Social Darwinism in the stories of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Wrong Box, Treasure Island, and Kidnapped.
Promoting knee-jerk right-wing reactions to social problems.
Burton Weltman
The (im)moral of the story?
Story #1. An adolescent boy, whose father has recently died, joins with some adult men to search for stolen loot. The boy’s father was a man of property and his colleagues are the pillars of the community. The boy and his colleagues battle a gang of villainous lower-class criminals who are after the same loot. In the course of the adventure, the boy takes irresponsible risks that endanger himself and his colleagues, but they luckily turn out all right.
Treachery abounds and trust is in short supply except among his immediate colleagues. The boy is repeatedly faced with fearful fight or flight situations. Gut reaction rather than reasoned choice prevails. The boy and his colleagues defeat the bad guys and get the loot. Instead of turning it over to the authorities or trying to return it to its rightful owners, they split it up among themselves and become rich men.
Story #2. An adolescent boy is orphaned and goes to live with his uncle. The uncle is worried the boy might make claims on his property, so the uncle has the boy kidnapped, ostensibly to be taken to America and left there. The boy escapes and spends weeks wandering through the Highlands of Scotland with a nobleman who is a traitor and a murderer, and who is on the lam from the law.
It is a bleak and impoverished land in which the boy can trust no one except his colleague, and everyone seems to be on the make against everyone else. The boy is repeatedly faced with fearful fight or flight situations. Gut reaction rather than reasoned choice prevails. In the end, he makes his way back to his uncle and coerces his uncle into giving him some property.
These are the basic plots of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, two children’s stories by Robert Louis Stevenson. In each story, an orphaned or fatherless boy of genteel stock, who is essentially on his own, joins with members of the upper classes on an adventure in which the goal of the boy is to become wealthy. In both stories, the boy and his colleagues must battle lower-class rabble and vicious ruffians in a zero-sum, survival-of-the-strongest world in which no one can be trusted except one’s closest colleagues. In both stories, the boy goes with his gut reactions and acts in irresponsible ways that turn out all right. In the end, the boy demonstrates unusual pluck and courage, saves his adult colleagues from the bad guys, and gets his wealth.
Written by Stevenson in the late nineteenth-century, these novels are classic adventure stories, still popular today, and models for a whole genre of similar stories since. The stories are exciting and appealing, particularly to their intended audience of adolescent boys. Their young heroes are intended as models for adolescent readers, whose dreams are likely filled with going on dangerous adventures, doing irresponsible things that turn out well, and enjoying success in besting adult villains.
But what should young readers think about these stories and others like them? What is the moral of the stories? What attitudes toward themselves, people and society will young readers take from them? Stories such as these provide young readers with models of how to think about the world, respond to problems in the world, and make the choices they have to make. What do these stories teach their readers?
I am concerned with the world views – attitudes toward people and ideologies about society – that are conveyed in stories. The attitudes and ideologies embedded in stories can influence the way in which readers understand, react and respond to the world. Views embedded in stories can challenge readers’ views of the world and induce them to think rationally about things, or can promote prejudices and emotional reactions that frequently run counter to rational thinking.
I am most concerned about the ideologies embedded in children’s stories, ideologies that young readers might absorb without realizing it and that might promote ingrained prejudices, prejudices that could surface during their adult lives as knee-jerk reactions to social issues. If an author’s views are not explained, examined and critiqued, young readers are liable to accept and absorb that author’s ideas even though they may not be right or reasonable. The stories that children read can have lasting effects on their ideas and actions when they become adults.
The import of this essay is that the ideologies that underlie children’s stories are generally not examined at all and are almost never explained to children, and the failure to do these things contributes to confusion about the world in children’s minds and to political conflict in the country. The conflicts between liberals and right-wingers, Blue States and Red States, Democrats and Republicans are often presaged in children’s stories.
What makes Robert Louis Stevenson particularly worthy of discussion in this regard is that he wrote stories for both adults and children, his political views are clearly embedded in his stories, and his political intentions toward children can be seen. The way in which Stevenson insinuated his adult messages into his children’s stories is particularly instructive. Stevenson makes for a good example of the general problem of the ideological implications of children’s stories.
Full disclosure: I am a self-styled liberal and I am disturbed by the right-wing political implications of so many children’s stories and their reflection in American culture. I believe they contribute to the illiberal ideology that is so widespread in our country, and to the political confusion and conflict that result from harboring an illiberal ideology in a liberal society.
Stevenson was politically on the right and this essay treats his coupling of right-wing ideology with fascinating stories such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped as something that parents and teachers need to recognize and help their young readers to understand. The moral of this essay is to encourage young people to read stories such as these but then to examine and understand what it is that the authors are trying to convey in the stories.
Definitions: Liberal, Conservative, Right-Wing.
For purposes of this essay, I define liberals as people who favor increasing public health and welfare services, increasing governmental regulation in the public interest of the economy and the environment, and increasing governmental efforts toward racial, ethnic and gender equality. Liberals generally trace their origins back to the philosopher John Locke and the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment. Their social goals can be summed up in a phrase coined by the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Frances Hutcheson and incorporated into the American Declaration of Independence as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
I define conservatives as people who generally favor maintaining the social status quo for fear of the chaos that might result from social change. The origins of conservatism can be traced back to the eighteenth-century English politician Edmund Burke who contended that people are too short-sighted to appreciate what might happen in the long run when they undertake social change. His concern for the unintended undesirable consequences of social change has long been a main argument of conservatives against social reform.
I define right-wingers as people who want to get rid of most governmental services, regulations and social reforms. While generally favoring a strong police state to keep in check the undesirable portions of our population, invariably defined as the country’s racial and ethnic minorities, they claim to want to restore the country to an idealized imaginary past in which there was ostensibly more of what they call freedom, but which in the United States was really just the predominance of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants over Blacks and everyone else.
Unlike conservatives who are concerned about the unintended consequences of the actions of do-gooders, right-wingers are concerned about the intended consequences of do-gooder actions which they claim are inherently tainted with evil. They claim that the subtext and real purpose of do-gooder government regulations and social programs is tyrannical government control over everyone and the elimination of individual freedom.
Right-wingers emphasize cultural values such as religion, race, and ethnicity, to which they react emotionally and adamantly. They deemphasize political institutions and political values such as democracy or the rule of law, which call for reasoned and pragmatic responses. They invariably see their cultural values as endangered and are willing to do anything to save them.
Presenting Problem: An Illiberal Ideology in a Liberal Society.
The United States was founded during the eighteenth century as a liberal country with a pro-social political theory and political structure, and largely remains so to the present day. But Americans gravitated during the nineteenth century toward an ideology that is illiberal and anti-social, and that largely underlays our culture to the present day. The clash between the country’s liberal founding theory and political structure, on the one hand, and the country’s illiberal underlying ideology and culture, on the other, has since then been a continual source of confusion and conflict. It has been most evident in the triumph of Trumpism in recent years.
In The Declaration of Independence, the Founders proclaimed a political theory based on people’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which, in the context of the times, meant the ability to develop one’s individuality through participating with others in society. The Constitution then established a political structure in which people could exercise their rights through mutual respect and cooperation with each other. The Declaration and the Constitution incorporate a liberal theory and a liberal practice that reflected the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and that encourage the use of shared reason and common sense to pragmatically and cooperatively resolve social problems.
Conflicting with this founding theory and structure is an illiberal and anti-social ideology that stemmed in large part from reactionary elements of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. Romanticism emphasized culture, race, ethnicity and religion as more important than political structures, and relied on emotion over reason. Romantics combined an emphasis on elite culture with a disdain of the working class that arose with the industrial revolution. This elitism was, in turn, fueled by racism and ethnocentrism that worsened with the massive immigration to the United States of Irish and other non-WASP peoples, the continued enslavement of African Americans, and the ongoing brutal conquest of Native Americans.
It is an ideology that promotes freedom and individualism as opposed to the liberty and individuality fostered by the Founders. In the nomenclature of the Founders, freedom means being able to do whatever one wants irrespective of society, whereas liberty means the right to make choices within a social framework. Individualism means the cult of oneself by and for oneself, whereas individuality means developing oneself in cooperation with others. The Founders favored a pro-social ideology.
Unlike the ideology of the Founders, this underlying individualist ideology portrays society as a constraint on the self rather than as a source of opportunities to develop oneself. And it is a view that sees others, and especially others who are different than the self, as a threat to one’s freedom rather than as comrades in a joint exercise of liberty. It encourages an attitude of every man for himself – me against the world – and of the superior people against the inferior people – us against them. And, unlike the theory and practice promoted by the Founders, this ideology focuses on personal feelings and emotional reactions to problems – going with one’s gut – rather than on reason.
Illiberal nineteenth-century American ideology was promoted by influential segments of the social and economic elite of that time and, with the continued support of the successors of that elite, continues to the present day to predominate in the mass media and the general American culture. It is absorbed by children from their earliest ages in stories such as those by Stevenson. Unexamined acceptance of the views in these stories contributes to the illiberal ideological prejudices that lurk below the surface of most Americans’ minds, and that contribute to the erratic nature of American politics.
Prologue: Be aware and beware of what your children are reading.
The thesis of this essay is that the children’s stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island and Kidnapped in particular, convey right-wing political attitudes that young readers are liable to absorb as they blithely enjoy Stevenson’s adventure stories, stories that feature adolescents with whom they can identify. Stevenson was a right-winger politically and continues to be a hero to right-wing libertarian ideologists. He wrote stories for both adults and children and essentially transferred the right-wing sentiments he conveyed in adult novels such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Wrong Box to his children’s books.[1]
Stevenson was a highly-regarded late nineteenth-century Scottish author. His novels have remained popular to the present day and many of them, including the four discussed in this essay, have been made into popular movies. Stevenson was part of the romantic movement in literature and was a disciple of the reactionary Scottish romantic Sir Walter Scott. Stevenson had an acerbic wit characteristic of George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and other British authors of that age. But, unlike them, he was politically on the right. Also, unlike them, he wrote stories for adolescents as well as adults. These stories are generally considered innocent tales of derring-do with young heroes. But there is more to them and that more is the subject of this essay.
Children’s literature has been a politically contested terrain for most of the last two hundred years. Liberals such as Charles Dickens, L.M. Montgomery, and Dr. Seuss, and right-wingers such as Stevenson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Walt Disney, have all tried to convey social and political messages to children through their books. Bluntly put, these authors have tried to politically indoctrinate kids. While story books are not likely by themselves to politically indoctrinate kids, stories can play an important part in the development of their attitudes.
Psychologists have demonstrated that attitudes adopted by people in childhood can stay with them throughout their adult lives without their even being aware of it. When adults are forced to face a critical issue, these childhood attitudes can come to the fore and become the basis of knee-jerk ideological responses that may defy reason, rational analysis, and reliable evidence. Childhood prejudices, literally prejudgments that are subconsciously held, can determine people’s responses to issues, almost despite themselves.[2] The importance of stories like those of Stevenson lies in the way they help form attitudes in children that may emerge in the form of knee-jerk illiberal and irrational responses to social issues when they become adults.
Trump voters: A Consequence of Illiberal Ideology in a Liberal Society.
I am writing this essay in December, 2020. We have just finished a national election in the United States which seemed to demonstrate how politically divided Americans are between liberals, conservatives, and right-wingers.
Although liberals came out ahead in a close Presidential race in the recent election, right-wingers did well in Congressional and local government races. Conservatives were essentially side-lined. For liberals like myself, it was a glass half-full/half-empty result, with most of us aghast at how many people voted for Donald Trump and his Republican supporters. While the Democrat Joe Biden received some eighty-one million votes, Trump got some seventy-four million, almost half of the electorate. It is hard for us liberals to understand how so many people could have chosen Trump. But it may be understandable as a result of the underlying knee-jerk right-wing ideology with which most people in this country have been bombarded since childhood.
Trump appeals to the racism and bigotry of his supporters, who cherish what they claim as their sacred rights to discriminate against others whom they see as different than themselves, to use guns against others whom they see as a threat to themselves, and to impose their religious views on others. Constitutional requirements, laws and legal procedures, the rights of others, even common decency, count for nothing in the defense of their sacred cultural rights. And Trump has flouted all of these principles with their support.
An Irony of American Politics: Red States, Blue States, and the Political Stakes.
We have in the United States what are called Red States and Blue States. Red States are the more right-wing areas of the country, predominantly made up of rural areas and small towns, and areas that have been politically gerrymandered in favor of the rural and small-town parts of a state. These states are politically controlled by the Republican Party.
Republicans generally oppose government economic and social programs and regulations, which they claim stifle economic growth. They also favor low taxes, particularly on big businesses and wealthy people who are considered the engines of economic growth. They especially oppose Federal government economic programs for the poor and social programs for minority groups, denigrating these programs as handouts for lay-abouts and as discrimination against hardworking Americans. Demographically, Red State residents are mainly white, evangelical Protestants, and Red State Republicans think of people like themselves as the desired norm.
Blue States are more liberal and are predominantly urban. These states are politically controlled by the Democratic Party. Democrats generally support government social and economic programs and regulations that are intended to help the lower and middle classes, protect the environment, and eliminate invidious discrimination against minorities and women. They favor taxes on big business and the wealthy to pay for these things. Theirs is more of an all-for-one-one for-all ethic, as opposed to the Red State individualistic ethic. Demographically, Blue States are generally diverse ethnically, racially, culturally and religiously, and Blue State Democrats think of this diversity as normal and desirable.
Red States are generally poorer than Blue States. Their residents are on average also less educated, less healthy, and generally more in need of government help than residents of Blue States. Red states invariably get back from the Federal government more money in economic support than they pay to the Federal government. That is, Red States are essentially supported by the largesse of the wealthier Blue States and the willingness of liberal Blue State citizens to support the well-being of their Red State brethren. This seems appropriate since the root meaning of the word liberal is generous. But what Blue State liberals generally get back in return is vitriol and hatred from their Red State brethren.
And here comes the irony. Right-wing Red State Republicans vehemently oppose the very social and economic programs and taxes that they depend on for survival. Theirs is not a rational political stance. It is an ideological and emotional reaction rather than a pragmatic or programmatic response. And therein lies a big political problem.
America’s Bi-Polar Politics and Why We Should Care about Stories like Stevenson’s.
One of the conclusions that can be drawn from the recent election and from the split between Red States and Blue States is that the American polity seems to be schizophrenic or bi-polar. Slightly more than half of the voting public leans to the near left. Slightly less than half leans to the far right. And, according to most of the mass media and many politicians, there seems to be no way for the twain to meet. Liberals and right-wingers, they say, live in two different worlds with two different realities.
But I would like to suggest otherwise: what divides many Americans is the way they respond to social problems depending on how those problems are presented to them. The way problems are framed seems to be key for a large percentage of the populace as to whether they will respond rationally, pragmatically and liberally, or will react irrationally, emotionally and retrogressively. Strictly speaking, Americans are not rigidly divided between those who favor liberal policies and those who favor as right-wing policies. About a third of the people seem to be hard-core liberals. About a third are hard-core right-wingers. But about a third of Americans seem to be split within themselves between a liberal self and a right-wing self. Which self comes to the fore depends on how social issues are framed.
Social scientists over the last one-hundred years have noted a significant difference in the way many Americans respond to social problems depending on whether the problems are presented in emotional and ideological terms or in pragmatic and programmatic terms. Asked about a social problem in ideological and emotional terms, they are likely to give a right-wing answer. Asked in pragmatic and programmatic terms, they are likely to give a liberal answer.[3]
For example, if Americans are asked whether they support government regulation of business or social welfare for people who won’t work, most will say “No.” This answer reflects right-wing ideological opposition to government regulations and government handouts in general, and support for laissez-faire policies that require people to stand on their own two feet. In right-wing ideology this constitutes a moral stance in favor of self-reliance and individual responsibility. Right-wing ideology puts the blame for social problems on the misbehavior of individuals, and the blame for economic failure on an individual’s lack of character.
Self-reliant individualism is the cornerstone of right-wing ideology, and it is also widely considered a cornerstone of American ethics. Individualism is deeply embedded and pervasive in American culture. It is ingrained in Americans starting at an early age and continuing throughout our lives. Having been indoctrinated in the ethic of individualistic self-reliance, Americans are likely to give automatic right-wing answers when asked ideological questions such as whether the government should support the poor. The right-wing knee-jerk reaction is that the poor should display self-reliance rather than get help from the government.
But if Americans are asked specific questions about social problems that call for practical responses, most will generally respond in a reasoned and liberal way. For example, when asked whether they support restrictions against companies spewing toxic chemicals into drinking water or programs giving poor people money to keep children from starving, most will say “Yes.” In sum, if you ask Americans to react to an ideological issue, most will recoil to the right. If you ask them to respond pragmatically, most will reason themselves to the left.
This social science finding is itself consistent with liberal thinking. Liberal ideology emphasizes that people’s circumstances people are a major factor in how they will think and act. Good conditions will promote good behavior. Bad conditions will promote bad behavior. Liberals, as a consequence, tend to promote changing conditions in order to help people become their better selves. In promoting governmental efforts to improve the conditions in which people live, liberal ideology constitutes an alternative moral stance to the right-wing ethic of self-reliance.
Liberalism is also a stance that encourages practical solutions to social problems. It promotes the sort of reasoned response we are expected to give to problems we encounter in school, at work, and in our daily lives. Having adopted a pragmatic way of thinking when dealing with practical problems in daily life, people who otherwise espouse right-wing ideology will often respond in a pragmatic way when asked social questions of a practical nature and will, in turn, give liberal answers to those questions. That is, many of the same people who have a knee-jerk right-wing ideological reaction to broad questions about government regulations and welfare programs will give a pragmatic liberal response when asked about these same things in programmatic terms.
The net result is that many, and perhaps most, Americans have split political personalities and bi-polar political psyches. When encouraged to react immediately, emotionally, and ideologically, they tend to react with their brain stems, home of the “fright then fight or flight” reaction, and go in a right-wing direction. When encouraged to respond carefully, considerately, and calculatingly, they tend to respond with their cerebral cortexes, the home base of humans’ reasoning and rationality, and go in a liberal direction.
Applying this tendency historically, when an election campaign has been primarily contested on broad ideological grounds or on a fearmongering emotional basis, the right-wing side has usually won. If the campaign has been primarily contested on a pragmatic problem-solving basis, the liberal side has usually won. Democrats usually win when policy is at issue. Republicans usually win when ideology is at issue.
Given the predominance of right-wing ideology in American culture and in our psyches, liberals cannot win an ideological battle in this country. Ideology goes to the right. But reason goes to the left and liberals can win contests that are based on facts, reason, and practical policies. The last two presidential races that featured the fear-mongering and right-wing ideological appeals of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, and the mid-term election of 2018 that featured the programmatic appeals of the Democrats, exemplify this situation.
The Democrats won the mid-term election handily. Pragmatic reasoning prevailed. The Republicans won the 2016 election and although they narrowly lost the 2020 presidential contest, Trump made it unexpectedly close and Republicans did unexpectedly well in Congressional races and in state legislative races. And they did this despite Trump’s overwhelmingly awful policies and personal behavior. His race-baiting and fear-mongering countered and almost overcame the pragmatic appeals of the Democrats. Controlling the nature of the debate seems to be a key to which part of our national psyche will win out and which party will win elections.
But as the closeness and mixed outcome of the recent election shows, trying to control the terms of the debate is not enough to ensure that reason will prevail. It is not enough for liberals to run well-reasoned campaigns in order for rationality to prevail. Ideology is too powerful to neglect. While liberals cannot win an ideological contest, they need to blunt the effect of right-wing fearmongering and make it easier for appeals to pragmatic reason to succeed.
So, it is important to try to undermine the underlying right-wing ideology by exposing it and examining its sources. Not by merely opposing it and certainly not by banning it. But by unearthing the prejudices that are at its base and critiquing the culture that conveys it. Ideology can be influenced by thinking about the things that we take for granted, exposing the prejudices that are buried within them, and confronting them with facts and reasoning.
Take, for example, Walt Disney’s Three Little Pigs, a story about child-size beings being threatened by a grownup-size predator. In the story, a big black wolf tries to kill and eat three little pinkish pigs who are forced to use their wits to save themselves. It is a very appealing story to little kids who live in a big world that they feel threatened by and do not understand.
The ideological problem with this story is that wolves are almost never black and pigs are almost never pink. As such, the story is embedded with racist implications against Blacks, and it promotes fear of others who might be different from the reader. It is essentially an anti-social Social Darwinian tale. And it is an ever-popular mainstay of children’s literature that is rarely examined for its political implications.
Dr. Seuss, for one, responded to Disney’s racist messaging with stories such as Sneetches and Horton Hears a Who that preach the virtues of racial and ethnic diversity and cooperation. While Dr. Seuss’ stories are designed to counterprogram children with a liberal ideology, a key difference between his stories and those of Disney and other right-wing storytellers is that Dr. Seuss’ stories are intended to provoke thought and debate, not merely indoctrination. In his story The Cat in the Hat, for example, he sets up a moral dilemma and then ends the story with the question “Well what would you do?” Dr. Seuss’ messages are intended to be analyzed and, if accepted, be accepted on the basis of reason not on prejudice or fear.[4]
Because the right-wing messages conveyed in children’s literature are rarely exposed and examined, these stories can have the effect of implanting and reinforcing right-wing prejudices that children carry with them into adulthood — which is the purpose and point of my discussion of the stories of Robert Louis Stevenson.[5]
Political Ideology of Robert Louis Stevenson: A Litterateur’s Social Darwinism.
Stevenson outlined his political philosophy in an article called “The Day After Tomorrow” that appeared in April, 1887, in the same decade as the four books being discussed herein.[6] In it, he bemoaned that “we are all becoming Socialists without knowing it.” That is, he claimed, Great Britain was slowly but surely being taken over by a creeping socialism which was leading to “a form of servitude most galling.” Britain having adopted what was effectively universal male suffrage, he warned that the lower-class masses were busy regulating the freedom out of free enterprise. Britain was evolving toward a “beneficent tyranny” that would reduce everyone to slavery and society to an “ant heap” of malingerers and mindless worker ants.
Stevenson insisted that socialism cannot work because its emphasis on equality and fraternity is inconsistent with human nature. People are neither equal nor widely fraternal. Jealousy, competition, and the desire for high risk and high rank are endemic to humans. “Danger, enterprise, hope, the novel, the aleatory, is dearer to man than regular meals,” he claimed. Equality and fraternity are fool’s fantasies because people will inevitably fight with each other for place and power. All in all, Stevenson seemed to be saying that you can take the man out of the jungle but you cannot take the jungle out of the man.
Stevenson’s political ideology was essentially a form of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism was a right-wing social and political doctrine that emerged in the late nineteenth century as a self-styled offshoot of Charles Darwin’s biological theory of evolution. It is actually a misnomer to call this doctrine Social Darwinism since it is essentially anti-social and anti-Darwinian, but in adopting the name, right-wingers tried to give a scientific gloss to their unscientific ideas.
Social Darwinians essentially denied the existence of society and the sociability that we normally attribute to people in society. They claimed that what we call society is merely a collection of individuals, all of whom are in continual conflict with each other. In turn, they contended that life is a zero-sum game in which one person’s gain entails another person’s loss, and in which surviving and thriving are defined in terms of an individual’s wealth and power.
Social Darwinians ascribe the success of a person or a social group to their virtues. Wealthy people are superior people who deserve to be rich and to rule. Social Darwinians, in turn, ascribe the poverty of a person or a social group to their vices. The poor deserve to be poor because they are inferior and it is their inferiority that makes them poor. Trying to help them is a waste of resources, and taxing the rich to help the poor hurts the economy which hurts us all.[7]
Darwin did not agree and he was not a Social Darwinian. Darwin was relatively liberal in his politics and unlike the Social Darwinians who promoted individualism as the key to human success, Darwin argued that human sociability and humans’ aptitude for cooperation were keys to the survival and success of the human species.
Stevenson was a self-styled Social Darwinian. Although few right-wingers today would call themselves Social Darwinians – Darwin and his theory of evolution being taboo among most right-wingers today – the doctrine has survived under the guise of populism which in its current form is essentially an appeal to the popular prejudices of the white majority. And it is the core of right-wing ideology in America.[8]
Ideology in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Wrong Box: A Zero-Sum Game.
Stevenson’s two most popular novels for adults are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, first published in 1886 and The Wrong Box, first published in 1889. Both books have been made into popular movies, Dr. Jekyll eight times, The Wrong Box only once but it is one of the most hilarious movies ever made. The books exemplify Stevenson’s wide range of interests and styles. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a macabre Gothic tale of bipolar identities. The Wrong Box is a light-hearted comedy of manners and mistaken identities.
Both novels focus on questions of identity – who and what a human is – and morality – who and what is right and wrong. The books answer these questions with a view of humans as fundamentally evil, and a view of society as a struggle of every fallen man for himself with the devil taking the hindmost. The books exemplify Stevenson’s Social Darwinian political attitudes that are also embedded in his children’s novels.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Not-So-Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a condemnation of altruism. It is a story about the way in which intending to do good is inevitably tainted with evil, and trying to do good can cause evil greater than that which the do-gooder was trying to eliminate. The story dramatizes what Stevenson saw as the two-sidedness of humans. Characters are described as two-sided, with selfishness underlying what seems to be altruism, and violence lurking beneath a surface of tranquility. The story is a testament to the bestiality in supposedly civilized humans and the yen for wickedness in avowedly virtuous people. It is at base a cynical and anti-social view of humanity.
Although Stevenson was an atheist, he grew up in a Calvinist family, and Calvinist themes of sin and evil permeate the book, albeit in an ironic way. Stevenson seems to be making fun of his religious background. The story dramatizes what Calvinists would call the curse of Original Sin on humanity – we are all imbued with evil – and is a warning about the sinfulness of trying to undo that curse. Dr. Jekyllis a scientist with a messianic plan to rid humanity of evil. His plan – which Calvinists would condemn as blasphemy – is doomed and damned in its inception.
In conventional interpretations of the story, Dr. Jekyll is a good guy and Mr. Hyde is a bad guy. The story is seen as a struggle of good against evil. But if you look closely, I think you can see that while Hyde really is really bad, Jekyll is not so good. In his plan to eliminate selfishness and evil from humanity, Jekyll is himself driven by selfish ambition, drawn to the pleasures of evil, and damned through moral weakness.
The story is told through the eyes of a lawyer named Utterson and, significantly, the book opens with a description of him as having a two-sided personality. On the outside, Utterson is a cold, calculating and very repressed person, a model of moral rectitude. But on the inside, he is a passionate person, filled with desires and impulses that he conscientiously represses but whose expression he seemingly enjoys vicariously in others. Utterson is attracted to reprobates and he frequently defends them in court, the guilty as well as the innocent.[9]
Utterson instigates the action in the story and it proceeds as something of a mystery as he tries to figure out what has happened to his friend Dr. Jekyll. Jekyll had always been a friendly and upright person who inspired respect, but he has been strangely reclusive of late. And he has been hanging out with a Mr. Hyde who even Utterson, who is generally attracted to lowlifes, finds repulsive. Utterson describes Hyde as inspiring “disgust, loathing and fear” and having “Satan’s signature on his face.” And Hyde seems to have some kind of control over Jekyll. The situation presents a mystery that Utterson wants to solve for the sake of his friend but also as a matter of personal curiosity, the lawyer in him seemingly attracted by the scent of evil in the air.[10]
The action begins with Utterson hearing that Hyde has murdered a girl for seemingly no reason, and has then bought his way out of prosecution with money provided by Jekyll. Utterson does not seem surprised that someone could buy his way out of prosecution for murder, which is seemingly a comment directed by Stevenson to us readers about the corruption of the legal system and society in general. But Utterson is surprised that Jekyll is covering for Hyde. He is even more surprised when he subsequently discovers that Jekyll has redone his will and is leaving everything to Hyde in the event Jekyll dies or disappears for three months.[11]
But it is Hyde who disappears after killing an old man, again for seemingly no reason except the pleasure of killing. When Utterson’s law clerk notices a remarkable similarity between the handwriting of Jekyll and Hyde, Utterson goes to Jekyll’s house where he and Jekyll’s butler break into Jekyll’s laboratory. They find Hyde dead on the floor, an apparent suicide. There is a letter from Jekyll to Utterson that explains the mystery.[12]
In the letter, Jekyll claims “that man is not truly one, but truly two,” and that he had conducted secret experiments to split himself into two different men, one of whom would ostensibly represent his good self and the other his evil self. His goal was then to eliminate the evil self and leave only the good self to live on. Applied to all of humanity, the process would end “the curse of mankind” and fulfill Jekyll’s “beloved dream” of making the world a paradise.[13]
Jekyll had conducted secret experiments and made a drug with which he could transform himself back and forth between his benign self as Dr. Jekyll and his evil self as Mr. Hyde. Hyde was a small and horribly ugly man who was repulsive to everyone that encountered him. He was morally repulsive as well and enjoyed hurting and killing people. In recounting his actions as Hyde, Jekyll reports that when he was Hyde, “the spirit of hell awoke in me” and he committed murders and other outrages “with glee.”[14]
Although Jekyll could seemingly achieve his beneficent goal of eliminating the evil in himself by just remaining as Jekyll and refusing to turn himself into Hyde, he was not content to remain Jekyll and was strongly attracted to being Hyde. He reports in his letter that as time passed, he enjoyed being Hyde more than being Jekyll and he spent increasingly more time doing horrible things as Hyde. Eventually Jekyll came to have a horror of Hyde and decided to remain Jekyll.
But he couldn’t control the process and started spontaneously switching into Hyde mode. He was also having increasing difficulty transforming back into Jekyll. In the end, Jekyll ran out of the drug and committed suicide rather than spend the rest of his life as Hyde. Significantly, he took the form of Hyde in death, implying that Jekyll’s base side was his basic self.[15]
The story has an ironical and cynical twist. Contrary to conventional interpretations that see Jekyll as a tragic hero who is redeemed by his suicide, Stevenson seems to intend readers to see Jekyll as wrong and wrongheaded in trying to eliminate human evil. Evil is part and parcel of humanity. Trying to separate it out only accentuates it. His suicide is a function of his embarrassment as much as his feelings of guilt.
At the same time, Stevenson intends readers to identify with Jekyll’s willingness to defy society and take a dare in pursuit of his own ends. Jekyll is clearly a more interesting character than the boring lawyer Utterson, who represents conventionality and merely observes other people’s adventures. In this respect, Stevenson expects readers to overlook and effectively endorse Jekyll’s antisocial and egoistic behavior, essentially making him into a model of right-wing ideology that we readers are implicitly encouraged to endorse.
The message of the book is that selfishness and pridefulness underlie everything people do, including deeds intended to be good. Altruism is a lie and intending to do good is a source of evil. Humans are aggressively bestial by nature. Trying to eliminate evil only intensifies it. We have to accept the predominance of evil in us and in the world. The best we can do to avoid mass murder all around is to repress our worst desires and redirect our aggressive impulses into less harmful, albeit still selfish, channels. It is a cynical message.
The Wrong Box: Do unto others before they do unto you.
The Wrong Box is a testament to survival of the sneakiest. The story revolves around a legal device known as a tontine. A tontine is a type of lottery in which each parent in a group of parents deposits a small sum of money in the name of his child into a common fund that is managed by a financial institution. The fund is expected to grow over time and the last surviving one of the children gets the whole thing. It is a relatively small gamble that could yield substantial rewards to the one who wins.
The story is a comedy, that is, a dramatic form about a conflict between wise people and fools. The story is written in a facetious and sarcastic tone that cynically makes fun of almost everyone and everything in the book. The narrator derides the whole idea of a tontine, describing it as an exercise in futility since the winner will invariably be too old to enjoy his winnings, “so that he might as well have lost.” The narrator takes us readers into his confidence as confederates, as fellow wise people, who are superior to the insipid people about whom he writes.[16]
Everyone in the book is portrayed as a fool, except for Michael. Michael is a clever young lawyer who is the unlikely winner of the tontine in the story. Through a series of devious manipulations, he secures for himself the rights of the last two surviving participants. It doesn’t matter which one of them dies first; he wins. With Michael, we are expected to identify.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an overtly moral tale with a moral, albeit immoral, message. In a preface to The Wrong Box, Stevenson disclaims any such intentions for The Wrong Box, and claims the story is without any other purpose than “judicious levity.” But the situation and the events of the story belie his disclaimer. The tontine serves, in fact, as a judicious metaphor for the dog-eat-dog, Social Darwinian world that the story describes. In a tontine and in a tontine-like society, one person’s loss is another person’s gain, and one person’s gain is another person’s loss. Society in this story is a Social Darwinian zero-sum proposition.
It is survival of the fittest with unscrupulousness as the test of fitness. Everyone in the story has a con of some sort and is trying to get over on somebody or everybody. Cynicism abounds. The judicial system is portrayed as an instrument of anti-social selfishness and self-centeredness. The law is not a vehicle for justice but a vehicle for people’s aggressiveness and ill wishes toward each other. Society is not a vehicle for cooperation or caring but for people’s aggression, enmity, and competition to the death. And in making readers his comrades, the narrator sucks us into his right-wing ideological world view.
The story has a convoluted plot-line that zigs and zags humorously around, almost like a shaggy dog story. The main characters are two old men, brothers Joseph and Masterman Finsbury, who are the last surviving participants in a tontine, and their nephews, each of whom hopes that his uncle will win the tontine so that he can inherit the money.
Masterman is a retired businessman. He lives with his nephew Michael, a wealthy, well-known lawyer. Michael is “a trafficker in shady affairs” who specializes in representing petty crooks and other losers in the social struggle for survival. He is also an inveterate drunkard, party goer, and practical joker. His mantra could perhaps be summarized as “all for fun and fun for all.”[17]
Joseph Finsbury is a hard-up, part-time lecturer who is a pedantic bore and boor. He lives with his nephews Morris and John. The nephews are willing to do almost anything to have their uncle win the tontine so that they can get his money, and their behavior is abominable.
As the story goes, Joseph, Morris and John are traveling together on a train that crashes. An old man who looks like Joseph is killed, and Morris and John think that it is Joseph. If Joseph has died before Masterman has died, it is death to their hopes of inheriting the tontine money. In order not to lose the tontine, they concoct a scheme to hide what they think is Joseph’s body until Masterman dies. At that point they will claim the tontine and then produce Joseph’s body with the explanation that Joseph had just died.[18]
So, Morris and John put the dead old man’s body in a box and ship it to themselves. The box is, however, misdelivered to a failed artist named Pitman who just happens to be a client of Michael. Pitman consults Michael about what to do with the body. They put it in a piano and take it to the house of another lawyer whom Michael dislikes. Michael is inebriated throughout the story and thinks the whole thing is a great practical joke and great fun.
Another box containing a priceless sculpture that was supposed to go to Pitman is misdelivered to Morris and John. Aghast that they seem to have lost their uncle’s body, they promptly destroy the sculpture. Then step by step, Morris and John do one illegal thing after another in their desperate search for the dead body.
Meanwhile, Michael coincidentally meets Joseph in a pub. Joseph had escaped unharmed from the train crash and has ever since been wandering around the countryside boring everyone he meets. Michael convinces Joseph to sell Michael his rights to the tontine in exchange for money to support himself. Since Michael is already the heir of Masterman, the story ends with Michael having manipulated his way to getting the tontine rights of both Joseph and Masterman.[19]
It is said that in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Michael is the king in this story. He is a low-life who disdains social norms and lives in an alcoholic haze. But he is a devilishly clever man who is able to take advantage of others’ weaknesses to aggrandize himself. Not viciously but, nonetheless, callously. In a Hobbesian world in which everyone is at war with everyone else, he is able to perform legal judo and get everyone else fighting each other so that he can emerge scot-free — the definition of survival of the fittest in a Social Darwinian society.
Ideology in Treasure Island and Kidnapped: Stevenson’s Scotland.
Treasure Island and Kidnapped were written in the late nineteenth century but are set in Scotland during the mid-eighteenth century. This was the era of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the vainglorious attempts by small bands of reactionary and recidivist insurgents from the Catholic Highlands of Scotland to overthrow the Hanoverian King George III and return a Jacobite Stuart king to the throne of the United Kingdom. It was a lost cause that was romanticized by Scottish conservatives, including Sir Walter Scott in his highly popular novels and Robert Louis Stevenson in Kidnapped.
The Scottish Highlands in the eighteenth century were an economically and culturally backwoods area – -poverty stricken, clan ridden, largely illiterate, and largely stuck in place from the Middle Ages. From reading Treasure Island and Kidnapped, you could easily conclude that Scotland as a whole was a backward country of bands, brigands, and clans, most of them in conflict with each other and all of them in conflict with England. And that most Scots were ignorant, superstitious, and semiliterate at best. But that was only true of the Highlands.
A more complete picture of eighteenth-century Scotland would lead you to a very different conclusion. This was the age of what is called the Scottish Enlightenment during which Scottish thinkers from Francis Hutcheson to David Hume to Adam Smith developed the rationalist and humanitarian theories that have actuated liberals and liberal societies ever since, including the United States. In contrast to the Scottish Highlands, Lowland Scotland, which constituted the great majority of the country, was a center stage in what has been called the Age of Reason and a major influence on the emerging United States. Highly educated, highly civilized, and highly commercial, the Lowlands Scots were the models of a modern society.[20]
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and many others among the American Founders had studied with disciples of Hutcheson, and had adopted Hutcheson’s philosophy as their own, including when they drafted the Declaration of Independence. It is Hutcheson who coined the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which is enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence as the key to a good society. By this formula, Hutcheson meant that seeking the happiness of others was the goal of a good life in which liberty was the means thereto. [21]
Hutcheson also coined the phrase “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people” as the goal of a good society, a formula that has become a key benchmark in democratic societies such as the United States. By this formula, he meant that living and working with others, as opposed to working against others, was the way in which a society should be organized and in which people could best develop their own selves.
Hutcheson’s ideas, as further developed by other Scots during the Scottish Enlightenment, were adopted by the Founders of the United States and were the principles behind the emerging theories and practices of liberalism in the United States. Stevenson did not share the principles of his eighteenth century Scottish forebears and he essentially derided them in his novels. As such, it was seemingly no accident that he set Treasure Island and Kidnapped in the Highlands. Eschewing the progressive Lowlands and setting his stories in the regressive Highlands was effectively an ideological statement. Society, he is telling kids, is inherently a virulent mess.
Treasure Island: Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers.
Treasure Island is the story of a quest for stolen loot, and not for any altruistic purpose of giving it back to its rightful owners. First published in 1883, it is told through the eyes of Jim Hawkins, an adolescent boy who lives with his parents in a rundown inn in a rundown rural community. They are not well-to-do but they are members of the propertied class, and not mere laborers. As the story unfolds, Jim takes a treasure map from the sea chest of a sailor who has died at his parents’ inn. He takes it to the local squire, Squire Trelawney, who impetuously decides to finance a voyage to find the treasure on the island designated on the map. The squire takes Jim and a local doctor, Dr. Livesay, along on the trip.
Unfortunately, the squire also takes along a group of pirates as the crew on his ship, pirates who have been looking for the same loot and who intend to hijack the ship and take the treasure once it is found. Many bloody battles, devious plots, surprise disclosures, and acts of derring-do occur. In the end, the pirates are foiled and Jim and his colleagues end up with the treasure. They share it out among themselves and become wealthy men.
Treasure Island exemplifies the main themes of both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Wrong Box, particularly the two-sided good-and-evil nature of people and the us-versus-them zero-sum competition among humans for survival and success. All of the main characters are explicitly two-sided. Jim, the narrator and hero, is normally a shy and deferential boy, but he responds to the crisis situations in which he finds himself with unthinking gut reactions, and does what he wants irrespective of what is wise or what he is supposed to do.
Jim gets lucky. He repeatedly saves the day with his impetuous and irresponsible actions. At one point, for example, he hides in an apple barrel on the ship and overhears the pirates plotting mutiny, which enables Jim and his colleagues to escape to the island. Later, on the island, he absconds from the fortress where he has been holding out with his colleagues and ends up singlehandedly retaking the ship from the pirates. Jim is himself astonished at “the mad notions that contributed so much to save our lives.” And Dr. Livesay says of Jim that “There is a kind of fate in this… Every step it’s you that saves lives,” even though they were likely to be missteps.[22]
Dr. Livesay is the local magistrate as well as the local physician and local intellectual. As a doctor he is kind and caring, but as a magistrate he is strict and harsh. His clear-thinking plans are a key to the success of the band of treasure hunters, but his kindness in treating the medical needs of the pirates increases the danger to his colleagues.
Squire Trelawney is the lord of the locality. A wealthy man, he is generous to those around him, but he is also a vain, big-mouthed fool who is easily deceived, especially with flattery. He is fooled by Silver into hiring a band of pirates as his ship’s crew.
Captain Smollett is the captain of the ship that the squire hires for the adventure. He has a good heart as a friend but he is a martinet as a ship captain, without any flexibility with people or with rules. His inflexibility leads to strategic blunders that endanger the enterprise.[23]
But the main and most interesting character in the story is Long John Silver. Silver is a Jekyll and Hyde character, with the lust for gold as the thing that transforms him from Jekyll to Hyde. At the beginning of the story, he is a popular innkeeper who is described as “a clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.” Silver is an educated man. He has gone to school, which was rare at that time and place for any but the elite. A sailor says of him that “He had good schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when so-minded.” He has money and even a bank account, which was a status symbol that indicated gentility. And he is happily and devotedly married. All of these are unusual characteristics for a former pirate chief.[24]
But when gold is at stake, Silver becomes a beast. His very face and body change. When he learns what Jim and his colleagues are after, Silver connives to become the cook on Squire Trelawney’s ship and dupes Trelawney into hiring a gang of Silver’s former pirate mates as the crew of the ship.
In the course of their voyage to the island, Silver is a model sailor, all gentleness and kindness toward Jim and deferential toward the captain, the squire and the doctor. But once they get to the island, Silver becomes a complete villain, repeatedly killing people in cold-blood and executing vicious attacks on Jim and his colleagues. Then, ipso facto, at the end of the story, when the battle for the gold is over and he has lost, Silver becomes “the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out,” he escapes captivity, and he reportedly goes off incognito to rejoin his wife and resume his previous innkeeper’s life.[25]
I think that there are at least three key moral and political implications of the story. The first is that Jim and Silver are in many important ways two sides of the same coin. Despite everything Silver does, Jim is fascinated by Silver from beginning to end. And despite everything Silver is and does, he is seemingly genuinely attached to Jim. Jim is a Jekyll-like person with some Hyde in him. Silver is a Hyde-like person with some Jekyll in him.
Both Jim and Silver are capable of living within conventional norms but are also liable to break out of them given the appropriate stimulus. They both go with their gut reactions and have an internal drive that carries them outside normal bounds. More so Silver, but he has seemingly done what it takes to be successful and is admired for his success by even Dr. Livesay, the spokesperson for conventionality in the book. Jim is similarly admired by Livesay for, as well as despite, his impetuosity. The moral seems to be that there is Hyde in all of us, and that it is the Hyde that makes us interesting and successful.
A second implication is that the lower classes are inferior and dangerous to the upper classes, and must be kept down in a place of obeisance and obedience. It’s an “us-against-them” struggle. Other than Silver, who is a special person, the pirates are stupidly reckless and incapable of self-discipline. They live slovenly lives solely for the moment. And Silver’s efforts to make them follow a reasonable plan of attack is like herding cats. Dr. Livesay says of them that they demonstrated an “entire unfitness for anything like a prolonged campaign,” which is why they lost.[26] Livesay’s commentary on the pirates is the commonplace right-wing attitude toward the lower classes to the present day, and Stevenson reinforces this attitude in his story.[27]
The third implication is that survival of the fittest is a zero-sum game, and to the survivors go all the spoils. The adventure began as a selfish venture for loot and it ends in the same way. Significantly, not only do the squire and the doctor, who are running the show, fail to turn over the loot to the authorities or try to return any of it to the original owners from whom it was stolen, they don’t even give a share to the families of members of their band who were killed in the struggle with the pirates. Just like a tontine.
So, we have here a story of an adolescent boy whose irresponsible, individualistic behavior endangers himself and others, but he ends up putting down the vicious lower classes while elevating himself into the rich upper class. It is an adolescent boy’s dream and a heroic tale designed to appeal to adolescents. And so it does. The bottom line, however, is that although there is friendship and loyalty among social equals in this tale, which is its saving grace, the story conveys a fundamental message of selfish individualism and anti-social cynicism.
Kidnapped: Finding a diamond in the rough.
Like Treasure Island, Kidnapped is a story about a quest for stolen property. In this case, it is property that has been illegally appropriated by the uncle of the protagonist David Balfour. First published in 1886, the story takes place in mid-eighteenth-century Scotland in the midst of the Jacobite uprisings. The Jacobites were supporters of the heirs of King James II, who had been deposed in 1688 because he was Catholic. They were attempting to overthrow the Protestant British King George III and replace him with James’ Catholic grandson Charles Stuart, who was known as Bonnie Prince Charlie. The largely Protestant Lowlands in Scotland were pro-George. The largely Catholic Highlands were pro-Charles.
David is a seventeen-year-old orphan whose father was a schoolmaster of genteel birth. He is a Lowland Protestant whose family supported King George. Upon the death of his parents, David goes to live with his uncle. His uncle is afraid that David will claim property that the uncle had withheld from David’s father and that should rightfully be David’s. So, he tries to kill David but does not succeed. Having survived the attempt on his life, David thinks he has leverage to get something out of his uncle.[28]
However, his uncle fools David into accompanying him onto a ship, whereupon the captain of the ship knocks David out and sets off on a voyage to America where he intends to deposit David. But the ship sinks off the coast of the Scottish Highlands, and David escapes thereto. Hopelessly lost and without any means of survival, David meets up with Alan Stuart, a Jacobite nobleman trying to avoid the law, and trying to get himself and some money to France where Prince Charlie is organizing his efforts to seize the British throne.[29]
David is a shy boy, upright and innocent of the world. Alan is a worldly person and a scoundrel. He is incredibly vain and even makes up heroic songs about himself. He is also easily angered and ready to kill anyone who insults him. David says of him that “I was always in danger of smiling at his vanity,” which could have meant death. Alan is a thief and a stone-cold killer.
Despite their different backgrounds and opposing religious and political loyalties, David and Alan bond as friends and allies, and they wander together across Scotland. Their connection is similar to that of Jim and Silver in Treasure Island.[30] Stevenson’s Social Darwinism has a place for personal friendships and personal loyalties that defy social norms. David opines that “No class of men is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues.” That is, everyone is right in his rightful place, but friendship can exist between members of different social orders.
We see in each of the four books discussed in this essay an affinity on the part of the innocent and decent characters for the depraved and indecent characters. “We must bear and forbear” each other, David concludes. This could seem on its face to be a form of tolerance of those who are different, but it is really a form of anti-social cynicism and an affirmation of the Hyde in all of us. And we are all of us engaged in a survival of the strongest competition.[31]
The Scotland that David and Alan traverse is a complex web of us-versus-them conflicts between clans. Highland society is based on loyalty to clans and charismatic clan leaders. Alan is involved in many of these disputes and drags David into them with him. This is the ugly side of clan society. At the same time, David is repeatedly sick and is repeatedly nursed to health by strangers because of his connection with Alan. This is the saving grace of clan society.[32]
David repeatedly makes rash judgments and decisions that put himself in danger and outside the law. He watches as Alan kills two men. He helps Alan cover up a murder committed by a member of Alan’s clan. He essentially commits treason in helping the traitor Alan get to France to help overthrow the British government. But all’s well that ends well. In the end, Alan gets away to France and David ends up with a nice hunk of his uncle’s ill-gotten property.
Like Treasure Island, Kidnapped is an adolescent boy’s dream. The bottom line, however, is that it conveys a fundamental message of selfish individualism and anti-social cynicism.
Seeking the Truism in Altruism.
Story #3. An adolescent boy, who has been raised and regularly mistreated by his aunt and uncle, finds that he has special talents and is recruited to a school for similarly gifted kids. At this school, students are taught to develop their talents, use them in the public interest, and not abuse them for private interests or personal power. The boy has to overcome many obstacles in the course of his education, and is successful in large part because he invariably acts in the interests of others and the community. His good intentions are his greatest strength. In the end, he is able to save the world from a catastrophe because of his courage and his altruistic motives.
The danger to the world in the story stems from the efforts of an evil man to steal a powerfully magic talisman that would make him virtually invincible. The talisman is magically hidden in a mirror. A person can retrieve it from the mirror only if the person does not intend to use it for personal benefit. The evil person, who wants to use it for his personal benefit, cannot retrieve it. The boy, who wants to retrieve it only to help save the world from the evil man, is able to face down the evil man and retrieve the talisman, thereby saving the world.
This story is a brief outline of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling, which was first published in 1997.[33] The seven Harry Potter books are perhaps the most celebrated of recent books for children that convey a very pro-social and essentially liberal message, very different from the message in Stevenson’s stories. Although Harry is genuinely heroic, he is not a superhero. He is not the smartest or most proficient wizard among his colleagues. He is genuinely humble, and the dominant message of the books is one of respect for everyone, including all sorts of non-human creatures.
The Harry Potter books also promote the use of evidence and reason in response to problems rather than knee-jerk emotional and prejudicial reactions. In each book, a main theme and a main plot-line involves the need to use evidence and reason to overcome knee-jerk reactions.
Rowling’s books are not unique in their pro-social messaging. There has been a long line of pro-social children’s books that goes back at least to the turn of the twentieth century, and that have competed for the hearts and minds of young readers. Among these books are The Wizard of Oz and the subsequent Oz books by L Frank Baum. First published in 1900, The Wizard of Oz presaged the Progressive Era of liberal politics in America. Maybe the same is happening now? In the recent election, some two-thirds of voters under the age of thirty voted for the Democrat Biden. Can this be a Harry Potter effect? One can hope.
As we have seen with respect to Stevenson’s anti-social stories, the underlying message of a story lies not merely in the actions of its hero. It is also in the way in which the world is portrayed. In this regard, the message of pro-social books is not merely in the altruism of their heroes. The background circumstances and characters are as important in providing a model of the world for young readers. The message in the Harry Potter books lies not merely in Harry’s altruism but in the nature of Hogwarts, the school he attends, and in the norms of the magical community. Hogwarts teaches students how to do magic but, even more importantly, they are taught to use their powers in the public interest. They are taught to respect and cooperate with each other, and the magical community is, in turn, supposed to operate respectfully and cooperatively.
Although students are separated into houses and the houses compete with each other, it is mainly a competition to excel. Competition often plays a role in children’s books, but there are different types of competition, and that makes a difference to the books’ messages. There is competition in which the goal is to defeat one’s enemy and be the last person standing. This is the Social Darwinian competition that we see in Stevenson’s books — survival of the strongest or a tontine.
But there is also competition in which people push each other to improve their performance levels, and the goal is to raise the bar of excellence for all. When the eighteenth-century Scottish political economist Adam Smith promoted competition, it was this latter sort that he had in mind. Smith was a disciple of Frances Hutchinson and, like Hutchinson, held that happiness was the result of working with and helping others. He promoted competition toward excellence as a form of cooperation toward making social progress. And for the most part, it is this sort of competition that is encouraged at Hogwarts which, since the school seems to channel the ethos of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment, is perhaps not coincidently located in Scotland.
Readers of the Harry Potter books absorb not only the example of Harry, but also the whole environment of Hogwarts and the magical community. In this context, altruism is presented as essentially a truism. Rowling is saying that altruism is the way the world ought to work and for the most part does work when people are allowed to be their best selves.
Altruism is a truism in other books as well. In Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, for example, Horton’s altruism and heroism in trying to save the tiny Whos is not the only message in the book. Just as important is that once the other animals are able to hear the Whos and, thereby, verify that the Whos are real, the other animals immediately insist that the Whos must be protected and they want to help protect them. Their initial knee-jerk reaction when they couldn’t hear the Whos was that Horton must be crazy. But once they have evidence of the existence of the Whos, they immediately adopt Horton’s mantra that “a person is a person, no matter how small.” The book, thereby, presents to children a world in which it is assumed that people should and will help each other, and in which it is assumed that people will behave reasonably based on the facts. It should also be noted that the other animals are a diverse bunch who are willing and able to live and work together.[34]
Likewise, in The Wizard of Oz, the message is not merely in the altruism of Dorothy and her companions, but in the Wizard and the nature of Emerald City. The book is, after all, named after the Wizard and not Dorothy. And we find out that the Wizard in fact has no magical powers at all. He has merely the ability to convince people to do things, and with this ability, he has persuaded the people of Emerald City to cooperatively build and operate the most wonderful city you can imagine. And the citizens immediately take in and take care of Dorothy and her companions, no matter that Dorothy’s companions are a little weird and unlike themselves. This book portrays a world in which people are expected to work with and help each other.[35]
The Moral of this Essay.
The moral of this essay is that it is important to realize, expose and confront ingrained childhood prejudices as a means of defusing them so that they won’t surface in adulthood is to them. As such, having kids read stories like those of Stevenson is something to be desired as a way of dealing with the right-wing world views that are embedded in the stories and in our kids. Children should be encouraged to read such stories but also to think about them. To analyze and deconstruct the ideas embedded in the stories as a means of analyzing and deconstructing the ideas embedded in themselves. They should be encouraged to do the same with both liberal stories and right-wing stories. It has often been said that a generous understanding is the key to a liberal mind.
Reading and then analyzing what they have read is a way for kids to free themselves of the prejudices with which they have been indoctrinated by the people and the culture around them. It is a way for them to be able as adults to engage with issues without unhelpful knee-jerk emotional and ideological reactions, and it is a way for them to avoid being manipulated by demagogic politicians such as Donald Trump. It is a way for their rational and liberal selves to get the upper hand over their irrational and right-wing selves. Which would be a blessing to us all.
BW 12/20
[1] Bob Stevenson. “Robert Louis Stevenson: Champion of Liberty.” FEE. 8/1/78.
[2] Howard Gardner. The Unschooled Mind. New York: BasicBooks, 1991.
[3] For elaboration on this matter, I have a blog post “Distrust in the Hinterland: Bozp the Clown Promotes Fer and Hate, and It Ain’t Funny. Also “The Undoing Project and History as Choice: Reprogramming Your Intellect through Listening to Others.”
[4] For an elaboration on the ideology of children’s books and Disney versus Dr. Seuss, I have a blog post “What to do about the Big Bad Wolf: Narrative Choices and the Moral of a Story.”
[5] Howard Gardner. The Unschooled Mind. New York: BasicBooks, 1991.
[6] Robert Louis Stevenson. “The Day After Tomorrow.” The Contemporary Review. April, 1887.
[7] Richard Hofstadter. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.
[8] For the classic articulation of modern right-wing doctrine, see Edward Banfield. The Unheavenly City Revisited. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1974.
[9] Robert Louis Stevenson. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) in The Complete Novels of Robert Louis Stevenson. Musaicum Books, 2017, p.405.
[10] Ibid. p. 418.
[11] Ibid. pp. 408, 413.
[12] Ibid. pp. 427, 432, 434, 449.
[13] Ibid. pp.460-461
[14] Ibid. p.470
[15] Ibid. pp.473-476
[16]Robert Louis Stevenson. The Wrong Box. (1889) in The Complete Novels of Robert Louis Stevenson. Musaicum Books, 2017, p.1431.
[17]Ibid. pp. 1440, 1520.
[18] Ibid. p.1446.
[19] Ibid. p. 1568.
[20] Arthur Herman How the Scots Invented the Modern World.
[21] Garry Wills. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
[22] Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. (1883) in The Complete Novels of Robert Louis Stevenson. Musaicum Books, 2017, pp.86, 137, 191.
[23] Ibid. pp.14, 50.
[24] 53-54, 65
[25] Ibid. p..211.
[26] Ibid. p. 194.
[27] Edward Banfield. The Unheavenly City Revisited. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1974.
[28] Robert Louis Stevenson. Kidnapped. (1886) in The Complete Novels of Robert Louis Stevenson. Musaicum Books, 2017, pp. 479, 496, 502, 506.
[29] Ibid. p. 518.
[30] Ibid. p. 549.
[31] Ibid. p. 523, 564, 656.
[32] Ibid. p. 651, 663.
[33] J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. New York: Scholastic Press, 1997.
[34] For a discussion of the ideological implications of Horton Hears a Who, I have a blog post “So what if Horton heard a Who? The Ethics of Hobbes, Hutcheson and Dr. Seuss in the Age of Trump.”
[35] For a discussion of the ideological implications of The Wizard of Oz, I have a blog post “The Will to Believe and The Wizard of Oz: Pragmatism along the Yellow Brick Road.”
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