to listen. A person might also be torn between the inherent evil in them and the rules of society. This is something which we see in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The two novels show how an individual splits between two selves, how they are affected by their transformation and yet unable to resist it.
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