The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, ask some similar questions but go about exploring the answers in very different ways. Both short stories wonder about truth- what is it, and to what extent does it matter? What if appearances are deceiving?
Oscar Wilde suggests that people often don’t want to know the real truth. If the falsehood is pleasanter, many times people would rather be deceived. We can see this in how the women respond to Algy and Jack. It is not clear if they suspect that neither are who they say they are, but if they do they certainly enjoy pretending not to suspect anything. When they are told the truth, it doesn’t take them very long to go back to normal, as if nothing had happened. While we do not get to see as much of how people react to the truth in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because the story ends a bit more abruptly, it is certainly a horrible truth that many people would not want to know.
Wilde and Stevenson both explore the idea of false impressions and messed-up identities, though in very different ways. While Wilde keeps his story light-hearted and funny, Stevenson does not shy away from the more thrilling, horror-like aspects of science fiction. Both are effective in their own way. We laugh at the folly of the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest, but by the end, we start to wonder if maybe their faults hit a bit too close to home; don’t we all have different sides of us that come out in different settings? Is that okay? At what point does it become bad?
But Stevenson’s writings are also effective. The chilling truth that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person- or at least part of the same person- forces the reader to think about all that has happened thus far in the story with a new perspective. And we ask the same questions: is it excusable to want to separate different parts of yourself? Even if it makes your evil side so much worse? But what if it makes your good side so much better?
It is also very interesting to look at the last sentence of each story, as each seem to bring a strong conclusion at first. However, the more you consider them, the more you realize that the author is still being coy and we cannot actually say for sure what the end is.
Stevenson ends his story by saying, “Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end” (96). Here’s what we know from that sentence: Henry Jekyll had a horrible life but is now dead. That’s it! Was it a suicide, or a murder (by Hyde)? Does Hyde indeed live on after Jekyll dies? Who even wrote the letter? Did Jekyll end talking about himself in the third person because he wanted to distance himself from all of himself, Jekyll included? Or had Hyde slowly taken over as he was writing?
Wilde’s last line is similar in its slipperiness. “On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest” (Wilde, 91). Does he mean the importance of being honest? (Actually, are honesty and earnestness the same thing?) Or does he mean the importance of being named Earnest, because the word is capitalized? (It is interesting to note that Wilde capitalizes the entire title here). Is Jack/Earnest actually being honest, or is he perhaps lying as one film adaptation suggests? Did Jack/Earnest ever actually lie? Does telling the truth quite by accident actually count as telling the truth?
Clearly, the truth is treated as a slippery thing in both of these novels, and neither ends with a definitive answer either way. But both authors use distinct voices and styles to explore possible answers. It seems the truth is earnestly hyding itself on purpose.
Works Cited:
Stevenson, Robert Lewis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Planet eBook. https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll.pdf. PDF file.
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. Samuel French, Inc. http://www.jacneed.com/ASYD/Earnest/the_importance_of_being_earnest.pdf. PDF file.