Sexuality Part 2: The Victorians

Victorian Britain Sexuality

      It is impossible to talk about monsters as metaphors without referencing Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; a regular man bringing out his darkest desires in the form of a violent villain is, in itself, clearly a metaphor for repression and inner urges. This is particularly important given the historical time in which Jekyll and Hyde was written, as the Victorian culture was all about presenting an image of control and propriety, particularly in regards to carnal impulses. As Morse Peckham writes in “Victorian Counterculture”:

Thus, if we look at Victorian culture, we see a public culture of sexual restraint, a remissive culture of sexual license, and an emerging culture, eventually to be reasonably successful… of sexual repression. (4)

      This idea ties into an earlier blog post I wrote about monsters and sexuality; Dr. Jekyll is a classic example of a man unable to achieve moderation for his less savoury urges due to the culture he lives in, and thus must create a monster through which those urges can be carried out. And though the monster is himself, unlike Dr. Frankenstein’s creation whose form is separate, perhaps this is what makes Mr. Hyde much more satisfying, or more tempting of a monstrous double than Frankenstein’s ever could be. In the chapter, “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement on the Case” of Jekyll and Hyde, we hear the doctor describe exactly why he felt as though he had to pursue his repressed urges so catastrophically:

In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double dealer I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge… I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth… that man is not truly one, but truly two. (73)

      Had Jekyll been born into a different culture, his repression and pursuit of this knowledge might have been unnecessary; in the same vein, Stevenson’s story may never have been written had the author known a different era. And in this way we can see that, like the Ancient Greeks I wrote about initially, the Victorians were as obsessed with sexuality as those before them, and their repression and shame towards it created a new kind of monster: the duplicitous double, the wolf in sheep's clothing; the Mr. Hyde. 

Works Cited

Peckham, Morse. “Victorian Counterculture.” Victorian Studies, vol. 18, no. 3, Mar. 1975, p. 257. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=30h&AN=6882128&site=eds-live.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories. United States of America: Barnes & Noble, 1995. Print.

Victorian Britain Sexuality. Digital Image. Victorian-Era.org. February 2, 2017. http://victorian-era.org/sexual-repression-in-the-victorian-era.html/victorians-britain-sexuality. JPEG File.