Analyse and compare how war is

represented in Dr Jekyll and Mr

Hyde, and The Red Badge of
Courage
The way in which war is represented in both Stevensons Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,
and Cranes The Red Badge of Courage varies enormously in certain aspects, but
could be seen as quite similar in others. For example, though while Jekyll and
Hyde deals largely with internal and societal conflicts where The Red Badge
focuses on a much more literal case of warfare, the confusion and destruction
left in the wake of war is fairly evident in both novels. To elaborate, in Jekyll and
Hyde war is represented as the battle that each man must fight firstly to contain
the darker side of their own personality, but also to maintain the good name and
reputation of both themselves and their peers. As such, when Dr Jekyll creates
the elixir that unleashes the darkest aspects of his psyche and allows it to take
power over his body, he has effectively created for his colleagues an enemy
against which they all must metaphorically fight. However, it is not in order to
contain the potential damage that it could cause to the world around them, but
to themselves. In The Red Badge, while the main body of events rotate around
battle and atrocities of war, the narrative is largely focalised on the main
character, Henry Fleming. In doing so, Crane manages to point out the ironies of
war by following the change in both Henrys character and his attitude towards
earning a reputation for himself- something which he preoccupies himself with
much more greatly at the start of the novel than the end.
In Jekyll and Hyde, it is made abundantly clear from the opening passage that
the type of men, the middle-class professionals, with which the novel is
concerned are hugely protective of their good names. On recounting the story of
the shady gentleman who fails to deviate from his own path and consequently
tramples a small girl, Mr Enfield mentions that despite the gentlemans
apparently nonchalant demeanour, he also seemed frightened- the reasons for
which fear are clarified when the man says No gentleman but wishes to avoid a

scene1. As we discover later that the man is in fact Mr Hyde himself, the
starkness of the statement that is being made here becomes all the more
evident, for even when exhibiting the darkest corners of his personality, Dr Jekyll
is still visibly concerned with the upkeep of his reputation. However, what
epitomises the societal expectations that these men place upon each other, is
that even Mr Enfield refuses to mention to Mr Utterson the fact that the name he
saw on the compensatory cheque which the shady gentleman wrote to the girls
family was actually Dr Jekylls, saying that it was signed with a name that [he
couldnt] mention2. War, in this case, is represented as the on-going struggle,
which each Victorian middle-class gentleman was forced to experience in order
to conceal his private moods and feelings entirely from the public eye, by literally
separating it. It seems clear that this is a very real kind of war, given the huge
potential for societal damage, and the ferocity and determination with which the
men involved fought it.
To begin with it is important to realise the reasoning behind the defensiveness of
Victorian bourgeois men. To do so, one needs only to look at the rumblings in the
contemporary economic climate, which threw into question many of the
assumptions regarding the middle class as a whole. As Cohen explains in his
writing on the subject, the idea of the naturalness of the body as a metonym for
the naturalness of the unified subject [was] becoming increasingly problematic 3.
That is to say that despite the appearance of these men as goodly gentleman,
they were in fact responsible for a huge descent in the economy, namely
depression, bankruptcy, and unemployment 4, with the former being the
instigator of the others. A reference to this feeling of social discomfort with the
bourgeois can be seen in the novel itself, when Utterson confronts Hyde for the
first time and looks closely at his face. He states that [Hyde] gave an impression

1 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (London: Harper
Press, 2010), p. 5.

2 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, p. 5.

3 E.D Cohen, Hyding the Subject?: The Antinomies of Masculinity in "The Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde", NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 37 (2004), 181-97 (p.182)

4 Cohen, p. 182.

of deformity without any nameable malformation 5, implying heavily that Hyde is

a metaphor to explain that while the working class could look upon the middle
class as upstanding members of society, they exhibited an intangible sense of
untrustworthiness that was ultimately unavoidable.
Masao Miyoshi elaborates on the latter point as he argues that Jekyll fights to
suppress the hidden "je" in each of us, the "troglodytic" animal that only waits
for the moment of release6. The je to which Miyoshi refers here is effectively
the unadulterated primal tendencies of man, not dissimilar from the Freudian
id, which in most societies men agree to curb 7, but Henry Jekyll feels
necessary to suppress entirely. As such, it is no surprise that once Jekyll
transforms into Hyde, he feels younger, lighter, [and] happier in body 8given
that he can drop the social faade and simply indulge his dark side under the
guise of an alter-ego, which conveniently also differs hugely from him in
appearance. This, however, begins to prove problematic as Miyoshi continues to
argue, given that upon relieving himself of the contrived task of restricting
himself in public, Hyde begins to take over Jekylls body. Here, the theme of war
becomes even more prevalent as the scale of conflict increases, while Jekyll now
has to overcome Hyde and regain control of himself. As Miyoshi puts it, Jekyll
must now don the role of the je-killer, at [which] point, the self and society are
enemies to the death9.
The conclusion of the novel is effectively an explanation of the inevitable selfdestruction that must occur when one goes to war with oneself. There is however
a stark irony in the closing words of Henry Jekylls final statement and
confession, as he says this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow
concerns another than myself10, of course referring to Mr Hyde. This quote
exhibits the sad ignorance of Jekyll, who never realises that the sole reason for
5 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, p. 16.
6 Masao Miyoshi, Dr. Jekyll and the Emergence of Mr. Hyde, College English, 27 (1996),
470-474 + 479-480 (p. 473)

7 Miyoshi, p. 473.
8 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, p. 70.
9 Miyoshi, p. 473.

the destruction of his psyche was simply the fact that he was incapable of
accepting all of its facets and learning to live with them harmoniously. Rather, he
attempts only to destroy the aspects of it that displease him, which results solely
in destruction. As put forward by Irving S. Saposnik, Stevenson uses Jekylls
closing monologue to [illustrate] the inevitable conflict between natural urges
and societal pressures, and there he presents the tragedy of those who surrender
themselves to either11. The irony is clarified even further, as Jekyll notes that it
was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound
together- that these polar twins should be continuously struggling 12. Here he
shows one of his final displays of ignorance, in his inability to understand that
humankind cannot live happily whilst continuously fighting and internal war, in
which there can be no real victor.
In Cranes Red Badge, though the war that we are held to believe is the central
conflict of the novel is the American Civil War, it is still inescapable that the main
focus of the novel is the effect that any large-scale patriotic conflict has on the
individual. Early on in the novel we are shown how war offers an exciting
opportunity for a young man to make a name for himself, given the jingoistic
proclamations made frequently by the contemporary press. We are told that
almost every day the newspapers printed accounts of a decisive victory 13,
something that with the benefit of hindsight we can now see was simply untrue.
Nonetheless, these overtly patriotic ramblings inspired many young men to enlist
and join a war, which they believed was a justified and worthy cause. This is
evident when Henry is about to leave his home for the battlefield and is stood
in the doorway with his soldiers clothes on his back, and with the light of
excitement and expectancy in his eyes 14. In this passage, and indeed throughout
the novel, the youth of Henry is pointed out repetitively and almost laboriously.
10 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, p. 88.
11 Irving S. Saposnik, The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Studies in English
Literature, 11 (1971), 715-31 (p.729)

12 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, p. 69.

13Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (Oxford: OUP, 2008), p. 6.
14 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 6.

His mother continuously calls him child and boy and sends him off with a
typically maternal farewall, telling him not to forgit about the socks and the
shirts15 and reminding him that there is a cup of blackberry jam [in his]
bundle16. What is particularly striking about this episode is the eerie detachment
it seems to have from the war itself. Even as Henry is about to depart after his
mother has finished speaking, we are told that he had borne it with an air of
irritation, and leaves feeling a vague relief 17- a sentiment which would be better
associated with leaving ones mother for an extended school trip than to war. In
addition to this, Robert Dusenbery speculates interestingly on this Homeric mood
that is inherent to the opening of the novel. He comments on how Henry had
burned several times to enlist18 after long [despairing] of a Greek-like
struggle19. He asks is there no irony in this passage? Henry will in fact witness a
Greek like struggle20. The real problem with Henrys over enthusiasm,
therefore, is that it has blinded him from seeing the real prospects and the likely
if not inevitable tragedy that will face him once he joins the battlefield. Not
dissimilarly, Jekyll exhibits a determination to achieve victory on the battlefield
as he begins his official account of his experiment saying that he advanced
infallibly in one direction, and in one direction only 21. Here it is clear to see them
both bearing a Spartan defiance against potentially horrible odds, as each
consigns himself to [return] home, victorious, with his shield or upon it 22.

15 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 7.

16 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 7.
17 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 7.
18 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 5.
19 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 5.
20 Robert Dusenbery, The Homeric Mood in the Red Badge of Courage, Pacific Coast
Philology, 3 (1968), 31-37 (p.31)

21 Jekyll and Hyde, p. 68.

22 Dusenbery, p. 31.

This rose-tinted view of war is savagely overturned later in the novel, however,
as the company to which Henry is assigned [encounter] the body of a dead
soldier23. This makes for the initial shattering of the preconceptions Henry took
with him to war, as the corpse is discovered not long after Henry starts having
his first doubts, and it occurs to him that he had never wished to come to the
war24. Here we catch a glimpse of the fear that the youth begins to feel, as he
examines the dead soldier and notices that one foot is visible through his wornout shoes. As in death [fate] exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life
he had perhaps concealed from his friends 25, when Henry sees the corpse, he
begins to display the fear which had hitherto been suppressed and hidden from
his comrades. Another potential metaphorical meaning for the soldiers worn
shoes is that war victimizes solely those of a poorer income and lower social
classes, as it is rare for a member of the bourgeois to be in active warfare. This
stands in contrast with the idea of war in Jekyll and Hyde, given that in spite of a
distinct lack of gun fighting there all of the conflict in the novel occurs between
and within middle class men. Conversely, similarity Jekyll and Hyde could also be
found in Henrys reaction to the corpse, as there is a further interpretation
thereof. As put forward by Terry Mulcaire, it is likely that The corpse is terrifying
because his view of the war is empty of any perceptible interest in war 26. This
rings exceptionally true if Henry and the corpse, were replaced with Jekyll and
Hyde respectively. While Jekyll [has] more than a fathers interest; Hyde had
more than a sons indifference27, indicating an interesting consistency between
external and internal warfare; most who embark upon either enthusiastically are
often met with death and indifference.
In conclusion, it becomes apparent through the study of each of these novels
that while the particular variety of war that each focuses on is vastly different,
23 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 21.
24 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 21.
25 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 22.
26 Terry Mulcaire, Progressive Visions of War in The Red Badge of Courage and The
Principles of Scientific Management, American Quarterly, 43 (1991), 46-72 (p. 63)

27 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, p. 78.

they both come back to comment on the confusion and internal contention that
war brings out in humankind- be they a member of the infantry during the
American Civil War, or a doctor in Victorian London. While Jekyll fights to
separate himself from his primal urges and attempts to control the duality of
man, Henry Fleming is torn apart by his determination to make himself a valiant
soldier of good repute. The primary observation that must be made is that
neither novel glorifies war in any way- rather, they both depict it as depressingly
innate function of mankind that can only have negative consequences. When
Jekyll comes to the end of his fight, he is met with defeat and his subsequent
demise. When Henry finally gathers the courage within himself to act without
feeling or remorse and simply fulfill his role as a cog in the huge war machine he
was a part of, he feels limited fulfillment himself. In fact, as Crane concludes,
Henrys distaste for war is all that remains. He [rids] himself of the red sickness
of battle28 and [turns] with a lovers thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh
meadows [and] cool brooks29.

Bibliography
Cohen, E.D., Hyding the Subject?: The Antinomies of Masculinity in "The Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 37, No. 1/2
(Fall, 2003 - Spring, 2004), pp. 181-199
Crane, Stephen, The Red Badge of Courage, (Oxford: OUP)
Dusenbery, Robert, The Homeric Mood in the "Red Badge of Courage", Pacific
Coast Philology, Vol. 3 (Apr., 1968), pp. 31-37
Miyoshi, Masao, Dr. Jekyll and the Emergence of Mr. Hyde College English, Vol.
27, No. 6 (Mar., 1966), pp. 470-474+479-480

28 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 117.

29 The Red Badge of Courage, p. 117.

Mulcaire, Terry, Progressive Visions of War in The Red Badge of Courage and
The Principles of Scientific Management, American Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1
(Mar., 1991), pp. 46-72
Saposnik, Irving S., The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Studies in English
Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 11, No. 4, Nineteenth Century (Autumn, 1971), pp.
715-731
Stevenson, R.L., The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, (London: Harper
Press)