Two Can Keep a Secret if One of Them is Dead

It's difficult to say whether The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde confirms or defies this point.  What is startling about this book is that it seems as though everyone knows the "secret" and yet we, the audience, are really never made privy to it.  When we discussed this topic in class I brought up a point about the dream Utterson has about Jekyll's bedroom that I would like to further explore.

This scene is a reflection of the greater story on several levels.  First, the way that the dream is describes doesn't actually tell the reader anything about what Utterson is actually seeing.  Instead, the passage is filled with innuendos that we are left to interpret on our own.  He dreams that Hyde awakens his friend and " there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding" (Stevenson 19).  Now, this can clearly be taken as a sexual reference.  The blackmailing that Utterson assumes is taking place historically falls in line with the idea of homosexuality as cause for this sort of action.  He presumes that Jekyll's debt to Hyde must be the result of "the cancer of some concealed disgrace" (Stevenson 28).  So for Stevenson to make the setting of this imagined encounter in the bedroom seems to be a direct implication of sexual "misgivings."

I consider this dream to be the most apparent inference of the "secret" that none of these gentleman are willing to actually talk about.  Jekyll's dual-personality can be interpreted this way based on Stevenson's own experiences and the Labouchere Amendment- which we talked about in section.  The "blackmailer's charter," as it was referred to, is what seems to have been Stevenson's motivation behind this novella.  That being said, Utterson's dream is the most explicit that Stevenson gets in reference to sexuality (homo or hetero), and even so, he really doesn't say all that much.

There is also the idea I brought up in section about how this moment shows the lack of privacy that is conveyed throughout the entire book.  We talked about how everyone knows the business of everyone else and that no one can escape the surveillance of their peers.  Really, what else do bored old men without wives or families have to talk about?  They all gossip about Hyde and everyone has a different opinion about the appearance and manner of the man.

Even though this scene is the figment of Utterson's imagination, it is a particularly extreme invasion of Jekyll's privacy.  Utterson is essentially watching a man in his bedroom and the actions taking place in his bed.  A person's bed represents one of the most personal sanctuaries that exists.  For Utterson to watch- even in his minds eye- Jekyll sleep as well as "do [the] bidding" of another man is to know everything about him (Stevenson 19).  Despite the obvious existence of a "secret" throughout the entire story, there is really no way for anything to be secret.  Everyone sees everything and nothing escapes the watchful eye of society.

The moment that "the curtains of the bed plucked apart" so is the thin veil that Stevenson has placed over the true nature of this story (Stevenson 19).  There is no need for Jekyll's "secret" to be openly revealed to us during his confession, because when it comes down to it, Stevenson told us what it was as early as page 19.

The boys club that these men belong to clearly has less to do with being a gentleman, and more to do with protecting the reputation of a pal so he'll do the same in return.  I guess I could amend the title of this post to "two (or more) can keep a secret if both of them have dirt on one another."  Or maybe "two can keep a secret if there wasn't a secret to begin with."  Then again, Jekyll does die, so maybe the saying is true.

"A Profound Duplicity of Life"

"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" (Stevenson 108).

Through the use of this one sentence Stevenson pithily puts into words the sensation that Freud describes in his work The Ego and the Id.  So Dr. Jekyll is left to face the multiple aspects of his personality.  The book gives the two halves of the Dr. the basic attributes of "good an evil," which simplifies the greater idea that applies in a more general self.  We hide or "Hyde" our Id within ourselves in order to contend with the super ego found in the world around us.

The point that Stevenson successfully makes is that the Id isn't necessarily evil so to speak, but is looked at as evil by society and therefore the ego of ourselves.  So assuming that Jekyll is the Ego and Hyde is the Id, people like Utterson, who exist in the greater world, can be considered the Super Ego.  And if we are to relate the theme of "black mailing" in this novella to illegality of sodomy, then we can say that the Id is likely meant to represent homosexual tendencies in Jekyll- and the other men in his circle.

So it is no wonder that Jekyll wishes to separate the two parts of himself that he has been forced to live with his entire life.  Jekyll includes in his confession, "I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame" (Stevenson 107).  His "irregularities" cause him to invent the potion that lead to his ruin.  This intense suppression of his Id results in the greater explosion that we see in Hyde.

What I find interesting is that even after Jekyll has allowed Hyde into the world, he still feels incredibly guilty about the actions of his other and "he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde" (Stevenson 119).  After realizing the damage that Hyde is doing, Jekyll continues to release him because of the high he gets from decompressing his Id.  The problem is that he does not learn from this separation of self.  He cannot get out from under the thumb of the Ego and Super Ego that control his life.  There is only extreme, a happy medium cannot be found.

Despite recognizing the duplicity within himself, Jekyll cannot find a way to cleanse away the Id that he so despises.  The reason that he moves so towards Hyde is that Hyde is his true self.  When Jekyll is Jekyll, Hyde is still within him, when Jekyll is Hyde, Hyde is only Hyde.  It is in his self hatred that Jekyll turns to what he supposedly hates within himself, rather than being a person that he can control.

Stevenson clearly realizes that there is a lot of power in not having to hide the "evil" within yourself, because you have no sense of the shame that society forces upon you.

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.