Homosexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde essays

Homosexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde essays It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. This quote from Austins Pride and Prejudice, while being sarcastic and facetious, is truly indicative of the societal expectations placed on men in Victorian society. This is the very belief that is subverted and challenged in Robert Louis Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The conflict in his novel is over the dominant conception of the professional upper-middle class Victorian man and his professed masculinity. Not only are the men in this novel all bachelors, but there also appears to be an air of homoerotic tension pervading their tight knit social circle. Stevenson provides several other symbols that lend a homoerotic interpretation to the novel. The discussion of the blackmail house between Mr. Utterson and his kinsman Richard Enfield, the description of the door leading into the blackmail house, and the depiction of Utterson and Poole, Dr. Jekylls butler, breaking into the lab. Blackmail in the Victorian period was commonly associated with homosexuality, and in fact, instituted to deal with homosexual liaisons. Enfields nickname for Dr. Jekylls laboratory, blackmail house, supports the underlying homoerotic themes pervading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Relating the incident to Utterson in which Hyde uses a check signed with Jekylls name, Enfield says, Black mail, I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I call that place with the door, in consequence. Though even that, you know, is far from explaining it all (Stevenson 11). Enhancing the homosexual aura surrounding the blackmail house is the description of the door leading into the house. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and disdained. [It] bore in every...