Essay: Coded homosexual narrative in Jekyll and Hyde

Queer can function as a noun, an adjective or a verb, but in each case is defined against the ‘normal’ or normalising .
Queer Theory is a literary theory that studies gender and sexuality as a ‘fundamental category for historical analysis and understanding’. The term ‘Queer’ was re-appropriated from its negative connotations traditionally used with homophobic intentions to denote an inclusive category that resists any kind of monolithic definitions of identity.
Queer can be used to describe those who do not identify as heterosexual e.g. lesbians, gay men or bisexuals, people who are not ordinarily gendered e.g. transvestites, transgenders and non-binary’s or polyamorous people, those engaged in open or multiple relationships.
Lesbian and gay literary theory has only prominently emerged and been named an academic discipline since the 1990’s in the USA, it was heavily influenced by the women’s studies twenty years before and the writings of Michel Foucault.
Like feminist criticism, queer theory had its own social and political aims, in particular ‘an oppositional design’ upon society. For it is informed by resistance to the ideological and institutional practices of heterosexual privilege and homophobia.
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian and activist, whose work is generally categorised as poststructuralist. Along with Jacques Derrida’s evaluation of Western metaphysics and Jacques Lacan’s fundamental revelation of psychoanalytic theory , Foucault’s various investigations into knowledge and power have formed the foundation for the recent studies into the hidden human subject.
Michel wrote the first volume of his ‘History of Sexuality’ in the 1970’s, which was known as the ‘sexual revolution’ in Western culture.
It offered a provocative counter-narrative to the long-established story about Victorian sexual repression giving way to progressive liberation and enlightenment in the 20th Century.
Continuing this idea, Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ was written in 1886, during the Victorian Period. Stevenson could not make explicit references to homosexuality in his short story due to the Era, but many modern queer theory critics have recently located a coded homosexual and erotic narrative in Jekyll and Hyde.
Jackie Kay’s short story ‘Physics and Chemistry’ was written in 2011, 125 years after Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’. The story explores the relationship between two lesbian women, and how the labels that societal norms create can affect a person’s behaviour.
Both texts explore the representation of sexuality, between gay men and lesbian women, while one suffers under the burden of sexual repression which inevitably ends in suicide the other shows the advantage of liberation from sexual repression. Reading both of these texts with Foucault’s theory in mind, makes it clear that we as readers are forced to see through a heterosexual lens within literature, and therefore we unknowingly repress any queer sexualities.
Jekyll and Hyde
Stevenson explores the theme of mistaken identity, encasing the protagonist inside this concept and how he comes to terms with his own individuality . The story is centred on the representation of Dr Jekyll’s repressed sexuality and the Victorian Society’s unspoken fears of eroticism.
At the time of ‘Jekyll and Hyde’s’ publication homosexual punishments were the norm. The ‘Blackmailers Charter’ was passed in 1885, which outlawed any erotic acts between males, whether private or public . This therefore meant that many homosexuals would have constantly feared for their reputation, and life.
In particular, it seems that the upper-classes had much more to lose from being openly homosexual, for instance the case of Oscar Wilde. Wilde’s sexuality was considered a scandal that brought him two years of hard labour in prison, this was around the time that Stevenson was publishing his work. This fits with the character of Henry Jekyll, who states that he was ‘born to a large fortune…with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future’
Dr Jekyll constantly feared for his life, as his polar twin Mr Hyde began to break free and not be controlled by the use of the medicine. He also feared for his reputation as Dr Jekyll was a well-respected doctor and friend of many, who had a form of etiquette in which he had to uphold.
Homosexuality and blackmail were frequently linked crimes during this time period. Which meant many assumed that the plot initially hints at Hyde blackmailing Jekyll because of the doctor’s unorthodox sexual preferences .
Mr Hyde is described as being an animalistic and violent ‘deformity’ of the moral Dr Jekyll, the narrative subtly shades the entirety of same-sex desire as innately brutal and amoral.