STEVENSON

COMMENT ON JEKYLLS EXPERIMENTS(pag 387)

In this extract from chapter 9 it is reported how Dr Lanyon describes the metamorphosis
from Hyde to Jekyll in his final letter to Mr Utterson.
Dr Lanyon is the narrator and writes reporting his own feelings of the moment and
describing realistically the transformation of Dr Jekyll in mr Hyde.
At the beginning of the letter Lanyon describes with a lot of adjectives and actions what
was happening during the transformation, he says that suddenly after Jekyll drunk the
drug followed a cry and then Jekyll walked with weak and unsteady steps, clutching at
the table with injected eyes and gasping with the mouth open. Moreover he was
becoming bigger and his face was turning into a black color.
After that Lanyon reports in a terrified way his reactions to what was happening. He says
that from the fear he stood up immediately and jumped against the wall with his arms
up to protect himself. Furthermore looking again at Jekyll he screamed O God O
God again and again (repetition), because he saw standing again Henry Jekyll as
restored from death, in fact before he was pale and shaken and half fainting. Reporting
these feelings in his letter Lanyon uses terrifying adjectives, to underline the
monstrosity of that moment.
Then the letter goes on by describing the fear Lanyon has, that his afflicting his normal
life. He says that he cannot sleep anymore because he is terrified all the hours of the
day and of the night, he feels his days numbered and he must die.
In the last part of the letter Lanyon reveals to Utterson that the creature who entered
into his house was On Jekylls own confession known by the name of mr Hyde, the one
hunted in London for the murder of Carew.




CRITICAL ANALYSIS ON HENRY JEKYLLS FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE(pag. 388-9)

In this extract from the chapter 10, the narrator is in 1 person internal. The language is
quite common, its full of personal opinion and it ends with a rhetorical question.
At the beginning Dr. Jekyll describes his personality saying he is a diligent man who
loves being respected and honored. His main fault is the impatient gaiety of
temperament.
His main aim is to help and improve society by separating the good part of human from
the evil one. He is an onset and objective point of view, he thinks that every man has a
dualistic soul, half positive and half negative, and they are complementary.
The most significant sentence from the extract is: That man is not truly one, but truly
two. His experience during life confirms his idea of a dualistic soul in every man.
Before his experiment and scientific research, the scientist already known the dualism
of human nature. At the beginning of his study he thinks that by spearing the two
antagonist soul, the good one could progress and prevail over the evil one. By doing this,
he thinks to be able to improve all man and to get a better society with good moral
values.
Then he realizes that this idea is hypocritical because the two part coexist and are
complementary and its really difficult to dissociate them.
From this extract emerges the personality of Dr. Jekyll, he is a handsome gentle and
elegant man of good manners, polite and well educated who loves to be admired and
appreciated. He has a really scientific point of few and he is in contrast with romantic
ages thought, because is isnt in any way hypocritical, also in himself coexist two souls,
no one is excluded.


THEME THE DOUBLE
The main theme of the book is the double. It speaks of the problem of
duplicity of human nature, Bleak had already spoken of this duplicity, in his
poem The Tiger and the Lamb. He says that inside every man there are a
tiger and a lamb, he sees the moral point of view of this duplicity.
Stevenson, on the contrary, sees the psychological and social point of view,
where is not important how you are, but how you behave, the image that
people have of you: your respectability .This is the kind of contestation and
denounce of moralism and hypocrisy of Victorian society. The problem is
not to be good or wicked, but to be respectable. The wicked personalities is
Hyde, that is pale and dwarsh, he gives an impression of deformity,
weakness and deviousness, and he is small shabby, because he is still
young, he has not much expensive of life and of his power. Dr Jekyll
represents the good personality that is in every person, in fact, he is a
doctor with good reputation and respectability. He discovers chemical
portion wakes up and gives life to the wicked person hidden inside him and
call him Mr Hyde. In time the chemical reactions that permit the changing,
became more used so it is Jekyll that became feebler and uncereit, and
Hyde that becomes stronger and more condent. When the changing
happens without chemical potions, Hyde takes the control on the reaction.
The reaction happens spontaneously. The Dr Jekyll realizes that Hyde is
going to win over him and he will be never Jekyll again, consequently the
only way to kill Hyde is to kill himself, so Je Kill, and he commits a suicide.
The important element is the door of the internal garden of the laboratory.
A door which is always locked and only Jekyll and Hyde, of course, have the
key. The door serve to keep divided what really easy what must





OSCAR WILDE

OSCAR WILDE
Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and critic. He is regarded as one of the
greatest playwrights of the Victorian Era. He lived during the last period of the Victorian age, when
people started to question science and materialistic values. Wilde was a proponent of the
Aestheticism, a doctrine which emphasizes the values of beauty, respectability and physical
appearance. For the aesthetic movement life should become a work of art, moreover the artist
should look for sensations and pleasure. The principle which summarizes the aestheticism is: art
for arts sake.
Oscar Wilde was a dandy, a person who dresses in an expensive, fashionable way, very interested
in his own appearance and that is well educated.
Oscars purpose wasnt didactic, he didnt want to teach something, he wanted only to express
beauty and create masterpieces of art.
Concept of the artist (In Wildes view)

The artist is a person who is able to nd beauty when the others cannot

The creator of beautiful things, his purpose is to create beauty and it doesnt matter if beauty
has moral or immoral values, because he doesnt want to teach something.

The artist is a man who distinguishes himself from the others because of his superiority.

Is a man free to express his sensations, passions without feeling limited and unaccepted.
Concept of art

Is only perfection and beauty, it is useless in the sense that it has no practical use. It can be
moral or immoral.

It is used only to celebrate beauty, sensations and pleasures.

Virtue and vice

Employed by the artist as raw material in his art. They havent an importance in the operas
because the important thing is to produce something beautiful.








WILDE KEATS
Beauty concerns life, life is the exposition of
beauty that has to enrich all sensations and
passions.
So beauty is physical and it hasnt a moral
implication.
Beauty is both art and truth. It is something
that concerns all the different fields of art.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Beauty Is seen not only as something related
to appearance but is something more deeply
related to human joy and wellbeing
(benessere).
Wilde had an eccentric life, he felt superior to
all the others. He was willing to accept
immoral values and follow sensations and
passions.
He felt isolated and lived a very closed life
because he was too much sensitive.
He was much more modest than Oscar Wilde.
I WOULD GIVE MY SOUL
CRITICAL ANALYSIS

In this extract there is a dialogue between lord Henry and Grey. Lord henry eulogies
Dorians beautiful appearance by stressing out the importance of his youth which is
short. In fact Lord Henry claims that youth last only few seasons of our life and at the
end it will be replaced by wrinkles, ugliness and stupidity because he thoughts that
beauty is the most poetical way of expression of good appearance but smartness too.
Therefore he states that beauty is the visible genius of men. He continues to underline
the shortness of youth by using natural images such as : lilies and roses, season.
In the meanwhile Dorian Grey is fascinating about his words and then he starts to think
of his beauty and he slowly become awareness of his good looking becoming vain. At the
end he reflects on youth which is very short. Therefore he praises to be forever young
and beautiful as that day because he is afraid of aging. By swearing that he would give
his soul to be forever young . This underlines that he is obsessed by his own physical
appearance.
The main theme is the search for beauty and pleasure, which is the main feature of
Hedonism and Aestheticism, main artistic and philosophical movements of the Victorian
age.
As summarized in Lord Henrys view, the only purpose of man is the search for beauty
and for new sensations. Beauty is a form of genius, higher than genius itself, because it
does not need explanations.
In addition to that, Dorians wish and the evolution of the plot underline the close
relation between art and life: according to the Aesthetic movement, life should be lived
as a work of art. Through Dorians wish, the portrait (art) and Dorian (real life) will
exchange their roles: the beauty of the portrait will change and decade, while Dorians
beauty will keep its perfection through the years. In the end, when Dorian stabs the
portrait to break the evil charm, Dorian grows old and marked by vices, while the
portrait recovers its original perfection: art and life take back their original role, where
art survives human mortality.
Youth is a period of splendor and beauty, while the old age is a period of decadence. If a
man does not live his youth fully, that is searching for pleasure, in his old age he will be
haunted by regrets. Lord Henry changes Dorian Gray and makes him became arrogant,
obsessed of his beauty, selfish, violent. Dorian Gray has no scruples, he lose his moral
values, becoming insensitive and immoral in name of youth and beauty, for example he
caused the suicide of his girlfriend and killed Basil. Exactly as the myth of Faustus,
Dorian gray by saying: I would give my soul for that make me understand that he is
willing to make a pact with the devil for eternal beauty and youth.
Old age is described as a moment of regret, sufferance, remorse, pain and sadness,
while youth is considered as a moment of beauty, happiness which is really short,
therefore it is necessary live it fully by looking always for new sensations and don't be
afraid of nothing, live the wonderful life that is in you every single moment of your life.



THE PREFACE TO "THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY"

The preface of The picture of Dorian Gray is considered the manifesto of the Aesthetic
movement.
Manifestos are text of literary criticism which expound how poems should be written and
critic what was going on at the time, the movements that come up until that moment.
During the 19
th
century the idea of art was that it should entertain people and teach
something: literature had a didactical function.
The critic has to nd beauty in things. He has not to see things from his point of view.
Style epigrammatic or assertive.


The prafece is organized into a series of statements where Oscar Wilde expounds his
ideas about art. Art, according to the writer, is the creation of beautiful things. He goes on
saying that the idea of morality is in no way connected to art. What matters is how art is
produced: it can be well or badly reproduced. The instruments of the artist are thought and
language.
Art does not mirror life and all art is quite useless.
The style of the preface can give no ideas about its function (Aestheticism)
The writer seems to be dictating a code. This happens because the ideas about art were
different in previous years (art should be useful and teach a moral). Previous literature, for
example, was Victorian literature, and according to its standards even art should be useful
because whatever was not useful was sinful.
At the same time, the preface introduces a motif relevant to the whole novel: the
atmosphere typical of the period contemporary to Wilde. It also gives hints at some of the
characteristics of the protagonist's personality.
It is not art that has to mirror life, but the life of the individual should became a work of art:
it is the so cold motto of the doctrine of art for art's sake. It is not the artist he who matters,
but art.















Life as the Greatest of the Art

Life as the Greatest of the Art is an extract taken by Mr. Wilde's novel The Picture of
Dorian Gray.

In the rst sequence is presented the habit to give a party and in particular is presented a
Dorian's party rich of details and care for them. The reader can best imagines the scene
thank to the narrative technique of telling. The reader considers Dorian as a type to imitate
because he has only the guests' lter to create an opinion about him. There is a 3rd
person omniscient narrator who drive reader opinions and ideas about character. The
guests see in Dorian a true realization of someone they had dreamed; this is a
contradiction because a dream for denition can't became true and the fact that Dorian is
considered true should wake reader's attention about what is real and what no.

The second sequence has the function to explicit to the reader Dorian life's philosophy
founded on Fashion and Dandyism.

In the third sequence the narrator deepens Dorian expectation of life, he is not content to
be an arbitrer elegantiarum having charm only in the behavior or in the body, he would
create a new philosophy of sense in which charm becomes feature also of personality and
inner side of everybody.

In the fourth sequence is presented Dorian's reection about senses, emotions and
passions in human being's history and concludes that they were suppressed and this is
been a terrible loss.

In the end sequence are presented Lord Henry's prophesies that are the same concept of
Dorian's philosophy.

The ending sequence have a language orderly and rational in according to the reasoned
philosophy and ordered principles theorized by Dorian.

Right from the start the reader understands that Dorian Gray is a "rigid" person, who
behaves always in the same way, and follows all the same rhythm of life. (lines 1,2: every
month, each Wednesday).
The reader understands that Dorian Gray has an high life's style: during winter he usually
opens his house to the most celebrated musicians of the day to charm his guests with the
wonders of their art.
In his opinion the greatest of Arts is Life, while all the others seem to be only a preparation.
its introduced the principle of Dorian's "new Hedonism, it wants to recreate life and save it
from Puritanism., that is people should search for new sensation and live fully their
passions. Its aim was to be experience himself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or
bitter as they might be.
In this novel Wilde uses a 3
rd
person omniscient, intrusive narrator. The reader can not feel
his presence because he identies with the characters of the novel.
This extract can be interpreted as a criticism of supercial Hedonism and self-love, and as
an illustration of the immortality of art.





COMPARISON BETWEEN DR JEKYLL VS Dorian Grey
There are similarities as regards the character and the life of Doctor Jekyll and mr Hyde
and Dorian Grey. Both of them initially are kind, good, have a good respectability, but then
they commit crime, bad vices, bad actions which would have consequences at the point of
death. Both Mr. Jekyll and Gray go through many experiences that lead them to live a
double life. Mr. Jekyll, can be identied as a curious scientist who one day drinks a "potion"
that makes him turn into a vulgar and tempered man. Mr. Jekyll desires and is arouse at
the idea of becoming someone else, without anybody truly knowing who Mr. Hyde is.
Whereas, Mr. Dorian Gray, can also be identied as a curious and young gentleman who
also falls victim to his desire to stay young forever, without anybody really knowing what is
his true form. Dorian Gray sold his soul to the devil, which makes him never get old.
When we compare both Gray and Jekyll it is essential to say that they can both relate,
because both are seen as normal kind good man, but who both have a dark and deadly
secret. As being Mr. Hyde, Jekyll feels liberated and feels like he has more freedom to do
whatever he wants without being caught as his real self. Both Gray and Jekyll desire to live
a life of freedom from persecution and act towards any impulse, but in the end it brings
trouble to both because they are hurting people at the same time.
Dr. Jekylls death is very similar to Dorians one. The protagonists are locked in a room and
the door is forced to open. When they locked in a room, a horrible cry follows. Dr. Jekyll is
closed in his laboratory, the dark side of his house, which symbolizes also the darkness of
his soul. While Dorian Grey is locked in his loathsome where there is his awful portrait.
Another comparison of these characters is that throughout their experiences, they nally
come to terms with their mistakes and the root to the problem. It is clear to say that they
both ended their life in their own terms, by killing the monster that they had become. Gray
killed himself by ultimately slaying his portrait that represented the monstrosity and real
person that he had become, while Jekyll poisoned himself. I believe in the end they did
have sympathy for the horrible things that they had committed, and that is why they killed
themselves. Killing themselves, relived them from what they had to live with for the rest of
their lives.
Both Dorian gray and Dr. Jekyll believe in their desire to ultimately become another
person. Gray wants to stay young and do whatever he wants, while Dr. Jekyll wants the
freedom of doing anything he wants by protecting his real identity and letting a monstrous
character take over him. In the end they both die in the hands of themselves; tormented
and nally seeing the reality of their arrogance and immorality.

Jekylls body is found by his servants while Jekylls corpse is found by his best friend Mr.
Utterson and his servant Poole. In jekylls death there was found a broken phial in doctors
hand, while in the body of Dorian grey there was stab a dagger.
Both protagonists sew the seeds of their own destruction. In both cases the escape from
the consequences of their actions is impossible.