Let’s Discuss! Repressed homoeroticism with Jekyll and Hyde!

I cannot help but feel Stevenson’s novel, Jekyll and Hyde, is a story about repressed homosexual desire. The “trapped in the closet” story. For many years, gay people had to hide behind the shadows of society. For this discussion, let’s take away all the filter of the novel, the murders. The murders would only represent rage and repressed anger coming out. Dr. Jekyll is a prestigious man. He has an image to uphold. But lately he keeps having these unspeakable urges. In the time the book was written, people could not speak as freely as today. We could look at what kind of unspeakable acts this could allude to, but nothing really comes close as much as homosexuality does. This book had very, very few women in it. It’s basically an all male cast. Utterson, too, has these desires as well, such as when he dreamt after meeting Hyde, he was in a bedroom. Perhaps throughout the text he secretly wanted Jekyll, but before knowing they are the same person, Utterson thought Hyde was involved with him. In a time of repressed sexuality, this book is a cryptic description of the struggles that certain men and women had to endure. When you hear Jekyll’s confessions at the end, it goes hand in hand with being trapped in the closet. He was a man born at the wrong time, perhaps things might have been different. If born into today’s world, he might not have been the angry repressed  person we saw him as.

However, if this book is taken into the view of mental illness, and having split personalities, this is all moot. We’d have to discuss a different approach.