The Doppelganger: A Disturbing Concept of Identity in Victorian Literature

1. The Doppelganger LO: to understand the concept of the doppelganger/double and to be able to relate it to Victorian issues of identity TTYP: What makes this such an enduring and FRIGHTENING/disturbing concept/image? split of self? confrontation of repressed identity? facing of fears? fascination with who we are/of what we are made?

2. So what is a Doppelganger? Literally, a doppelganger is a paranormal double of a living person usually representing evil or misfortune. In fiction, it has come to be used as a symbolic representation of another side to a person/character. However, by enabling us to see a replicated personality, the doppelganger opens up important issues regarding the concept of identity and self-identity, and is a particularly popular feature of Victorian literature. Can you think of any other examples, Victorian or modern? The other most famous Victorian examples come in the shape of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson, but more subtle elements of the doppelganger can be found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein / Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The most recent doppelganger I can think of is in Black Swan.

3. The Gothic novel often features elements of repression and concealment. In TPODG this comes out in the way that Dorian conceals his double – his Doppelganger – from society. From Punter and Byron If, as Robert Miles and other recent critics have suggested, the Gothic generally represents ‘the self finding itself dispossessed in its own house, in a condition of rupture, disjunction, fragmentation’ (Miles 2002: 3), then this is a concern which is increasingly intensified in the works of this period. The idea that the supposedly civilized subject harbours something alien within is particularly emphasized by the return of the double or Doppelganger in such works as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In both these cases, however, it is suggested that the real problem is not the existence of some more primitive and passionate internal self, but the force with which that self must be repressed in accordance with social conventions.

4. Dorian, who sells his soul for eternal youth while his portrait ages and decays in his place, is warned of the dangers of repression by Lord Henry: ‘The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.’ As in the case of Jekyll, repression has the potential to produce a split in psyche. However, although we are encouraged to think in terms of duality by the opposition of Jekyll and Hyde and of Dorian and his portrait, the texts also imply it is not simply a split that is at issue but a more complex fragmentation of the subject. As Dorian suggests, man may well be not a stable unified subject, but a ‘complex, multiform creature’.

5. Do you consider Dorian’s double to have a supernatural element? How does this contrast with the double represented in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? How does doubling lead to transgression or deviance in TPODG? Which elements of Dorian’s double would you consider to be Gothic?

6. So how could you use this in the exam? Well, this counts as applying a different way of reading to the text... “This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors.” To what extent do you consider art to be responsible for Dorian’s downfall? In pairs, spend five mins planning a response to this question using ideas of the doppelganger and thinking about how you can work in your knowledge of context. Then INDEPENDENTLY begin to write a response.

7. AO3/AO4 FOCUS: RESEARCH THE DOUBLE – THE DOPPELGANGER – IN ANOTHER VICTORIAN TEXT. FOCUS ON EITHER WILLIAM WILSON IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S SHORT STORY OR DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE IN ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON’S NOVELLA.