Gender Must Be Contended: An Examination of Motherhood in Stevenson and Diaz

Lee writes in her post “Jekyll and Hyde: Past, Present, and Future?”: “Race, then, is a term that has internal and external, inclusionary and exclusionary implications—it is a mark of belonging and also of otherness.” While I agree that race has “inclusionary and exclusionary implications,” it seems that Stephen Best and Hortense Spillers both examine specifically the exclusions inherent in a slave-existence that attempts to conform to American ideals: an assuredly faulty identity that denies/excludes the power of slave women. The denunciation of slaves’ blackness, therefore, is inherent and seemingly secondary. So, if the process of racializing Hyde is, as Lee argues, representative of a “single entity” within a larger race, then one might argue, by means of reading Spillers, that the process is also fundamentally gendered. In my view, Jekyll is both mother and father -- an obfuscation of the traditional, patriarchal society of 1880s Britain. Just as the meaning of race is socially constructed, so too is the meaning of gender.

Furthermore, if one examines the existence of Jekyll/Hyde as a Hegelian dialectic, one begins to notice the implicit reliance of both consciousnesses upon one another. I would argue that an exploration of the male/female dialectic is exceptionally fruitful for Stevenson’s work. Which characters fulfill solely the role of male or female? It seems that Jekyll is oftentimes both -- he is master (father) and also creator (mother) for Hyde. He bears Hyde like a burdensome child. Nonetheless, “[Hyde] is a being of voice, will, and intent, who must subsume his freedom and individuality to the desire of a master and to the morality of a society that deems him inhuman, monstrous, and unworthy of life” (Emrich).  If Hyde is a character of “voice, will and intent,” he is probably male, in Victorian terms. However, his existence also aligns with that of woman, in that he cannot consciously separate himself from a societal construction that ranks men as foremost. (His own construction is a result of his being created by a male, after all.) Similarly, one could read the simultaneous feminization of Jekyll as a larger discussion by Stevenson on the acceptance of unconventional gender roles, a refutation of societal prejudices of and expectations for women. While I still do not agree that Stevenson categorically provides an account of a racial group’s genesis, I think that a dissolution of Victorian era patriarchy is an interesting notion. 

Lee argues that “Jekyll, a creature obsessed with Morrisonian ‘melancholic historicization,’ (460) seeks in vain to restore a past sense of his (united) self; yet even he realizes the impossibility of such a quest and eventually he gives in to the fierce life force of Hyde.” I would contend that Morrison’s Beloved, which features a strong female lead, the matriarch, parallels Jekyll’s mastership over Hyde. However, where Sethe commits infanticide to perhaps “save” her daughter from the horrors of slavery, Jekyll seemingly revels in his creation, until his poisonous concoction begins to run out and he realizes his precarious position.  Best similarly argues that “Morrison makes separation and fearful estrangement conditions of relation, so kinship appears not a given in the world but something forged” (467). The scientific forgery of Hyde also demonstrates a mothering, an artificial creation of kinship, far more than a racialization. However, Hyde rebels against his domineering mother (Jekyll), which eventually causes an eradication of Jekyll entirely. The mother is consumed by the daughter, a “loss as the property of an immediate circle of kin” (Spillers 76).

This attempted overthrowal of the mother figure closely parallels Beli and La Inca in Brief Wondrous Life. As Spillers writes: “The destructive loss of the natural mother, whose biological/genetic relationship to the child remains unique and unambiguous, opens the enslaved young to social ambiguity and chaos” (76). The mother-daughter relationship between La Inca and Beli is undeniably complicated, because Beli feels an inchoate yet fervent desire from an early age to escape the unattainable expectations of La Inca, a symbol of the likely acceptance and continuation of oppressive sexism within the DR (not quite slavery, but close). Perhaps, then, Diaz’s relegation of Beli (whose mother is killed by Trujillo) to abandon Bani and La Inca structurally expands Spillers's thesis -- the daughter abandons the mother. Another interesting connection between Spillers and Diaz is the symbolic representation of the Freudian “oceanic feeling.” Slaves in “Middle Passage” were suspended in the “oceanic” (71), just as “Beli would talk about how trapped they all felt. It was like being at the bottom of an ocean…there was no light and a whole ocean crushing down on you” (Diaz 81). The existence and continuation of a familial line rests upon women; but this reductionist, sexist position is completely unsatisfactory to Beli. As a result, she feels trapped, held down and smothered by an ocean of patriarchy.