TITLE
Discussing the consequence of othering stemming from Literary identities and Stereotypes prevalent in the victorian fin de siecle
Great Expectations, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Victorian fin de Siècle: Discussing Othering stemming from stereotypes of degeneration.
INTRODUCTION
Othering is a large contributor to prejudices against identified groups. When expanded, it catalyses large scale dehumanization ranging to acts of violence against others (Cherry 2020). While there are a plethora of categories under othering such as religion, ethnicity, gender, and class, the foregrounded kind of othering in the fin de Siècle draws from what Victorians call 'degenerative traits'. This essay aims to unpack how Victorian literature echoes its society’s perception of Morel’s degeneration theory (1857) and its biological characteristics, whilst exploring its justifications within frameworks of the Victorian mindset. These ideas will mainly be drawn in context to excerpts containing crucial elements of othering from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).
EVOLUTION AND DEGENERATION
When the scientific theory of evolution by Charles Darwin (1859) was published and recognized, the putative idea that humans have evolved from apelike ancestors devastated a cornerstone of Victorian values—Christian Orthodoxy. Additionally, the growing discovery of ‘missing links’ between primitive apes and modern humans fractured the belief of distinct ‘kinds’ amongst species, another cornerstone of anthropic exclusivity (Tuttle 2021). Subsequently, the vocabulary of degeneration theory spread, with B. A. Morel claiming that though societies do progress, there are also probabilities of stagnation and even regression ensuing immoral influences and environments (Hambrook 2006). This concept—hereditary degeneration—is clearly present in the aforementioned literature by Dickens and Stevenson (Maudsley 1884); they engage with concerns regarding an increased susceptibility towards a recrudescence of humanity’s buried atavism, which was viewed as synonymous with moral bankruptcy. Necessarily, as the impermanence of the human condition was realised, the new conceptual field of degeneration began rapidly spreading amongst the Victorians, who struggled to grasp the term's radical implications. Interestingly enough, the hereditary narrative resonates with the theology of original Sin embedded in doctrines of Abrahamic Faiths (Patte 2019). While this spawned flawed versions of evolution, the familiarity of religious language may have smoothened the othering process of stereotyping ‘intergenerational transgression’.
OTHERING OF PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL TRAITS
ENTRENCHMENT OF OUT-GROUP DISCRIMINATION
To begin with, humans are an incredibly social species possessing the ability to progress and achieve breakthroughs when bonded together as a common group or tribe (Baumeister 1995). Tribal instinct is seen in Stevenson’s and Dicken’s works, as jarring ideas of evolution and consequently hereditary degeneration become key narratives directly addressing humanity’s fate. Next, rallying effects of a commonality encourage desirable group identity, which easily mobilizes action when given a common enemy— those who do not adhere to in-group commonalities. For instance, when proponents of Eugenics such as Francis Galton (1883) emerged, they raised awareness by providing tangible enemies and aims to nullify the threats of degradation.
Understandably, lengths taken to ameliorate the human condition via selective elimination of substandard genes only instigated a more irrational level of fear induced othering; discrimination in the domain of stereotypes. Discourse of out-group discrimination within the respective novels expresses degenerative criminal and moral stereotypes as polarised (Morgentaler 1998)—a dichotomy between altruistic and nefarious psyches where the former is depicted as morally irredeemable; rotten from the core, and the latter as morally pure; gentlemanly and dignified. The excerpt of Mr Utterson’s first meeting of Mr Hyde illustrates how ingrained the sense of bias is within his subconscious—to the point where he drew from his ‘hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear’ the conclusion that Hyde has an ‘impression of deformity without any nameable malformation’. Stevenson explicitly writes Utterson making a superficial judgement—that it is Hyde’s ‘radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent’. By reframing Hyde’s soul as evil, Utterson constructs a mental process that allows him to palatably strip away humanity from Hyde. This understanding of Stevenson’s choice of text is especially important, for it parallels the stereotyping processes of Victorian readers repulsed by Hyde’s emergence, infiltration, and pollution of Jekyll’s seemingly righteous character.
Regardless, Hyde’s detachment from humanity implicates a clear distinction of duality; the good and the evil within a person. By referencing duality, Stevenson introduces a black and white interpretation that the influence of decadence is inherently evil, another hotly debated issue in the late 19th century insinuating that any form of indulgent immersion equates to moral decline via a feeding of the degenerative psyche. For example, the morally high Dr Jekyll endangered his innate goodness the moment he succumbed to his ‘secret indulgences’ and coalesced his physical form of Victorian evil; namely by finding freedom in the mind of Hyde purely for to practice personal pleasures. Reflecting this, the Victorians’ act of othering most likely is a reflexive defence of the species by preventing the degenerative unravelling of intelligent ideational generativity (Calhoun 1973)—defined by complex behaviours exemplified in abstract concepts like morality and purity of character.
To pacify the Victorians’ fear regarding threats of rising criminal degeneration, essayist W.R. Greg (1851) assured that criminals were only found in a specific demographic apart from familiar communities. Similar to Utterson’s genetical perspective of Hyde and Pip’s classist view of Magwitch, scientifically racist utilisations of othering contributed to arguments for discrimination in order to anchor the superiority of model Victorians in contrast to their ‘degenerative counterparts’. However, such notions have since been debunked (Brookes 2021) and deemed incompatible with modern genetic research.
Another reinforcement of othering is shown where Pip ‘recoil[s] from [Magwitch] with a stronger repulsion, the more [Magwitch] admired [and was fond of him]’; it reveals Pip’s horror understanding Magwitch as his benefactor, as othering renders any linkage between them unthinkable. By viewing through the eyes of the Victorian elite, Magwitch’s recognition and subservience to “gentleman prestige” and Pip’s hatred for his own ungentlemanly roots are consolidated. Accordingly, they endorse a lens of othering in internalising the elite view of discrimination towards people like themselves, which further propagates investment in social hierarchies set by those holding power.
PHYSICAL FEATURES
From previous ideas discussed, we ascertain that Victorians consistently justify a necessity of Othering in order to anchor the purity of collective human identity. We can, from the dynamics between Pip and Magwitch in Great Expectations as well as Hyde’s general reception in Dr Jekyll and My Hyde, infer that this is largely done by methodically solidifying certain traits that are assumed to be animalistic and on the other end of the frame of reference in contrast to ‘morally grounded’ humans. Utterson described Mr Hyde as ‘pale and dwarfish’ with ‘knotted hands’, and goes as far as to attribute ‘Satan’s signature’ upon his face while Pip exasperatedly fails to ameliorate Magwitch’s appearance: ‘the better I dressed him, the more he looked like the slouching fugitive’. This is a superficial prejudice towards people like Magwitch and Hyde, who possess physical traits that Mr Utterson classifies as ‘troglodytic’ and ‘hardly human’. These anatomically prominent traits include: hairiness, shorter statures, hunching backs, beady set eyes, large jaws etc. (Lombroso 1911).
Lombroso (1876)
Contradictorily, a level of cognitive dissonance is apparent when we consider Pip’s fawning over Estella’s beauty despite her cruel traits. Akin to Pip’s bias, the hardened crook Compeyson’s trials were won in his favour because he did not look like a criminal with his gentlemanly, attractive appearance and background, unlike Magwitch who became a scapegoat because of his lack thereof (Chp.42). Evidently, though at different levels of understanding respectively, Pip and Utterson still subscribes to the most scientifically supported biases during the Victorian fin de Siècle—that man is intrinsically born with visible physical characteristics reflecting physiologically degenerative traits (Buzwell 2014).
BEHAVIOURAL ATTRIBUTES
As the Victorian digs into behavioural similarities in profiling the atavistic criminal, a telling sign would be a highly reactive emotional temperament, to which Magwitch and Hyde both share. Scholars like Nordau (1930) and Baldwin (1980) posit that since humanity’s role within the evolution of nature is to develop reason, manifesting high levels of instinct and strong emotions are degenerate in a man. Though radically explained, this idea holds weight as it indicates that an incapability of restraint and a poor control of emotions could lead to irrational actions. Furthermore, a less civilised temperament can also be externally engorged, as when Pip stated that Magwitch’s behaviours are due also to a cultivation of his savage disposition from ‘solitary hut-life’, comparable to Hyde’s morally isolated mental state, breeding minor misconduct that built up to treading a child down, to the violent murder of an old man. This flow of narrative suggests the Victorian interpretation of barbaric nurture as well as the prerequisites of originally criminal nature.
On a parallel strand, Pip’s fears of and fear for Magwitch is amplified due to his ignorance of Magwitch’s past, as he sees Magwitch only as a ‘dreadful mystery’. Logically, fears of the unknown solidify a bias of behavioural stereotypes, leading to Pip’s criminal profiling of Magwitch, or as Pip relays: ‘loading him with all the crimes in the Calendar, until the impulse was powerful on me to start up and fly from him’. Filling in the blanks of the ‘dreadful mystery’ by labelling Magwitch as an impulsive criminal with ‘Convict in the very grain of the man’ is Pip’s confirmation bias, where he sees Magwitch as ‘Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as plain could be’ ‘in all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking’. This abject perception of Magwitch or individuals with criminal records in general posed largely detrimental effects on their social interactions with the classes (Morgentaler 1998).
Likewise, because Stevenson wrote him as the Victorian embodiment of evil, Hyde has a feral disposition beyond his physicality. Hyde’s speech is ‘with a flush of anger’, ‘snarled aloud into a savage laugh’ etc. Even the tone of voice is subject to critique as Mr Utterson mulls on how Hyde has ‘a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness’ accompanying a ‘hoarse’, ‘husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice’ that are ‘points against him’.
In brief, the level of discrimination as shown requires the othering effect taking place to the extent where the indefinite perceptions of arbitrary actions and behaviours fuel the definitive biases of the observer.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
We might say today that however ugly you are on the outside, it’s the inside that counts, but as discussed, ideals entrenched in the Victorian fin de Siècle would indicate otherwise. Pantzidou (2021), Chelsy and Hernawati (2018) observed that Utterson’s point of view encapsulates the voice of the ideal Victorian, a narrative that could be Stevenson’s stylistic choice of a moral norm bridging the average Victorian to the controversial narratives of Jekyll and Hyde without crossing the line of excessive mental gymnastics. Comparably, Dickens’ equivalent of the Victorian moral standard is reflected in Pip’s narration. Othering lies as an apparent choice for these two perspectives that consider degeneracy on par to an infectious disease due to misinformation or an incomplete understanding of the topic. After all, the fear of that which is not known is a compelling justification to ostracize those who pose potential danger and threats.
Spurred on by concerns spawned from the evolutionary narrative, the act of Othering (stereotyping physical and behavioural traits) is a desperate grasp to maintain the anthropic principle which essentially draws from the well of human hubris and exceptionalism. This sense of othering becomes double-edged when levelled at those which dominant culture deems less-than-ideal versions of humanity (Spivak 1985), like Magwitch or Hyde, which in this case can be said to represent marginalised individuals. Dehumanisation of such marginalised groups lead to ostracization, often equating to a neglect and deprivation of mental and social support. The resulting lack of resources from such treatment forces the hand of these groups to resort to desperate means, continuing the cycle of othering as the fears of the public are confirmed.
Unfortunately, while efforts made in modern cosmopolitan societies have alleviated certain biases, society needs to be consciously aware that we are not exempt from the inextricably linked phenomenon of Identity and Othering— which modulates and mutates on a more nuanced scale as the world becomes more complex and, through the snowballing effect of group biases, more fractured.
PRIMARY REFERENCES
Dickens, C. (1992). Great Expectations. Wordsworth Editions.
Stevenson, R.L. (1886). The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Longmans, Green & Co.
SECONDARY REFERENCES
P. M. Baldwin (1980). Liberalism, Nationalism, and Degeneration: The Case of Max Nordau. Central European History 13(2): 99–120.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin 117: 497–529.
Brookes, E (2021). Cesare Lombroso: Theory of crime, criminal man, and atavism. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/lombroso-theory-of-crime-criminal-man-and-atavism.html [Assessed 23 October 2021]
Buzwell, G. (2014) ‘Man is not truly one, but truly two’: duality in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/duality-in-robert-louis-stevensons-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde [Assessed 10 November 2021]
Calhoun, J. B. (1973). "Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 66(1 Pt 2): 80–88.
Chelsy, V. and Hernawati, M. (2018). Criticism against the Gentlemen Image in England’s Victorian Period in R.L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. LEXICON 5(1): 77-83
Cherry, K. (2020) “What Is Othering?”: Race and identity. Verywellmind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-othering-5084425 [Assessed 8 November 2021]
Darwin, C. (1859). The origin of species and The descent of man. New York: The Modern Library.
Galton, F. (1883). Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development. London: Macmillan Publishers.
Gilmour, R. (2016). The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel. London: Routledge.
Greg, W. R. (1851) 'England as It Is'. Edinburgh Review 43.
Hambrook, G. (2006) “Baudelaire, Degeneration Theory, and Literary Criticism in ‘Fin de Siècle’ Spain.” The Modern Language Review 101(4): 1005–24.
Lombroso, C. (1911) Criminal Man. New York: London
Lombroso, C. (1876). L’Uomo delinquente. Milano: Hoepli.
Massey, I. (1973) “The Third Self: ‘Dracula, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ and Mérimée’s ‘Lokis.’” The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 6(2): 57–67.
Maudsley, H. (1884). Body and will. New York: D. Appleton.
Morel, B.A. (1857). Traité des dégénérescence physiques, intellectuelles, et morales de l'espèce humaine. Paris: J.B. Balliere.
Morgentaler, G. (1998) “Meditating on the Low: A Darwinian Reading of Great Expectations.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 38(4):707–21.
Pantzidou, L.K. (2021). ‘Jekyll, Hyde and the Victorian Construction of Criminal Working-Class Masculinities’, Athens Journal of Law 7(2): 233-252.
Patte, D. (2019). "Original Sin". In Daniel Patte (eds.) The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, Two Volume Set. Wipf and Stock.
Raina, B (1986). "Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth". Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
Spivak, G. C. (1985). The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives. History and Theory 24(3): 247–272.
Tuttle, R.H. (2021) "human evolution". Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/human-evolution. [Accessed 12 November 2021]
Appendices (selected passages)
Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens;
Chapter 40, Pages: 351-352
The more I dressed him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like the slouching fugitive on the marshes. This effect on my anxious fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old face and manner growing more familiar to me; but I believe too that he dragged one of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man.
The influences of his solitary hut-life were upon him besides, and gave him a savage air that no dress could tame; added to these were the influences of his subsequent branded life among men, and, crowning all, his consciousness that he was dodging and hiding now. In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking,—of brooding about in a high-shouldered reluctant style,—of taking out his great horn-handled jackknife and wiping it on his legs and cutting his food,—of lifting light glasses and cups to his lips, as if they were clumsy pannikins,—of chopping a wedge off his bread, and soaking up with it the last fragments of gravy round and round his plate, as if to make the most of an allowance, and then drying his finger-ends on it, and then swallowing it,—in these ways and a thousand other small nameless instances arising every minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as plain could be.
It had been his own idea to wear that touch of powder, and I had conceded the powder after overcoming the shorts. But I can compare the effect of it, when on, to nothing but the probable effect of rouge upon the dead; so awful was the manner in which everything in him that it was most desirable to repress, started through that thin layer of pretence, and seemed to come blazing out at the crown of his head. It was abandoned as soon as tried, and he wore his grizzled hair cut short.
Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, of the dreadful mystery that he was to me. When he fell asleep of an evening, with his knotted hands clenching the sides of the easy-chair, and his bald head tattooed with deep wrinkles falling forward on his breast, I would sit and look at him, wondering what he had done, and loading him with all the crimes in the Calendar, until the impulse was powerful on me to start up and fly from him. Every hour so increased my abhorrence of him, that I even think I might have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of being so haunted, notwithstanding all he had done for me and the risk he ran, but for the knowledge that Herbert must soon come back. Once, I actually did start out of bed in the night, and begin to dress myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him there with everything else I possessed, and enlist for India as a private soldier.
I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in those lonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the wind and the rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have been taken and hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be, and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to my horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated kind of Patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own,—a game that I never saw before or since, and in which he recorded his winnings by sticking his jackknife into the table,—when he was not engaged in either of these pursuits, he would ask me to read to him,—“Foreign language, dear boy!” While I complied, he, not comprehending a single word, would stand before the fire surveying me with the air of an Exhibitor, and I would see him, between the fingers of the hand with which I shaded my face, appealing in dumb show to the furniture to take notice of my proficiency. The imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. (1886) By Robert Louis Stevenson.
Chapter 2; Search for Mr Hyde, Pages: 15-16
‘You will not find Dr Jekyll; he is from home,’ replied Mr Hyde, blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, ‘How did you know me?’ he asked.
‘On your side,’ said Mr Utterson, ‘will you do me a favour?’
‘With pleasure,’ replied the other. ‘What shall it be?’
‘Will you let me see your face?’ asked the lawyer.
Mr Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden
reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. ‘Now I shall know you again,’ said Mr Utterson. ‘It may be useful.’
‘Yes,’ returned Mr Hyde, ‘it is as well we have met; and a` propos, you should have my address.’ And he gave a number of a street in Soho.
‘Good God!’ thought Mr Utterson, ‘can he too have been thinking of the will?’ But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in acknowledgement of the address.
‘And now,’ said the other, ‘how did you know me?’
‘By description,’ was the reply.
‘Whose description?’
‘We have common friends,’ said Mr Utterson.
‘Common friends?’ echoed Mr Hyde, a little hoarsely. ‘Who are
they?’
‘Jekyll, for instance,’ said the lawyer.
‘He never told you,’ cried Mr Hyde, with a flush of anger. ‘I did
not think you would have lied.’
‘Come,’ said Mr Utterson, ‘that is not fitting language.’
The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment,
with extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house.
The lawyer stood awhile when Mr Hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. The problem he was thus debating as he walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved. Mr Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr Utterson regarded him. ‘There must be something else,’ said the perplexed gentleman. ‘There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.’
Excerpt 2: Chapter 1, Volume 3
The more I dressed him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like the slouching fugitive on the marshes. The othering of criminals, the idea where man can be intrinsically born with visible physical characteristics that reflect physiologically degenerative traits. This effect on my anxious fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old face and manner growing more familiar to me; but I believe too that he dragged one of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man.(GE, p. 352)
The influences of his solitary hut-life were upon him besides, and gave him a savage air that no dress could tame; added to these were the influences of his subsequent branded life among men, and, crowning all, his consciousness that he was dodging and hiding now. Barbaric Nurture as well as the integration of originally criminal nature, C.D.'s pov; the outward appearance (physical degeneration) of the person betray the (assumed) inward representation of themselves.
In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking,—of brooding about in a high-shouldered reluctant style,—of taking out his great horn-handled jackknife and wiping it on his legs and cutting his food,—of lifting light glasses and cups to his lips, as if they were clumsy pannikins,—of chopping a wedge off his bread, and soaking up with it the last fragments of gravy round and round his plate, as if to make the most of an allowance, and then drying his finger-ends on it, and then swallowing it,—in these ways and a thousand other small nameless instances arising every minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as plain could be. The othering effect takes place to the extent where different arbitrary actions fuel the perceptive biases of the observer.
It had been his own idea to wear that touch of powder, and I had conceded the powder after overcoming the shorts. But I can compare the effect of it, when on, to nothing but the probable effect of rouge upon the dead; so awful was the manner in which everything in him that it was most desirable to repress, started through that thin layer of pretense, and seemed to come blazing out at the crown of his head. It was abandoned as soon as tried, and he wore his grizzled hair cut short.
Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, of the dreadful mystery that he was to me. When he fell asleep of an evening, with his knotted hands clenching the sides of the easy-chair, and his bald head tattooed with deep wrinkles falling forward on his breast, I would sit and look at him, wondering what he had done, and loading him with all the crimes in the Calendar, until the impulse was powerful on me to start up and fly from him. factoring the idea that we assume the worst in someone when we place them in a group we view negatively; the rich spectrum of humanity becomes a one-dimensional plane and we treat the faulting subjects as such. Of course, these ideas are framed to be the flawed thoughts of Pip, in which reflects a critique on the fallacious thinking permeating the Victorian fin de siecle Every hour so increased my abhorrence of him, that I even think I might have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of being so haunted, notwithstanding all he had done for me and the risk he ran, but for the knowledge that Herbert must soon come back. Once, I actually did start out of bed in the night, and begin to dress myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him there with everything else I possessed, and enlist for India as a private soldier.
I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in those lonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the wind and the rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have been taken and hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be, and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to my horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated kind of Patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own,—a game that I never saw before or since, and in which he recorded his winnings by sticking his jackknife into the table,—when he was not engaged in either of these pursuits, he would ask me to read to him,—“Foreign language, dear boy!” While I complied, he, not comprehending a single word, would stand before the fire surveying me with the air of an Exhibitor, and I would see him, between the fingers of the hand with which I shaded my face, appealing in dumb show to the furniture to take notice of my proficiency. The imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me.
REFERENCES
In Smith’s article on “Animal Relatives, Difficult Relations,” she disagrees with the common idea posed by ethical theorists that one’s discomfort or “intuitive sense of outrage” at something is a sign of its inherent impropriety (Smith 3).
Levels of discomfort regarding an entitiy and Intuitively Defining it as other or lesser stems from a flawed, incomplete perspective, a bias that is hard to discren whether it reflects our temeraments rather than our nurtured identities.
https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/engl-355-fall2013/2013/11/21/animal-or-anti-victorian/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1314725?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-othering-5084425 (Cherry K)
Massey, Irving. “The Third Self: ‘Dracula, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ and Mérimée’s ‘Lokis.’” The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association, vol. 6, no. 2, Midwest Modern Language Association, 1973, pp. 57–67, https://doi.org/10.2307/1314725.
Morgentaler, Goldie. “Meditating on the Low: A Darwinian Reading of Great Expectations.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 38, no. 4, [Rice University, Johns Hopkins University Press], 1998, pp. 707–21, https://doi.org/10.2307/451094.
Morality
While some may say that it is a duality in nature, the novel has phrased established (proof) that Hyde cannot exercise control over his nature determined to be irredeemably bad. He is not inherently evil, he has an external force bringing his psyche into cutting off his ability to manifest good, whereas Jekyll has the ability to do bad at the same time. So ‘the splitting of dualities’ as Jekyll stated in his confession is too simple a view to take; this is because Hyde is essentially a lobotomized Jekyll. His ‘evil’ is only uncontrollable only because Jekyll chose to lose his control.
The spectrum of free will
Pip has no free will. There is no choice but to be groomed Into becoming a gentleman. Or more specifically, he is directed and influenced by external factors to be biased against the lower class. apart from high moral integrity, the gentleman of the Victorian era is synonymous with highborn aristocracy and wealth (cite). This perception of the gentleman in itself is another external determinant that shapes Pips biases, even if he clearly has an initial struggle to disengage himself from such influences (cite)
Hyde is worse off than pip, as he lacks free will internally, he is incapable of conceptualizing restraint and morality, as Jekyll's incarnation of evil.
that's hard determinism in play for Hyde where u can't even imagine him being good, but for pip it's soft determinism bcs he has the idea of "good" and thinKs he can make a change (but in reality, he's just shepherded everywhere)
Here we can consider the cogent argument formed on the basis that the good man is he who is free to choose evil (Irving 1973)— but abstains from doing so. Someone who commits bad acts cannot be necessarily or inherently evil, not as long as they lack the awareness or the knowledge of a maximization of “good” or “wellbeing”.
Thus Dr. Jekyll, who is undoubtedly shown to be intelligent and aware of his moral grounds, has crossed the line of goodness into the unmistakable realm of evil the moment he coalesced his physical form of evil. He finds more freedom in the mind of Hyde (e.g.), purely for personal pleasure, when he indulges in
Even so, the Victorian fin de siècle sensibilities of the evil incarnate dispel such notions of moral awareness. Instead, the spike of interest in the fields of eugenics, decadence and degeneration propagated a rise of vocabulary in evolution
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