History 364-0-01: Gender and Sexuality in Victorian Britain; Northwestern University, Fall 2014
Male Sexuality: The Double Life and the Beast Within, Day 2
- Is Showalter’s description of Stevenson’s novella as “a fable of fin-de siecle homosexual panic” accurate?
- How did Victorian social mores exert pressure on men to lead double lives? Was this pressure felt more strongly by women, or less?
- Women didn’t even have the outlet – they had to mask themselves in both public and private
- Women-on-women homosexuality wasn’t even mentioned
- Hysteria was a condition associated with femininity in Victorian Britain, but is the notion of hysteria important in the almost exclusively male world of Jekyll & Hyde?
- Was Jekyll & Hyde more a tale of morality, of science, or of the supernatural?
- How does Stevenson’s description of Jekyll’s physical transformation into Mr. Hyde relate to Cook’s discussion of the construction of the homosexual body?
- What was the role of class in Victorian male homosexual relationships? How is this manifested in Stevenson choices in Jekyll & Hyde?
- Why does Showalter think that, even in today’s time period, a “gender-swapped” Jekyll & Hyde story is impossible? Do you agree?
- What is the significance of reputation in the novella? How does this reflect broader trends and events in late Victorian Britain?
- Matt Cook in his discussion of homosexuality during Victorian England mentions the legal and social blurring of the private and public spheres of sexuality. Is this sense of “blurring” evident in the novella?
- The Hyde portion of Jekyll’s split persona is depicted as wholly evil and sinful, and much younger. How does this representation of Jekyll’s double life resemble the double life le by men in the Victorian period?