The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana

by Jess Nevins

The Doppelgänger 

copyright © Jess Nevins 2022

The doppelgänger, or double (the literal translation is “double-goer”), was one of the most common literary motifs of the nineteenth century. The term was coined by the German writer Jean Paul in his Siebenkäs (1796), after its use in the works of the German Romantics, but the motif of the doppelgänger became widespread in English literature in the Gothics and thereafter was a stock plot device in supernatural fiction.

The figure of the doppelganger¼may, of course, be more correctly identified as two figures in one. Raising questions as to the wholeness of the human subject, doppelgangers emerged as shadowy, disturbing alter egos in an age in which the Cartesian cogito ergo sum of the Enlightenment firmly established the individual and its intellectual powers of reason as the defining characteristic of mankind. Transcending the narrow borders of literature, the doppelganger has pervaded philosophical, visual, and literary discourses since the late 1700s when it became a key figure in portrayals of the complex psychological economy of the modern subject. More than most other fantastic figures and monsters, with the exception, perhaps, of the werewolf, the doppelganger has thus occupied a privileged position in psychoanalytical theory¼.1 

The doppelgänger is a person’s double, an alter ego or a second self, often but not always a physical twin, occasionally a more bestial version of the person. The doppelgänger is usually (but again not always) a character’s darker, more evil side made real, whether as flesh and blood or simply as a spirit or ghost. In Gothic literature the doppelgänger is often demonic but can also be the irrational counterpart to the rational protagonist, the doppelgänger personifying the darker elements of Romanticism and the rational protagonist standing in for Enlightenment values. In much nineteenth century horror literature the doppelgänger is evil, but as the twentieth century approached the doppelgänger acquired a psychological meaning, as the id or as something repressed.

One of the earliest of the modern appearances of the doppelgänger is also one of the most thorough. In James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), the doppelgänger appears twice; in the first half of the novel the bookish introvert Robert Wringham becomes a “shadow’ to his more athletic and popular older step-brother, George, eventually provoking a fight and eventually George’s death, implicitly at Robert’s hands. In the second half of the novel Robert is haunted by the sinister Gil Martin, Robert’s physical double and emotional opposite.

Examples in Victorian literature are too numerous to list. A few include: Golem Bella, the sexual id, in von Arnim’s Isabella of Egypt; Peter Schlemihl’s shadow in Adalbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl (1813), which becomes the part of Schlemihl without which he is incomplete; the Creature in Frankenstein, the irrationality, masculinity, and hate which Victor represses; Bulwer Lytton’s “Monos and Daimonos” (1830), in which a man who values solitude above all else is haunted by another individual who simply will not leave him alone, even after being murdered; Poe’s “William Wilson” (1839) which includes the rare moral doppelgänger to the depraved protagonist; Poe’s “Purloined Letter” (see: The C. Auguste Dupin Mysteries), in which D---- is the less scrupulous (and almost as clever) double of Dupin; a doppelgänger created by magic in Ainsworth’s Lancashire Witches; the Shadow in George Macdonald’s Phantastes, perhaps the doppelgänger with the most uncomplicated moral symbolism; the two Allan Armadales in Wilkie Collins’ Armadale, the one haunted, friendless, and sympathetic, the other bluff, hearty, and idiotic; Benito Perez Galdos’ La Sombra (1870), in which Galdos becomes the doppelgänger, the titular shadow, of his protagonist, who is in turn haunted by a third version of himself; and Henry Harland’s The Cardinal’s Snuff-Box (1900), in which an author meets the doppelgänger of the heroine of his novel.

The two most obvious doppelgängers of the century are the werewolf and Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde (see: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde). The werewolf, a popular motif in nineteenth century supernatural fiction, generally represents either the purely evil side of a character (see: Wagner the Wehrwolf) or the repressed side (see: The Leader of Wolves). But some prominent nineteenth century werewolf stories do not present the werewolf as a doppelgänger. In these stories (see: The Phantom Ship, “The Were-Wolf”), there is no significant difference between the human personality and the werewolf; the human body is simply a costume the wolf wears.

Mr. Hyde became the paradigmatic doppelgänger. The ambiguity of his symbolism, and the way in which multiple meanings can be derived from him, make him the ideal doppelgänger. He can represent the id, or evil, or repressed homosexuality, or whatever other meaning a critic wishes to apply to him. The symbolism of the physical change, something not present before Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, adds to the resonance of the character for later, modern audiences.

 

1 Barry Murnane, “Doppelganger,” in Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ed., The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2014), 172-173.