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Lamia Islam, Prime University, BangladeshAbstract
This study compares the concept of duality in two classic works of late Victorian literature: Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The study examines how both writers depict the moral and psychological tensions between inward transgression and external respectability, mirroring the larger social concerns of the Victorian age. The paper investigates how Stevenson and Wilde challenge these standards through their narratives, which are rooted in the cultural context of rigid moral rules and oppressive societal norms. While Wilde explores the underlying decay of the soul through symbolic deterioration in art, Stevenson employs literal bodily transformation to illustrate duality. Both novels emphasize the dangers of repressing one's darker desires and the consequences of living behind façade of virtue, despite their divergent approaches. The findings show that duality serves as both a thematic issue and a lens through which Victorian concerns about identity, morality, and the unconscious are conveyed. The study indicates that the authors' depictions of the divided-self provide long-term insights into the psychological and cultural tensions of the time. Furthermore, the study stresses the works’ ongoing relevance in questions of moral ambiguity and the performative aspect of identity. Future studies may benefit from using interdisciplinary approaches, such as gender studies or postcolonial theory, to investigate how the topic of duality links with broader Victorian and contemporary social concerns.
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Conference: PCAH2025Stream: Literature/Literary Studies
This paper is part of the PCAH2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Islam L. (2025) Duality in Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Comparative Study ISSN: 2758-0970 The Paris Conference on Arts & Humanities 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 9-19) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2025.2
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2025.2
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