At one level the novel can be seen

as dramatising the contrast between middle class

bourgeois repression of the 'darker' side

As a kind of venting of libidinal rebellion

against the striving for middle class respectability

Bourgeois Repression vs. Bohemian Liberation [Source]

At one level "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" can be seen as dramatising the contrast between middle class bourgeois repression of the 'darker' side. As a kind of venting of libidinal rebellion against the striving for middle class respectability.

Hyde, in this sense, could represent the 'shadowy' otherness of the working class or proletariat.

Alternatively, remembering that late nineteenth century Britain was, above all, an Imperialist culture, it is possible also to see the novella as dealing with the relationship between of Imperialist Master and Slave.

Jekyll's view seems to be that the split in his being has derived much less from the presence within his psyche of an uncontrollable, passionate self than from the force with which that self has been repressed according to the dictates of social convention.

The original tendency of Jekyll's alter ego was by no means towards the vicious, but rather towards the 'loose', a neutral desire for certain kinds of personal freedom which has been repressed by the 'imperious' need not only to conform to, but also to stand as a public example of strict virtue.

Jekyll's problem, surely, is largely put as a social one, and one can interpret it in two connected ways:

Literally, as the problem of a member of a 'respectable', professional upper middle class, who is supposed to 'body forth' social virtue in his person and to eschew any behaviour, however harmless, which might tend to degrade that stance, and also metaphorically as the problem of a member of a 'master-race'.

Jekyll's dificulties are those of the benevolent imperialist: they are not at all to do with the political problem of sanctioning brute force, but with the maintenance of dignity under adverse circumstances.

It is strongly suggested that Hyde's behaviour is an urban version of 'going native'.

The particular difficulties encountered by English imperialism in its decline were conditioned by the nature of the supremacy which had been asserted: not a simple racial supremacy, but one constantly seen as founded on moral superiority.

If an empire based on a morality declines, what are the implications for the particular morality concerned? It is precisely Jekyll's 'high views' which produce morbidity in his relations with his own desires.

Thus, of course, the name of his alter ego: it is the degree to which the doctor takes seriously his public responsibilities which determines the 'hidden-ness' of his desire for pleasure.

Since the public man must be seen to be blameless, he must 'hide' his private nature, even to the extent of denying it be any part of himself.

The Jekyll & Hyde Conflict in All of Us

Published in 1886, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has the force of a classic myth or fairy tale in the way it speaks to humanity’s deepest fears. The phrase “Jekyll-Hyde” has entered common parlance and is automatically understood.

Even as the story resonates cross-culturally and through the years, it could be seen as a tale that could only have originated in the milieu in which it was written, the Victorian era, with its strong insistence on public propriety and rigid sexual repression.

Robert Louis Stevenson claimed the idea for the novel came to him in a dream so it is not surprising that the story itself has a nightmarish quality.

The reader first learns of Hyde as a brutal man who deliberately walked into and trampled over a 10-year-old girl.

Hyde has a friend and benefactor in a physician named Dr. Henry Jekyll who writes a check to the child’s family so they will not press charges against his friend. The friendship between these two men is puzzling.

Hyde is described as, “a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really damnable man” while Jekyll is “the very pink of proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fellows who do what they call good.”

Not only is the “damnable” Hyde a bad man but he is a man who looks the part. A character says, “There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable” and that he “must be deformed somewhere.”

However, the deformity is of a bizarre sort that escapes categorization since, “he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way.”

What is the root of the friendship between Dr. Jekyll, a respected gentleman, and Hyde, a callous brute whom no other decent person but Jekyll “could have to do with”?

A seeming clue appears with the information that Jekyll has not always been “the very pink of proprieties” but “was wild when he was young.”

Thus, it is speculated that Hyde might be blackmailing him with knowledge of a youthful transgression.

A character in Mary Reilly, a movie inspired by this story, speculates that Hyde may be Jekyll’s out of wedlock son, a “wild oat” sown in his youth.

Indeed, while Hyde is frequently thought of as Jekyll’s evil twin, the novella itself often talks of a father-son relationship.

Jekyll says that he has done scientific experiments that allow him to bring out the more primitive elements of his nature by transforming him into Hyde and speaks of both himself and Hyde in the third person and as if they are parent and child.

We are told that “Jekyll had more than a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference.”

The mature Jekyll, tempted but restrained by conscience, appears the quintessential middle-aged and responsible paterfamilias while Hyde seems like the paradigmatic rebellious and irresponsible youth, heedless of consequences and carelessly indulging his whims.

Much in the novel is heavily symbolic, perhaps most dramatically the name of Jekyll’s alter-ego.

“Hyde” suggests the forces of wickedness hidden within the civilized individual. It may also be suggestive of “hide” in the sense of the flesh and its desires.

Jekyll remarks on his own “undignified” yearnings and tells us that, when he was young, “the worst of [his] faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition” that he “found hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry [his] head high.”

Perhaps equally tellingly, Hyde has the “hairy hand” that was, in Victorian folk belief, thought to be the mark of the habitual masturbater.

In her forward to the University of Nebraska Press edition of the novel, Joyce Carol Oates wrote that she believes that Hyde’s trampling of a 10-year-old child suggests, to the extent a work published in the era could, a sex crime.

“Much is made subsequently,” Oates pointed out, “of the girl’s ‘screaming’; and of the fact that money is paid to her family as recompense for her violation.”

The novel may be read as a warning against sexual repression and that is how Oates views it: “Had the Victorian ideal been less hypocritically ideal or had Dr. Jekyll bee content with a less perfect public reputation his tragedy would not have occurred.”

Dr. Jekyll may have turned himself into Hyde in order to take a pleasant wank, then unwittingly released horrendously destructive impulses.