Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
Psychologising Jekyll, Demonising Hyde: The Strange Case Of Criminal Responsibility, Nicola Lacey
Psychologising Jekyll, Demonising Hyde: The Strange Case Of Criminal Responsibility, Nicola Lacey
Nicola Lacey
Psychologising Jekyll, Demonising Hyde: The Strange Case of Criminal Responsibility
Nicola Lacey
This paper puts the famous story of Jekyll and Hyde to work for a specific analytic purpose. The question of responsibility for crime, complicated by the divided subjectivity implicit in Mr. Hyde’s appearance, and illuminated by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grasp of contemporary psychiatric, evolutionary and medical thought as promising new technologies for effecting a distinction between criminality and innocence, is key to the interest of the story. I argue that Jekyll and Hyde serves as a powerful metaphor both for specifically late Victorian perplexities about criminality and criminal …