The “Beast” Within: Mr. Hyde and the Islamic Concept of the Untamed Nafs as a Gothic Monster

This chapter presents an interdisciplinary exploration of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde through the perspective of Islamic theology and ethics, with a particular focus on the concept of the nafs. The text has been generally analysed through Western concepts of psychoanalysis, Victorian cultural criticism, urban degeneration, and the Gothic doppelgänger. However, this study proposes an alternative Eastern framework. It argues that Hyde can be productively understood as a literary embodiment of nafs al-ammarah, the soul that pushes toward evil, as articulated in the Qur’an and developed in classical Islamic scholarship and Sufism. Rather than confining the novella to a simple duality between good and evil, this chapter highlights the Islamic understanding of the self as capable of both erosion and enhancement. Dr. Jekyll’s failure is interpreted not as the inevitability of human corruption but as a spiritual and ethical collapse resulting from the neglect of inner struggle and moral discipline. The Gothic monster Mr. Hyde’s increasing takeover and violence are read as symptoms of an untamed nafs. Moulding a Gothic narrative with Islamic conceptions of the soul echoes the novel’s universal concerns about desire, shame, and guilt.