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A German word literally meaning “double-goer.” In literature, the doppelgänger is a character who is the double — often a dark mirror — of another. It appears frequently in Gothic and Romantic literature as a manifestation of psychological duality, repression, or hidden desire. Examples: Hyde to Jekyll in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre as Bertha Mason’s symbolic relationship to Jane.
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