post three the fears of victorian london
In the short story of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson we are able to see the themes and fears that haunted and troubled Victorian London society. Fears of a loss of control of becoming animalistic. Even before this story was published the fear of a second evil part of a person’s nature was already a popular idea. This is where we get our modern-day myths of werewolves. The perfectly respectable men who when the moon was full would transform themself against their will into a savage beast that would kill without mercy and without cause. In Jekyll and Hyde we see this ancient fear thrust onto a different context one that has more symbolic meaning then literal but still maintains much of the same themes. While the potion that Jekyll drinks in pursuit of his experiment to prove the duality of the human personality does not literally turn him into a beast, it does do something that to Victorian Londoners was far more terrifying and far more real. It instead released the animalistic nature that lies beneath all of mankind. A side of ourselves that Sigmund Freud referred to as the ID. This “ID” was the part of us that just wants to fulfill basic animal desire without thought for anyone else or for the consequences of our actions. One thing that was extremely important to men in London society during this period was civility and the idea that human beings are rational and intelligent creatures, able to resist animalistic desires and temptations. However, as much as Jekyll tries to contain Hyde he ultimately fails showing a key fear of the audience. That they too would end like Jekyll and would end up being unable to control the dark more animalist side of their own nature.
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