Learning From The Classics Podcast: Stevenson And Dualism

This track is a recording of my weekly LIVE PODCAST, Learning from the Classics, dated March 14th, 2025.

In this LIVE session, I will relate prompts from Classic Literature to the challenges we face every day. There is a certain sense of security in understanding that some struggles are universal and not personal to ourselves. In such novels, there is also a reconciliation to be had with souls we cannot and will not ever meet but who teach us so much.

All LIVES are available week to week on a playlist.

Transcript

Ah take a deep breath I'm gonna get into it so today we are looking at Dr.

Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde my new series on the three tracks and this is a novella so it's a lot shorter and yeah it's something that I really I focus a lot on women's literature and I'm really excited about talking about the other side the men's side of literature of the same period of time so I am going to start I'm going to get into it now I'm assuming we are here so I'm going to change screens and I am going to begin this week we're looking at Jekyll and Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson and his groundbreaking work which this piece specifically so it's Victorian Gothic literature but this piece specifically features the dualistic nature of man which is fascinating in itself philosophically speaking is fascinating in itself I was published in 1886 during the Victorian era and I spoke last week and if you didn't manage to see it you can always catch up by listening to the recording of my life which is available as a free track and they are all available on a playlist so look out for that I have a playlist for all the series so if you're ever missing anything just check out that so this novel Jekyll and Hyde was published in 1886 and it's part of that Victorian era so as I explained last week got the Georgian Regency within that Victorian and then Edwardian Victorian era is what I'm looking at this week and next week so next week we'll be talking about the role of religion in the Victorian era and Stoicism we will touch on today so Stoicism being that emphasis on virtue,

Duty,

Self-control something that resonated with the Victorian values of discipline,

Hard work,

Moral rectitude so that correct behavior,

Ways of thinking,

Righteousness very much a stiff upper lip period and within this era there were well-defined roles for men and women so this concept of manliness in the Victorian era often involves Stoicism and this Stoic theme appears a lot during Victorian times and in this novel specifically Jekyll and Hyde it is something that is a theme that runs through it but we look at the other side to that coin so we can contrast it with something that is completely free-willed and full of expression and wild okay so you've got the emotionally reserved Victorian gentleman on one hand the strong the brave the true internalizing all his emotions and feelings and expressions and then on the flip side of that you've got completely wild so in between in this story it's a story of dualities so that's what we're looking at so Stoicism will be covering next week which we're celebrating resilience and determination in the face of adversity and as I mentioned before the Victorian period was a big time of change so there was a lot of there was an unsettling feeling and I'll talk a bit more about that later on it's a period of scientific innovation which scared the Victorians right because they were used to basing their understanding of the world their reality on the Bible and suddenly here comes along something that's challenging that so just to recap this week Jekyll and Hyde a story about a novella which is 10 chapter shorter story about the duality of man so that's challenging that Christian narrative right there and then next week we're going to talk about Stoicism within the Victorian period okay so let's get into it if you've just joined thank you for joining I really appreciate everybody being here every week it's lovely to see you and if you can share these lives the actual event itself not the life I don't think you can physically share the life itself but if you share the knowledge of event through your socials or your with your friends on the app that would be great so we could continue doing this good work because speaking about literature is like any other hobby it's an escape and it's something that is unchanging the history is written it's there for us to absorb and asked to escape into and for these next 45 minutes that's what we're going to be doing okay so Robert Louis Stevenson let's get into it he was a Scottish novelist he wrote short stories he wrote poetry he was a born in 1850 he was a qualified as an advocate but he made his money through writing as a young child he suffered many illnesses so actually had a very short life he only lived to the age of 44 he was afflicted with the croup scarlet fever chicken pox monks gastric fever you name it the poor little boy had it so you know later on in life he sought warmer clients for his health specifically Samoa in the South Pacific so he left old blighty and off he went to live in the Sun he had a Christian upbringing but he did reject that and caught himself at one point in his life an atheist although his wife Fanny Stevenson was a devout Christian and when he lived abroad all his servants were Christian too so he was still surrounded with that school of thought and very very much in underpinned the backdrop you know to his life so when later on he got older he developed a tuberculosis he dabbled with various psychotropic drugs cannabis opium and he is quoted as saying that when the when he wrote the strange case of dr.

Jekyll and Hyde the story itself was revealed to him in a dream in one of his dreams so we've got this protagonist just to just to sort of recap the story now at the moment on my tracks we've only got to chapter 1 there are 10 chapters chapter 1 the story of the door which covers well it features his and it's not his main character or protagonist funny enough but it features someone called mr.

Utterson who is dr.

Jekyll's lawyer and mr.

Utterson this is indicative of the school of thought of the time and underpins the message the that is running through the story mr.

Utterson is presented as a stoic character who is a lawyer high status okay upstanding citizen he leads a sedate existence for the first part well throughout the story actually so this moral backdrop if you like this foundation that he set at the beginning that Stevenson set at the beginning of the story upon which to contrast all these forthcoming toxic elements is predominantly Christian now usually in a novel or novella you would have the protagonist featured right at the beginning but no in this novella it is this chap Utterson so you've got the story arc haven't you you've got ten chapters and right at the beginning you've got these Christian foundations set in stone so this Utterson is reliable as a voice in the story who's telling you relating the story for the majority of the story until right at the end we hear from Jekyll himself okay and also a fellow scientist who's presented as someone who is another stoic character as well as Utterson so at the beginning you've got this foundation of Christian fortitude then in the middle you've got where the action is taking place so the story arcs and we start here the foundations and then we've got oh my goodness everything's going a bit crazy and we're finding out that things are not what they seem dr.

Jekyll my friend thinks mr.

Utterson is not the man I thought he was he's a revered scientist but he has straight off the path okay so that's in the middle of the story and then at the end of the story we have retribution so Jekyll commits an altruistic act because he realizes the error of his ways okay so let's just dip a little bit into the story itself dr.

Jekyll is a scientist the mood of the time Victorian times was oh I don't know whether we trust scientists we're Christians we're good honest stoic people and along comes this chap Charles Darwin and he says guess what this is my theory of evolution and everybody loses their minds what is he saying that God didn't create everything how can that be how are we supposed to accept this first of all we've got the Industrial Revolution life as we know it going crazy and then we got this scientist coming along and saying do you know everything you thought you knew actually you didn't know that because it's wrong so that's the kind of backdrop to what's going on you've got Dickens writing about urban life and the duality of existence the complete disparity between what you've got happening with the rich what you've got happening with the poor you've got people like Stevenson coming along and saying yeah and it's not just happening society it's happening in every man we can't believe everything that we've been told there is there is a school of thought beyond Christianity and then you've got people like Freud coming along which we will cover in a minute and the id so this going back to the story got this backdrop Christian backdrop everything's okay seems okay this chap Hutterson he knows dr.

Jekyll he says oh I know that man yeah and he's walking along the street and he's talking to a friend of his mr.

Enfield and mr.

Enfield says to him look at that door that funny-looking door where the shops are is inviting as women selling their wares you know selling shopkeepers saying hello to us and they're friendly smiles so they're walking along a beautiful street in the daytime this is where everything begins in the daytime don't forget the contrast between light and dark within this story and mr.

Enfield tells Utterson a story and he says well there's a doorway there's a funny-looking doorway and that doorway in chapter one it's very dark isn't it and that is the doorway to something actually quite mysterious and he tells if you listen to the track you'll hear he tells Utterson this story of a man that he saw coming out of that door and going back into that door and that connects dr.

Jekyll and mr.

Hyde at this point nobody when the story came out to knew they were the same person so the big shock horror is oh my goodness they're the same person how can such good and such evil exist in the same being is how is it possible so it was groundbreaking in the way that they were challenging Stevenson was challenging the acceptable narrative of the time as was Darwin as was Freud okay so this dr.

Jekyll is a well-respected man intelligent scientist everybody knows where he lives Utterson's a friend of his Enfield is walking along and he tells him his horrific story of this man he saw mr.

Hyde in the flesh trampling over a young girl and then running into this funny door in this street where all the shops were pretty and you know well presented and respectable and then this one odd looking shabby door and that's where it begins so obviously the symbolism there is well we've got the dark amongst the light right and it's a back door which represents something that is well we're not walking in Hyde is walking in through the back of the building okay the back of the building leads to the laboratory and this suggests that something there's something dark yeah and it's not going in through the front door okay it's not something that's celebrated this sort of seedy path into psychotropic bill has to be taken is only accessible via the back door okay and that's what dr.

Jekyll is doing in that building in his laboratory he is experimenting with his mind he has come to a realization is presented as a good honest reputable high-status male who has decided there is more to man than what we are aware of which horrifies his fellow scientist dr.

Lanyon who is somebody who would not stray from the acceptable path so this feeds into the Victorian narrative of distrust of scientists okay many elements to this story okay but one of them is a distrust of science science versus religion another one is this gothic Trump and it is a gothic novel based in London and the various elements of the gothic are dark I'll talk about the gothic in a minute which is very well represented here okay so the symbolism something to be hidden it's a hidden door it's dark and we we don't trust it right from the beginning there's a story we don't we talk about the protagonist but we don't meet him there's a mistrust there and also there's a confusion because artisan is saying I'm his lawyer I know this man he's a really good man so I don't understand what you're saying about this mr.

Hyde well mr.

Hyde obviously is the bad man and dr.

Jekyll is a good man and mr.

Hyde must be blackmailing him that's all there is to it so an honorable character like artisan refuses to even consider that his friend might have strayed from the acceptable path and little does he realize Jekyll in his laboratory is conducting his most ambitious experiments yet so there's this juxtaposition set up right from the start the Bible versus science and then you have the light versus the dark and you have the old versus the new and you have the experimental versus the tried-and-trusted and all of these symbols all of these that we see throughout like the bedraggled door and the mystery behind it they're all there to emphasize the message and create intrigue so his story is well structured and it is planned step by step so that we as Victorian readers who've read it for the first time do not know what's going on it's all a mystery and of course shock horror when it's revealed mind-blown that they're the same man mind-blown so the door is odd disassociated from its surroundings and behind the door dr.

Jekyll who's now experimenting becomes erratic alienated from his friends and Victorian society his science pals he's become dissociated from and of course the door is a metaphor for that it's metaphor for his alter ego hide okay something that is detached from reality and everything that's going on around it so as the story progresses we see dr.

Jekyll covertly he's providing this utterance to the evil in his soul he does various unspeakable things but of course he's doing them as hide okay so in the course of his experiments he produces a concoction that enables him to free the evil in him he understands he's a scientist and he understands early on I have good and evil okay there is evil within me I wish to detach myself from that and let it be free hide is the evil I am the good and the evil can go and do what on earth he wants of course it's actually him doing that but as we know okay but he's saying well I want to be free from the control of this so if I experiment on myself and I detach myself from that that's not really me doing it isn't it what a great get-out clause only a psychopath would do something like that so Edward hide is represented as pure evil and a moral his psyche is different from dr.

Jekyll his his body is presented as grotesque deformed different hunched over he doesn't look like dr.

Jekyll and thus dr.

Jekyll thinks he can receive the pleasure that both parts of him crave without being encumbered by the demands of the other okay but of course mr.

Hyde mr.

Hyde is going to evoke those feelings after Jekyll realizes what he's done of that dread that abhorrence with himself and his friends don't know what's happening so they're all saying saying you know you can't have anything to do with this guy hide without realizing that he has elected in his naivety that's how it's presented in his naivety to give birth to that side of his soul that he has formerly repressed so this is a little bit of a warning as well isn't it Jekyll and Hyde has become an eponymous term for multiple personalities so we say it these days always a Jekyll and Hyde character as in we never know what we're getting and it has been critics have considered the novel novella as a case demonstration substance dependence so it's a moral question and when you listen to it through my tracks or you read it yourself or both you will come to understand that as with the best novels they leave questions in our mind and they encourage us to question ourselves and this certainly does that okay so as the novel progresses Jekyll becomes unpredictable he decides it decides because he understands now guess what this Hyde has got a lot more power than I thought he had and it's no longer me in charge of my destiny I'm finding it harder and harder to recover from this side of myself that goes and does these unspeakable things okay so he decides right this has got to stop I've got to try and make it stop so I'm gonna need to try and develop an antidote to try and suppress this now now that I've given it life I need to suppress it and in one of his lamentations he says to himself okay I'm gonna have to leave a will so if everything goes wrong and there is only mr.

Hyde left and I can no longer suppress him and me dr.

Jekyll is no longer able to be me I'm gonna have to leave everything everybody's gonna think I'm dead everybody's gonna think I'm gone because they won't see me anymore they'll only see mr.

Hyde so I'm gonna leave everything in my will to mr.

Hyde which of course was a massive red flag for his lawyer Utterson who said what how can you leave everything to this man of course he still doesn't realize they're the same person so this doctor this mr.

Hyde his psyche is different from dr.

Jekyll but he is and he's becoming ever more powerful and of course this ultimately is going to lead dr.

Jekyll to his doom okay with that experimentation that unorthodox practice that dr.

Jekyll's carrying out opening the doors to parts of his mind which were previously shut Utterson is becoming very very concerned because he's seeing less and less and less of dr.

Jekyll and hearing more and more about these atrocities that mr.

Hyde is committing so many people saw this as attack they saw Charles Darwin what he was saying as an attack on religion the origin of species made many of the Bible's teachings impossible and this was an attack because it was saying you're telling us we're evil you're saying that you know let's open up our minds and accept all of this that we have denied for so long how can we trust these messages this is challenging the very backdrop of our existence which was very very unsettling in the Victorian era many people were religious and they believed in the devil and they believed that people harness the devil's power when they committed evil acts and crimes and what this dr.

Jekyll is doing is doing exactly that but of course Stevenson as I've said to you before regarding if you want people on side you are gonna have to feed a little bit into their narrative Steven Stevenson had to at the end of the story arc to conclude he had to make sure some there was some comeback for that some payment was made there was no way that mr.

Hyde could just be allowed to get away with it okay so we've got this motif good versus evil and we see that very much in the Gothic in the Gothic tropes of the time so the haunted houses the supernatural occurrences the darkened doorways the darkened side of Victorian London and this is feeding into that narrative so it's a very overly dramatized dark piece and that fed into this anxiety of social upheaval and the loss of traditional values so in some way the book was underlining yes there is reason to fear yes it's not all in our minds and this is evidence okay so if we're going to talk about dualism the good versus evil the light versus darkness what this book is basically saying is they're co-eternal they're coexistent and they're equipotent they are just as powerful as each other okay so Christian religion is saying no there's one God and that's the omnipresent and that's it and nothing is more powerful than that and what this book is saying well they sit side by side and if we become aware of that and we accept that and we have a greater understanding of who we are and how our minds work we can say oh all right we can work with that we can learn to manage that okay and that's really really important that's that that was really groundbreaking for the time the the idea that the two forces are constantly at war and only at the end will good finally vanquish the evil if we acknowledge that it exists okay so let's just have a look now at at the scientific in the historical knowledge of the time there was a big crisis of faith at this time and this is reflected in the works not just of Stevenson but George Eliot Thomas Hardy got middle March that explores the lives of characters grappling with religious doubt the changing social landscape lots of question marks Dickens making you know astounding astoundingly realistic claims about what life was really like for the poor in London this novel needs to be looked at in the context of its setting so it is a Victorian novel and that's what makes the story relevant if it were written today it would be relevant but it wouldn't have such it wouldn't be so powerful because we are not living in a world where religion anymore for most people is everything so you've got this massive contrast that's what makes the novel powerful he's talking about dualism in society as a whole so you've got the rich versus the poor you've got many of the rich people visiting the poor districts of London at nighttime which is also feeding into that gothic narrative everything bad happens at night okay and here Jekyll in this story has a difficult time juggling between these demands okay so at this time Freud conceived this idea of the id and the id is the unconscious source of all innate needs so emotional impulses desires everything that you would do if you were given free reign to be the worst possible version of yourself and dr.

Jekyll is presented as someone who's having a very difficult time juggling between the demands of the id that is represented by Hyde and the super ego that's represented by the implicit morals of Victorian society and people are reading this at the time and they are questioning themselves which any great literature does it challenges the narrative and says this is the acceptable voice and it doesn't such a way that it's not it can be argued that if you are were at that time a man writing and being published can be argued it was more acceptable for you to challenge the narratives of the time than it was if you were a woman that's why many of the women had pseudonyms or they just used the initials of their Christian names so that nobody would know they were women okay but yeah going back to the story mr.

Hyde can be interpreted as a manifestation of the id the primitive instinctual part of the psyche that we all have and Stevenson was saying I'm I was brought up as a Christian but I want to challenge some of the accepted scriptures and accepted knowledge and I want us all to open our minds to something beyond that okay so he lost his religion but again as I said he still prayed and he was surrounded by Christians in Samoa his staff and his wife and she spent a lot of time reading him stories from the Bible and he actually wrote you might want to seek this out he wrote a book of prayers and I'm going to end today's session with just reading one of his prayers it says we are evil Oh God and help us to see it and amend we are good and help us to be better look down upon thy servants with a patient eye even as thou sendest rain and Sun look down call upon the dry bones quicken enliven recreating us the soul of service the spirit of peace renewing us the sense of joy and within that we can see even at the end he was still acknowledging the omnipresent he was still saying well I do believe there is a God but I'm straying away from the accepted notion that there's one religious path and I'm challenging as did Freud the accepted ideas of the time it's for me reading male literature it's a completely different animal and it's really exciting because we are freed up to talk about ideas that affect society and it feels like when we're reading them these stories written by men that there are fewer restrictions and they have that freedom to discuss topics that women just would it would not be acceptable for them to even even mention so reading this now in the 21st century it's almost it's as a woman it's knowing that we can discuss these things it's a gift because those restrictions those restraints and societal expectations of the Victorian era are no more and that's exciting because now we can talk about we can talk about anything we want to talk about I hope you have got something from today's live this is thanks Jo love the thought the classic literature provides much new yes and also much insight because you know there's a lot of chatter the world is very noisy and it's very noisy with people saying nothing and what's nice is to have a little moment where we are learning something that perhaps we didn't know before or we recap recapping something that perhaps we hadn't thought about for a long time and especially when we are reading works from other people who have really thought about this and we don't need to come to it with judgment because it's a story but if we take some understanding of the purpose behind the need to have written this story actually it just opens your mind to a whole other perspective and that's why I like to read a wide range of different authors both men and women and I think as Robin mentioned thanks Robin on a review yes Victorian literature sounds a lot different when you're listening or reading it the voice sounds a lot different so you have fewer words and it's more direct it's actually somewhat easier to read and it's more to the point and the difference between male and female literature it's the same thing I actually really enjoy reading literature written by men because it's more in many ways it's more of a reflection on politically what's happening within the world at that time depending what you're looking for in a novel for me I like to have a lot of history thrown in and you can really tap into that and you can really hear that voice that male voice coming through in male literature and the feminine voice coming through and it's really important for us to appreciate both we might have our preferences but to have a really good understanding of what's going on in each era when these stories were written we need to appreciate the literature of men and women so that leads very healthily into next week next week is Victorian England and stoicism we've covered Charles Dickens and realism we've had a little bit of Freud and the duality dualism and we're going to go on to stoicism next week which it really rings true for me as somebody who really appreciates the concept of stoicism how was Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein received or did she publish it with a man's name or maybe that's a question for another time we will go into that another time Joe I think it's 45 minutes in now so I'm going to wrap it up today but yeah really good question there's so much we can talk about and in future lives I'm actually going to I'm going to produce some different lives not these ones that are discussing philosophies and history behind novels but actually live reads so you can take your book and we can read along together and I'm considering doing that in costume so that should be fun yeah so if you're up for that keep listening and tapping in thank you so much for coming along today please keep coming because I love to see you I look forward to my Fridays now our Fridays and yeah keep listening keep reading keep challenging yourself and take these little moments out to tap into something else it was lovely to see you and I shall see you next Friday bye