The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde vs. the Picture of Dorian Gray

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“One of the values of Speculative fiction is that this genre bears witness to what it is to be human; that humans have strengths and limitations” Evaluate this statement The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891) are both late Victorian speculative fiction novellas, which bear witness to what it is to be human during the modern era. Both authors have speculated upon their own society and have created a mirrored society within their work. These texts display the speculations from the authors of the Victorian society influencing and impacting humanity. As a reader, we are questioned what it means to be human; does our society determine and shape who we are? These questions are brought to the surface throughout these speculative fiction novellas. A strength and limitation as a human that has been speculated by Stevenson and Wilde is that we crave to belong, so we do anything to ‘fit’ in. This means we take on society’s morals and learn what is deemed ‘evil’ and suppress these acts, or in Dorian’s case- embrace them. We learn that Dr. Jekyll and Dorian Gray are both respectable gentlemen within their society, as they adapt to their society’s morals and live up to the standards of the ‘middle class’. The Victorian era has been described as “outward respectability and inward lust” as it had a tendency for social hypocrisy. This description of the Victorian society suggests a dual nature, which has been driven into the individuals causing humanity to have a dualistic nature. W.D. Hart believes that dualism as a philosophy “signifies the views that the universe contains two radically different kinds of beings”. This definition, if brought down to a smaller scale, defines the Victorian’s society dualistic nature, as respectability and lust are radically different within this context. Our
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