The Object as the Identificatory

I have so much to say in response to Robert Stevenson's, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I am most certainly not finished with The Yellow Wallpaper, but I'd just like to first respond to a question posed in class.

First though, I want to reinstate the classifications that Professor Moglen gave for Freud's concepts of the love towards parents:

Identifacatory Love- Parent with whom the child identifies and wants to be like.
Object Love- Parent that one can imagine loving in the future.

Someone asked what would happen in the case of an abnormal family atmosphere, such as a single parent or a homosexual parents.  Professor Moglen responded that this question is often asked of Freud's theory and remains unanswered.

To a certain degree, I can see Stevenson's novel as a bit of a response to this question.  There are hardly any women in the novel and Jekyll lost his mother during his own birth.  His father at this point is a single parent, left to fill two roles.  As a result Jekyll is likely to love his father as an object as well as identify with him.

Stevenson may be making a commentary on this dual relationship through the homosexual tendencies within the novella, particularly in the case of Jekyll's club of gentlemen located on "queer street."  The secrets that they keep for one another suggests an unspoken understanding of this sort of behavior.  The lack of women and families in their community questions the ability to find someone to fill the role of object love who is not a man.  They definitely don't seem to be looking to find women and family on top of that.

So this is what I propose:  Dr. Jekyll feels as though he should repress these implied desires because he is Gentleman, as his father was.  As a result Hyde escapes from within him and lives out all of Jekyll's dirtiest desires without shame or remorse.  One reading we could make is that he didn't even have a mother to identify with in an effeminate manner, thus making him feel alright about his desires.  No, he was left to take on the role of the man that his father was, as well as see men as objects of love.  But because of the former, he cannot accept the latter!

Really, that would drive anyone crazy.  It's no wonder he developed multiple personality disorder and caused his own downfall.  It's a lot to handle.