Key Quote
“"Man is not truly one, but truly two"”
Dr Jekyll · Chapter 10: Henry Jekyll's Full Statement
Focus: “two”
Jekyll's philosophical declaration — the thesis of the entire novella — asserts that human nature is fundamentally divided, containing both good and evil in unstable coexistence.
Technique 1 — ANTITHETICAL PARALLELISM / UNIVERSAL CLAIM
The antithetical (contrasting) structure — 'not truly one, but truly two' — uses parallelism (matching grammatical structures) to present duality as a balanced, scientific observation. The universal noun 'Man' (humanity) transforms Jekyll's personal experience into a claim about human nature itself — this is not one doctor's peculiar condition but a universal truth about the human species.
The repetition of 'truly' is deeply ironic: Jekyll claims to have discovered truth, but his experiment to separate good from evil fails catastrophically. The word 'truly' carries the weight of scientific certainty, yet the story demonstrates that his 'truth' is dangerously reductive (oversimplifying a complex reality) — human nature cannot be neatly divided into two components.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
Jekyll's confession reveals his regression: in attempting to purify his good side by separating out the evil, he has instead liberated a force he cannot control. His scientific ambition has produced moral catastrophe — a regression from civilised doctor to enabler of murder. The tragedy is that his intention was moral improvement; the result was its opposite.
Key Words
Technique 2 — SCIENTIFIC REGISTER / CLINICAL DETACHMENT
Jekyll's statement uses the register of scientific observation — detached, analytical, declarative — to describe what is essentially a moral and spiritual crisis. This clinical detachment (emotionally distant, medical tone) reveals Jekyll's fundamental error: he approaches the human soul as if it were a chemical compound that can be separated in a laboratory. Stevenson critiques the Victorian faith in science's ability to solve all problems, including moral ones.
The use of 'Man' rather than 'I' performs a crucial distancing function: Jekyll presents his personal crisis as universal philosophy, avoiding direct confession. This deflection (redirecting attention away from oneself) through generalisation is itself a form of the respectable concealment that the novella criticises — even in his final confession, Jekyll cannot fully own what he has done.
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Context (AO3)
VICTORIAN SCIENCE & ETHICS
The late 19th century saw rapid scientific advancement — anaesthesia, germ theory, vaccination — fuelling a belief that science could solve any problem. Stevenson questions this positivist (believing that only scientific knowledge is valid) confidence: Jekyll's experiment demonstrates that some problems — moral, psychological, spiritual — cannot be solved by chemistry. Science without ethics produces monsters.
DUALITY IN VICTORIAN CULTURE
Victorian society was structured around binary oppositions: respectable/disreputable, public/private, male/female, reason/passion. Jekyll's statement challenges these binaries by suggesting they coexist within every individual. The novella was published during a period of growing psychological understanding — anticipating Freud's model of the divided self.
Key Words
WOW — THE ID, EGO, AND SUPEREGO (Freud)
Freud's structural model of the psyche (published 1923, but anticipated by Stevenson in 1886) divides the mind into three parts: the Id (primitive desires), the Ego (rational self), and the Superego (moral conscience). Jekyll represents the Ego and Superego — the respectable, rational, moral man — while Hyde is the pure Id: desire without conscience, impulse without restraint. Jekyll's experiment is an attempt to separate the Superego from the Id, liberating both — but Freud would argue this is impossible, because the three components are structurally interdependent. The Id without the Ego's mediation becomes destructive chaos (Hyde); the Superego without the Id becomes repressive denial (Jekyll's tortured respectability). Stevenson's novella is a case study in what happens when the psyche's necessary balance is artificially disrupted.
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