I had my own Jeckyl and Hyde moment when starting this blog. I was all ready to complete this assignment on time, but my exponentially worsening anxiety and ADHD is becoming more and more...debilitating, and becoming my Hyde, popping out and taking over my life in the worst moments. If that analogy is a bit silly, let's take it a step further: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a story that could fit many different themes, all of which Robert Louis Stevenson had in mind when writing this masterpiece. Class, religion, gender, oppression, and so on, but the simplest, and most important theme is that of the duality of man. After all, it's not subtext, it's text. It's literally the entire purpose of the potion.
All of us have good and evil inside of us, no matter who we are, we are capable of terrible things, we're capable of great things, and each of these are further complicated by the subjective nature of morality. What is good? What is evil? I've already discussed the Church of Satan twice this week, I won't use it as a reference again, but we all confront this split within us every single day: be it something as small as "should I eat the last piece of pizza" to "why shouldn't I steal this candy bar" to "what if I robbed an Orange Julius," we always have conflict within ourselves. Our more primal, pleasure driven side will say to eat that delicious piece of pizza and forget the consequences while our more rational side will tell us that we need to watch our diet, summer's right around the corner. That's where Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde come into play. While certain actions Mr. Hyde take as story goes on show his more monstrous side, he's not supposed to be evil. He's just that side of ourselves that we try to suppress all too often. Mr. Hyde tries to separate himself so that he can became more of a purely good person, but obviously the experiment goes wrong. Jekyll represents repression while Hyde represents the more primal side of us gone wild with no restrictions. We have to find a balance between our Jekyll and Hyde to be fully human, we can't suppress ourselves or we risk becoming pent up, we have to indulge every now and then, but we have to be careful and do so sparingly, otherwise we can become just as destructive and monstrous as Hyde. If you're reading this, relax a little, let yourself indulge in things that make you happy, just don't go overboard. We all deserve a little pleasure.
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I knew almost immediately which work I wanted to blog about, and that was "Hymn To Proserpine". I grew up in a very religious area with lots of traditionalist Christian family members. I started to question the beliefs I was taught to follow by the age of 9 and accepted myself to be an atheist by the time I was 12. Since then, I've felt my own resentment towards Christianity as a whole and the bigotry/violence that it can create, and for a while, I was drawn to the Church of Satan. The Church of Satan isn't some force of evil, it's nothing more than a philosophy to inspire people to reject traditional Christian values in favor of indulging yourself in what makes you happy and fulfilled, treating yourself as a God. I eventually lost interest because I wasn't particularly interested in being a part of a religious based community of any kind, I just don't want to waste any more time on the subjects of spirituality and religion in my own personal life. That's why I felt so drawn to this poem that speaks of a longing to abandon the new faith being forced on people in favor of a past belief.
However, the comparisons between the new gods and the old is a bit...strange to say the least. The new gods are described to be beautiful and terrifying, while the new god is meant to be pitied and offers forgiveness rather than wrath. The poem describes a man during the age when the beliefs of the Roman Gods were being thrown away in favor of Christianity, but the biggest reason for his lament is that not only did a lot of people die during this transition, but the Christian belief involves a disregard for our lives in the name of an afterlife. The speaker seems to be calling out for Proserpine not to come back and smite the new God, but to bring him with her. In a way, it's as though he is asking for death. Of course, Algernon Charles Swinburne is not the subject of the poem, but his rejection and anger of Christianity represents the struggle during his life between scientific advancement and old, outdated Christian superstitions that were holding back progress during the 19th century. Swinburne is representing a sort of darkness the religion cast upon the world that transcended time, forcing the world to worry about an afterlife and death rather than the live we currently live and any progress in this world. I have to start out by admitting that my reason for being drawn to the story I chose might be a bit nonsensical. I chose the Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti frankly because I really like goblins, so much so that the first game of Dungeons and Dragons that I ever played was a goblin quest that I joined this past New Years. Goblins are basically tiny little land pirates that are too weak to get up to anything too horrendous, they're instruments of chaos and that's just wonderful. However, my heart broke when I discovered that this poem was less focused on the goblins themselves and more the two sisters that ate goblin fruit. Total rookie mistake.
Laura and Lizzie are relaxing near a brook during a warm summer's day when they hear the sound of goblin merchants draw near. The poem gets a little repetitive at this point, much like a child's poem or song, not in a negative way, but to reinforce a message. The message that we are given? Don't eat a goblin's fruit because you have no clue where it might've grown, don't even look at the goblins, just avoid them altogether. Sounds a bit like a trip to the mall, wouldn't you say? But rather than goblin fruit, it's just smelly perfume and cheaply made phone cases. Laura ends up eating the fruit as though she can't stop. The next day, she dreams of eating more while her sister warns her of a friend that died from eating goblin fruit. The clues start to pile up and it's made clear that Laura is hopelessly addicted to the fruit, and as she begins to fade, Lizzie goes to find her some of the goblin fruit to restore her to full health. However, the goblins aren't interested in her money. The goblins metaphorically attempt to rape her in one of the most graphic scenes in the poem Lashing their tails They trod and hustled her, Elbow’d and jostled her, Claw’d with their nails, Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking, Tore her gown and soil’d her stocking, Twitch’d her hair out by the roots, Stamp’d upon her tender feet, Held her hands and squeez’d their fruits Against her mouth to make her eat. She only manages to escape and bring the fruit back to her sister, but her sister can't eat it. Laura has a rather violent episode, but she eventually recovers. Clearly, this is a story representing drug addiction, tempting fruit being sold by strange and untrustworthy characters that causes obsession and eventual illness when forced to abstain. |