Robert Louis Stevenson’s short novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short novel The Double both involve the theme of the double, the alternative personality within each of us that in these two novels emerges as a separate entity. Stevenson is interested in the dual nature of the human soul and in why the opposing natures of good and evil are intermixed, while Dostoevsky utilizes the double as external evidence of the pathological nature of the main character. Both writers draw on the tradition of the Doppelg?nger, the sinister double of legend and literature.
Stevenson presents the difference between Jekyll and Hyde in several ways. One of these is in terms of freedom versus restraint, with Hyde having complete freedom because he is bound by no civilizing emotions or strictures.