The Mortal Immortal and Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

The Mortal Immortal - Mary Shelley

What first struck me was that the after just reading the short story by Mary Shelley, is the title. With its oxymoron title, Mary Shelley managed to capture my attention, and judging by my reaction, she probably succeeded in capturing the attention of the audience in the year 1833. What is also interesting about her short story  is that it is written in the first person point of view as if written by a man's diary, and it dances between fantasy and science fiction by playing with the elements of Gothic.
In my opinion this is a story of a heart broken by the time. All Whinzy wanted, the immortal mortal that is telling the story, is to have Bertha, the girls of his dreams and desires, falling in love with him. The simple greed for the cure for love, and the simple greed for the immortality were the story's theme Mary Shelley was trying to work around.
What is new in Gothic literature, and starts with Mary Shelley's work, is that the mystical part from the former Gothic is replaced with the witchcraft and mysterious potions.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

All his life Robert L. Stevenson wanted to be someone else. From the young age, being very sick he had to be locked in a house in Edinburgh. Even thought this is based on bare assumption, how wrong could I be to say that every little boy wants to be mischievous, bursting with energy, curios about the outside world. Little R.L.Stevens was spending his time in the home, instead of doing what other boys his age were doing, playing freely and carelessly. I could imagine him starring outside the window and pretending to be someone else in the outer world, someone strong and powerful.

Then on college, he allowed the R.L.Stevens he want to be to take the charge. His father wanted him to be engineer, but Robert wanted to do the poetry. The society even, it wanted for Robert to be a “normal” citizen, but he wanted to be bohemian. Cold one not argue Robert L.Stevens had the constant fight of two people inside him. One person is what society wants him to be, what is socially accepted and that is who Dr. Jekyll was , and the other person are all the secret desires, the rebellious one, represented by Mr.Hyde. The solution for one side of the personality to win is the suicide, but in the real life, he escaped the society and joined one where he can be whatever he wants; where he finally got free of the fight with two persons in him, and united them making peace with himself.