The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: the Evaluation Claim - Literature review Example

 The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: the Evaluation Claim The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are two novels that have much in common. Both novels are set in Victorian England and written during this period. Both novels concern handsome young men. In both novels, there is an embodiment of evil – Mr. Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dorian Gray’s portrait in Dorian Gray. There is a dual nature in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and, in Dorian, there is not really a dual nature – Dorian is pretty much all bad, although he often states that he wants to be good – yet there is a dual image. Dorian himself is beautiful, and his portrait, because it alone showed the physical effects of debauchery, is hideous. The dual image is also present in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as Dr. Jekyll is handsome, and Mr. Hyde is hideous. While there are many superficial similarities between the two novels, there are also many differences, and the messages of each novel are distinct from one another. Beyond the superficial similarities, the two stories have many differences as well. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde continued his career of, basically, skewering the rich dilettantes and exposing hypocrisy (Ertman 153). The Picture of Dorian Gray, although it is considered to be a dramatic novel, has much in common with his satirical plays, such as Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. There was even a name that was the same – Mrs. Erlynne, who was a major character in Lady Windermere’s Fan, appears in The Picture of Dorian Gray, albeit only in a passing mention. The famous line regarding knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing was a part of this novel (Wilde 28), and was also featured in Lady Windermere’s Fan. The themes of skewering the rich, making this a subversively satirical novel, can be seen all the way through the novel (Foster, 18). The same is true for the issues regarding hypocrisy. First, as with Oscar Wilde’s plays, the men in this play are dandies (Foster 18) and do not have any visible means of income. The two main men in this play, Dorian and Lord Henry, apparently live off their inheritance and do not do any kind of work. Because of this, the two characters have the cynicism of the idle rich, especially Lord Henry, who was the influence for Dorian Gray. Moreover, all the way through, there was subtle commentary that is the province of Oscar Wilde, in general (Ertman 153). This is seen in Dorian’s fascination of the super-rich and their debauchery throughout history, such as when he was reading about, among other people, the Duke of Milan, who slew his wife, and Pope Innocent, “whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor” (Wilde 141). Then, later in the novel, Dorian and Basil are arguing about Dorian’s associating with shady characters, and the implication is that these shady characters are all men of means – such as Kent’s “silly son [who] [took] his wife from the streets,” and Adrian Singleton who “writes his friend’s name across the bill” (Wilde 146). Then, Lord Henry talks about people who “balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy” (Wilde 190). Dorian tells Hallward that nobody can talk against him because everybody who talks about him do not have clean hands “what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite” (Wilde 147). In contrast, there is really no evidence that Stevenson meant for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to be a way of skewering the upper class, so much as it was supposed to be an exploration on how all of us are good and evil and that good and evil co-exist within each individual (Saposnik 716). Dr. Jekyll was not an idle rich man; he was a medical doctor and very well respected for that. There was also another main character, Mr. Utterston, who was a lawyer, and Lanyon, who was another medical doctor. Only Enfield appeared to be a man of leisure. Moreover, there was not the same cynical commentary in Jekyll as there was in Dorian. Thus, the message of the two different novels is decidedly different – Jekyll had more of a simple message, and there really were not any sub-themes that detracted from the overall message. Dorian was not only about good and evil, but also about cynicism and the idleness and debauchery of the upper class, and about hypocrisy. That said, Reed would state that Jekyll might have actually been a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of alcohol misuse, so this is another interpretation that might complicate the overall message (32). That said, Saposnik would argue that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was really a commentary about the hypocrisy of Victorian London, but its message about hypocrisy is undoubtedly more subtle than the same message in Dorian. This is because, as opposed to coming right out and stating that London society is hypocritical, like Dorian did, the message about hypocrisy is more symbolic. Saposnik states that Victorian London was “teeming with vice while concurrently responsive to religious persuasion” (718). This is akin to Dorian’s fraternizing with the drug addled in the opium dens while maintaining such a respectable place in society that he also was fraternizing with Lords and Ladies. As Saposnik saw the matter, Hyde was the embodiment of the vice that the Victorian Londoners felt, and could not adequately express. Reed's theory regarding Dr. Jekyll transforming himself into Mr. Hyde because of alcoholism would fit into this message as well as alcoholism was one of the vices that the Victorians felt debased men and tried to repress (32). If the story is read in this manner, one can argue that Stevenson had essentially the same message as Wilde, but just in more subtle packaging. This is another major difference between Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll. Basically, Dorian Gray became the way that he did because of the subversive influence of Lord Henry, not because of any inherent fascination of the dual nature of man. Dorian was not inherently bad, so much as he was extremely impressionable, in part because he had not yet become aware of his beauty at the beginning of the novel (Craft 113). He started out a lad of around twenty years old, callow and unsure about the world. Therefore, when Lord Henry let his cynical nature be known to Dorian, basically telling Dorian that man should always obey temptation because, if he does not, the “soul grow sick with longings for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful” (Wilde 21), and his words were very much taken to heart by young Dorian. Dorian changed that day due to Lord Henry’s cynical words. Even the painter, Hallwell, saw how much Dorian had changed. It was not long after Dorian heard Lord Henry’s cynical words that he was doing the first of his apparently long line of despicable acts – breaking up with Sybil Vane, simply because she embarrassed him by her lack of acting ability, and, in the process, telling her some of the most heartless and heartbreaking words imaginable. Hallwell thought that Dorian would be devastated at the news that Sybil had killed herself, but then he was shocked that Dorian was not devastated at all, but, rather, went to the opera shortly thereafter. This is in contrast to Jekyll and Hyde because in that story, Jekyll was not influenced by any one man, so much as he had to satisfy his own intellectual curiosity about man’s dual nature (Saposnik, 32). As Dr. Jekyll stated, in his own words, he was looking around his world and noticed the “profound duplicity of life” (Stevenson 78). He was fascinated by his own dual nature and how he knew that he had two sides: one side that “plunged into shame,” and the other side that “labored, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering” (Stevenson 78). In other words, there was not any one person who influenced Dr. Jekyll; thus, he was arguably more at fault for what happened when Mr, Hyde was let loose, then Dorian was when his darker nature became prominent. If Reed is correct and Jekyll was an alcoholic, then Jekyll was even more at fault for letting his dark side loose (Reed 32). There is the sense that Dr. Jekyll also did his experiment mainly out of boredom and the desire to challenge his intellect and emotions in exploring the duality of man. At any rate, Dr. Jekyll was to blame for what happened to him. With Dorian, arguably, Lord Henry is to blame for his transformation from callow and impressionable boy to a hardened and cynical man. A similarity that both novels have is the way our society is fascinated by beauty and repulsed by the ugly. This is a recurrent theme in Dorian: Dorian Gray fascinates everybody he meets, mainly because of his beauty (Craft 113). Lord Henry even tells Dorian that it is better to be beautiful than to be good, and since Dorian has beauty, Lord Henry feels that Dorian has everything. This is despite the fact that Dorian himself sees that he really has nothing and that he is the most wretched person has more than him. In Jekyll and Hyde, this theme presents itself as well. Saposnik states that when Hyde was caught pouncing on a young child, the crowd that witnessed this was “responding not to the trampling, but to Hyde’s physical repulsiveness” (723). In other words, if Hyde had the appearance of Dorian, or of Dr. Jekyll for that matter, the implication is that the crowd would not have reacted as they did to Hyde’s acts. Society values the beautiful and puts beauty above other virtues, and this is what is made clear in both novels. This beauty is the subject of Dorian Gray's narcissism, according to Craft. And Craft argues that Dorian's transformation from a callow and inexperienced youth to a cad was not because of Lord Henry's cynicism at all, but, rather, it was because Dorian did not realize his own beauty until he saw his portrait. Before that, Craft stated that Dorian's “self' is but a blank canvas awaiting the artist's touch” (113-114). Dorian's biggest sin, in this estimation, is narcissism, as all of Dorian's sins brings him back to look at his portrait to see how degraded he is inside – essentially sending “Dorian back to his closet so he may consult portrait and mirror again” (Craft 116). This is stark contrast to Jekyll. While Saposnik argues, in part, that Jekyll was narcissistic in that he did not have any regard for anybody but himself (718), the true sin that Jekyll displayed was, arguably, hubris. Like Faustus before him, Jekyll's overall curiosity and ennui with life in general moved him towards finding out about the dark side of life. He did not show regard for others, and this is true, but there was not any real indication that Jekyll was motivated by any kind of self-love, so much as he was moved towards self-importance. Conclusion Jekyll and Hyde and The Picture of Dorian Gray have much in common, but there are basic differences as well. The superficialities between the two novels are that they both involved handsome men who were evil, and the evil was personified – in a portrait for Dorian and in a man for Jekyll. But there are many differences as well. The tone of Dorian is more satirical, more towards skewering society, in general. Jekyll is more geared towards exploring the dual nature of man. These are but two differences, but each novel is extremely effective in their overall message – that there is good and evil in all of us, and, sometimes, beauty is only skin deep. Works Cited Craft, Christopher. “Come See About Me: Enchantment of the Double in The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Representations, 91 (2005): 109-137. Print. Ertman, Martha. “Oscar Wilde: Paradoxical Poster Child for Both Identity and Post-Identity,” Law and Society Inquiry, 13.1 (2000): 153-183. Print. Foster, Richard. “Wilde as Parodist: A Second Look at the Importance of Being Earnest,” College English, 18.1 (1956): 18-23. Print. Reed, Thomas. The Transforming Draught: Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson and the Victorian Alcohol Debate. North Carolina: McFarland and Publishers, 2006. Print. Saposnik, Irving. “The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 11.4 (1971): 715-731. Print. Stevenson, Robert. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ed. Martin Danahay. Plymouth: Broadview Edition, 2005. Print. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Print. Read More