man and a savage beast? In the latter half of Wilde’s novel, Dorian Gray, before Gray cruelly murders Basil Hallward he tells his victim: ‘I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else’.33 This statement, as well as the Robert Louis Stevenson short story The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde sums up the Victorian view about how this change in demeanour was possible; a dual personality. Comparisons of the Ripper to ‘Mr Hyde’ can be seen in many of the newspapers of the era. With the character of Jekyll also having a link to the medical profession (tying in the mad doctor theory) the dual personality thesis proved to be the most accessible explanation for the press to exploit.34 As Elaine Showalter states in Sexual Anarchy: ‘the metaphors associated with Hyde are those of abnormality, criminality, disease, contagion and death’.35 A description of Hyde is given early in the novella by the character Enfield as he reveals to Utterson how he watched Hyde trample a small girl underfoot; He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him.36 This portrays Hyde as the epitome of ‘otherness’; he embodies everything wrong with society and appears almost pure evil to those who interact with him, however, he looks entirely like a gentleman. The power of the ‘inner demon’ was an important fear rife in the Victorian era, made all the more common by the press coverage of the Jack the Ripper murders and the comparisons of the killer to an entirely fictional being. The attention given by the press to the elaborate story of a mad doctor, the dual personalities of a Jekyll-and-Hyde-type figure and the foreign element of other cultures or religions all contribute to the dark image of the terrifying killer stalking the streets of London, who could have fit into any of these categories. However, the exaggerations also show the press’ ulterior motive; which was to ‘sell' newspapers. The legends of the Ripper were always far more interesting that the facts, encouraging newspapers of the era to print the speculations of the cases rather than the Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (London: Ward, Lock & Company, 1891), p.143. Frayling, The house that Jack built’, in Jack the Ripper, ed. by Warwick and Willis, p.18. 35 Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle (London: Brown Book Group Limited, 1990), p.112. 36 Robert Lewis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, (London: Longmans, Green & Company, 1886), p.1. 33 34
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