Hedonism in the Victorian era

The Importance of Being Earnest and The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

A compare and contrast between Oscar Wilde and Robert Stevenson’s work about multiple identity in the Victorian era

By: Nahuel Cabral

‘’Man is not truly one, but truly two.’’  Robert Louis Stevenson.

Introduction

Besides being contemporaneous, both authors share the same views as regards the prudish, narrow, pompous, and hypocritical Victorian era. Also duality can be seen in both stories. Each author exposes the absurdity of high class society by mocking the importance of social roles and identity. The characters in these stories feel the need to create an alter-ego in order to escape from the inalterable reality in which they live in. They seem to believe that identity should not be such an important factor relevant enough to be unalterable. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the problem of duality is taken more seriously by means of social standing, since it is notable that Jekyll and Hyde— Jekyll’s abnormal transformation— represent a criminal/non-criminal dichotomy. Opposite to the latter approach, in The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde portray the multiple identity issue from a more witty and light-hearted point of view. Both main characters, Algernon and Jack, found themselves into the privileged side of the artificial barrier that defined society at that time.

To achieve the purpose of this work, I will present a simple definition of the central topic of the two stories: multiple identity. On the one hand, multiple identity can be defined as a way to act according to certain social situation. On the other hand, it can be a complex psychological condition that is likely caused by many factors, including severe trauma during early childhood (sexual or emotional abuse.) At the same time, I will try to explain the different concepts of identity presented by both authors from a social, moral, religious, political and economic point of view, taking into account all the changes that were taking place in the Victorian era.

The Authors

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. He had an extravagant personality that did not conform to the Victorian society. As a matter of fact, he hated Victorian views on moral and ethics. He wrote The Importance of Being Earnest in 1894. The story takes place in late Victorian London, and tells the story of two upper class gentlemen who developed a double personality in order to satisfy social conventions. Wilde studied in Dublin, and then he received a demyship to study Greats and Classics in Oxford. There he became inducted in the culture of aesthetes, later he went to London and became very popular in London’s high society with his witty sayings and aesthetic flair. In 1884, he got married and then had two children. He kept on writing until 1895, when he was arrested for homosexuality and was condemned to the maximum possible sentence, two years’ hard labour. His wife and children left for Switzerland, and he died penniless in France in 1900. He had been a Christian his entire life, but had had the influence of both religions (her mother secretly baptized him in a Catholic church at the age of 5.) This duality haunted Wilde his entire life. In his deathbed he converted to Catholicism, therefore dying as a Catholic. Politics was a matter of concern for Wilde, and he did consider himself as sort of an anarcho-socialist. Considering Wilde was homosexual in a society of traditionalism, his thoughts against the moral standards of Victorian society can be clearly portrayed in his plays and novels.

Robert Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He had a rough life because of his poor health. He had to attend several schools, but he managed to finish his studies. At the age of 17, he entered the Edinburgh University where he was expected to continue with the traditional career of his family, which was engineering, but at the end, he prepared for the Scottish Bar. During his time at university, he rebelled against his parents and became a liberal bohemian and, just like Wilde, he abhorred the dirty standards of Victorian society. He did not believe in all the standards imposed by the bourgeois society, and that is clearly visible when he started a relationship with a married woman, who ended up being his wife some years later.

A Critique of the Victorian Era

Queen Victoria’s reign lasted 63 years, and was one of the longest reigning British monarchs. Victoria’s reign can be seen as the golden ages for the British Empire, thanks to industrialization and expansion of the economy. New industries arose and demanded a huge amount of raw materials that were taken from all the British colonies around the world. This brought excessive richness, but only for a few. There was a huge difference on wages between the upper class and the working class, e.g. a butler made £ 42 per annum while a post office clerk made £ 90. In The Importance of Being Earnest, when Jack, who was positioned in the upper class, is asked what his annual salary was, he answered “Between seven and eight thousand (£) a year.” (Jack, 19.)

Victorian age was also a time for questioning religious and moral values, since the publication of Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species,’—which was quite controversial because it contradicted the religious beliefs of the time. We can clearly perceive Jekyll’s morals being in conflict, and how he longs to escape from that pompous and boring Victorian behaviour and act scandalously, but without being noticed. That is why he creates a low class, ugly and scabby criminal alter-ego that enjoys killing well-respected men of high social standing, showing true hostility between social classes in that period. Victorian society incited the suppression of those dreams that have been socially unacceptable, and Stevenson recognized this stigmatization and presented the issue through the character of Dr. Jekyll: ‘It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness’ (Jekyll, 79.)

Religion is promptly satirized in The Importance of Being Earnest through Dr. Chasuble, who can rechristian, marry, or bury as long as there was a proper monetary return. Marriage is also absurdly presented through Lady Bracknell, as clearly seen when she interviewed Jack to see if he was a proper candidate to marry her daughter ‘I think some preliminary inquiry on my part would not be out of place’ (Lady Bracknell, 57.) And at the end of this questioning, Lady Bracknell suggests Jack that he should: ‘produce a parent before the season is over.’ (Lady Bracknell, 22.) The latter suggestion lead to understand that Lady Bracknell had no trouble at all in changing or developing identity to show an acceptable family background. For instance, to Wilde, in marriage, appearance is everything.

If we consider money as a changeable factor of identity, we may be certain. But we should consider the economic situation as a whole, and not only how much money there is e.g. Mr. Hyde lived in the Soho, a neighbourhood well known as an infamous area for robbers and poor people as well as prostitutes. But was Mr. Hyde poor? No, he was not. Nevertheless, his false identity was established in a place where poor people and criminals lived, so the purpose of this was to be far away from the places considered to be for the upper classes. Both authors intend to mock the importance of social roles and identity by creating scenarios where these social rules go against pleasure seeking and the liberating behaviour of people.

Contrasts between The Importance of Being Earnest and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Even though both stories have names in their titles, the purpose might not be the same. If we consider the name of Dr. Jekyll we can see that there is a French like sentence with the pronoun Je, meaning ‘I’, and the verb kyll, meaning ‘kill’, rendering the message ‘I kill’. There is nothing humorous about this title, as in contrast to Wilde’s story where Earnest happens to be a word play between the name Ernest and the adjective earnest—though, at that time, Earnest was slang for homosexual, and Wilde was convicted for his homosexuality. It also occurs with the name of Hyde, where it can be interpreted as the verb hide. An important factor is that Victorian society incited the suppression of acts that were not accepted as morally correct, and Mr. Hyde was rarely seen as if he was hiding from someone or something. In the titles we can see hidden messages implying different ideas; a resource that most of the writers of that era found useful to express ideas that could have been out of place at that time.

Identity is the central issue in both stories; although, not in the same way. In Stevenson’s book, Dr. Jekyll’s alter ego’s purpose was to inflict damage to society. And as a matter of fact, it did by killing innocent people. Opposite to Stevenson’s work, in Wilde’s play, the characters did not cause any harm to society. Actually, they were created to avoid dinners and social meetings, and to escape from the pressure of a high class society.

To give a closure to the idea of contrast, it is important to point out that the sense of morality is approached in two different ways; Stevenson´s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde switch between identities is seen as morally wrong by Victorian society, while in The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack and Algernon disregard the moralities of switching identities in the country or in the city, and they act freely without thinking about the social consequences.

Comparison between The Importance of Being Earnest and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Both stories were written by authors who led a double life at some point of their existence. A hidden language with strong symbolism can be seen throughout both stories. One common factor in both stories is the servants. Both Poole and Lane are a clear symbol of the existing gap between the working and the upper classes. However, they do not play the same role in each story. Poole is more engaged in the story, as the problem of Dr. Jekyll develops, while Lane plays a minor role in the developing of the story. Both servants are truly loyal, and they will only respond to their masters. As seen in Wilde’s play, Lane covered Algernon when the host ate all the cucumber sandwiches that were meant to be for Lady Bracknell. Lane was ready to cover for his master at any moment. Poole is the one who took care of Dr. Jekyll when he needed a messenger, besides he is the one who seeks for Mr. Utterson’s assistance when he feared for his master’s life.

Wilde and Stevenson believe that identity should not be important enough to become unalterable. They strongly believe that identity is irrelevant, and that it may evolve or devolve to become more suitable for a certain moment in life. In both stories, the purpose of changing identity is either for pleasure or convenience. At some point, things may get out of control as it happened in both stories; but at the end, identity is clearly portrayed as something volatile and inconstant.

At last, a lot of comparison can be made with symbols and appearances, but I wanted to focus on the central topic of identity. This idea of having two personalities escapes from every reality, and surprises the reader in many ways. Both writers used an aesthetic language, that is a beautiful, artistic and carefully crafted with a poetic rhythm and flow way of writing. They also share a particular way of being, hedonism. A lot of contemporary writers considered themselves as hedonists: writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde to name a few. What did they have in common? Alter-egos. Mr. Hyde, Bunbury and Earnest teach us that pleasure is the only principle in determining the morality of an action. At the end, the only purpose for the creation of these identities was to achieve Dr. Jekyll, Algernon, and Jack’s intrinsic and hedonist goals.

Conclusion

After reading the stories, and making a lot of research I got to understand a little bit more of the history of England literature. I was amazed with all the characteristics of the Victorian period, and how writers managed to write about polemic topics such as marriage, religion and homosexuality without being noticed. I believe that both stories are a critique of social characteristics in the Victorian period. The fact that both authors had a double life at some point of their lives is quite interesting since there are many similarities in both stories. It is funny to think that nowadays people also lead double lives, and morals are hardly a thing to consider.