Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

“If I ever read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend”

U implies that he has been branded by the devil, not just reminded

Satanic seal of approval

Juxtaposition between friend —> not kind of friend we keep

Implies a depth in the relationship

Reflection of V society, and darker secrets that the men of society were required to keep

Homosexuality

“I incline to Cain’s heresy,” […] “I let my brother go to the devil”

Sons of Adam —> Cain killed Abel

Cain was thought to be the origin of greed and hubris

Irony suggests that we are more in tune with evil to God

Implies that when Cain killed Abel, he let Abel go to the devil —> JAB AT RELIGION

Irony suggests that Hyde wishes to take over Jekyll

Foreshadows the text —> Jekyll is his brother

• Juxtaposition between letting brother and going to devil

• Ignoring of each other’s sins

Speaks in restricted and formal sentences to reflect his profession and his societal standards

“I felt younger, lighter, happier in body”

Tricolon

Symbolic of addiction (to sin)

Slave to his desires

Superlative form invites idea that acceptance to your sin is better

When religion leaves, evil takes its place

“Man is not truly one but truly two”

Epigrammatic statement which encapsulates central theme of duality

• Suggests that all humans possess both good and evil

Repetition of “truly”

• Certainty of the division

• Reinforces Stevenson’s argument that Victorian ideals of morality are an illusion

Foreshadows Jekyll’s downfall

• His attempt to separate two sides of humanity leads to moral and physical degredation

Implicit that J and H were two sides of society: the hidden one and the presented one

Hidden desires of the Victorian society

Admittance of this —> Jekyll understands how he becomes a slave to evil

Hyde is imaginary until he discovers potion that will embody the divisions he feels in his soul

• Obsessive conformity to codes of respectability in society

Duality in the structure

• Fragmented outsider perspective

• Final revelation comes from Jekyll himself, suggesting that we can only learn the truth from what they tell us

  • Repression

• Society teaches us to repress and hide ourself just as the structure of the novella does

“The animal within me licking the chops of memory”

Metaphor, Jekyll’s disarray

Hyde is the animal, licking its lips to get out

“Licking” —> eagerness, desire, man’s true nature

• Even though its bad, Stevenson argues that human nature wants what human nature wants

Wants to get out —> troglodytic

“If I’m the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also”

Highlights key theme of many gothic novels (Frankenstein) —> do not mess with God

• Parallel structure of this phrase and the antithesis of sufferer and sinner

• It is also a paradox- how can he be both?

• How does it represent the theme of duality and the fact that he is both Jekyll (sufferer) and Hyde (sinner)?

• Is the novel a moral allegory concerning sin and the consequences of evil- is Jekyll justly punished?

Acceptance that he had sinned and therefore suffered in turn

• Penance of God

“My devil had long been caged, he came out roaring”

Continued savage imagery that the reader would come to associate with Hyde

• His lack of morals is what is so scary about him

Biblical imagery surrounding Hyde

• Startled largely Christian audience

• Used to represent the sin that poses a threat to Victorian society

Duality

• “My” —> he is intrinsically linked to Jekyll

• “Caged” —> Hyde is a threat that must be caged

• Recognises the horrors of Hyde

  • Arguably also an expose of the dangers of Victorian societal pressures of repression

  • The issue is not his “devil” per say but rather his “cag[ing]”

  • Can reflect how Jekyll himself feels caged

“Ape-like fury”

Relates to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

He has not evolved —> animalistic

Refuses Victorian society —> almost impossible by their standards as Victorian men are by all means perfect

“Juggernaut”

Religious symbol

Wagon that Hindu god Krishna used —> people threw themselves under

Representative of sacrifice —> Jekyll sacrificed himself for Hyde’s evil ways

Destructive and profuse force —> Hyde

Jab at religion —> Stevenson was atheist

“Man trampled calmly”

Juxtaposition and oxymoron

ID in perfect view —> trampling a GIRL —> pure animalistic nature

Allowing desires to rule you

The reaction of the viewers was overly dramatic

• Victorian society is too eager to judge someone from the appearance

He is aware of what he is doing

• Lacks human ability to decipher right from wrong

• Inhuman

• Perhaps Stevenson is saying that he is not only aware but choosing to do this

Furthered by trampling of an “aged and beautiful gentleman with white hair”

• Connotations of white = innocent

• “Beautiful” = feminises him, can be exploited

“The street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood”

The street on which the house can be found is generally very pretty

Contrast/duality in London

Juxtaposition of the aspect of light + dark, metaphor

“An air of invitation like a row of smiling saleswomen” vs buildings being “sinister”

Juxtaposition

Street being inviting and nice compared to the buildings being sinister

• Jab at women too, presenting them as fake

• Sibilance: creates serpentine sound

Presents an appropriate backdrop for the novella and the characters duality

• Prepares for conflict between good and evil

Based on Edinburgh

Women and Feminity

• There are no female characters

  • The characters that are female are represented negatively

• Maid recounted the tale of Carew's murder often

  • Implies that women are blood thirsty and find delight in the gothic

  • Mocking the female addiction to violence

  • Amplifies this by presenting the murder as horrific ("audibly shattered", "body jumped upon the roadway")

  • The maid "fainted", which is an attack of Victorian literature: how could she faint if she was so excited?

• Most of his readers would be women

• Misogynistic literature

• The housekeeper

  • "Ivory faced" juxtaposed to "evil face"

    • Just used to develop the atmosphere of fear surrounding the house

    • Women are just Hyde and Jekyll

    • However women's evil can be seen surface level whereas Jekyll's is within himself

Christianity and Religion

• Stevenson was not Christian

• Uses over-exaggerated language

  • Uses this to take a jab at Christianity

• "Scrawling in my own hand blasphemies"

  • Attack on Christianity

  • Hyde has understood that religion is a story

  • Religious reader would be satisfied that Hyde would be doing this as a satanic character

• Early readers saw it as a parable with a profound allegory

  • Fight about good and evil in human soul

  • Stevenson was Presbyterian by upbringing

Appearances

• We never know what explicitly Hyde looks like

  • Stevenson wants us to know that we cannot tell what evil is just from looking outside

  • “I never saw a man I so disliked yet scarcely know why”

• Does not believe in the dichotomy of good vs evil (rejection of Manicheanism)

• Jekyll

  • Presented as attractive (“large handsome face”)

  • S does not agree with V society so argues we cannot know that someone is good because they look good

  • Jekyll was effectively not purely good

  • Duality

• Novel is scary because it engages Lombroso’s theory of atavistic criminal type

  • However monster of Hyde is used to reflect onto those who defined it: lawyers and physicians

• Is perhaps the real villain public opinion?

  • Fear of reputation and public opinion

  • Destruction of reputation is considered “the next best thing” to death

  • Starts as a somewhat detective like novel but Utterson does the opposite of traditional detective

    • Does not seek to uncover secrets but rather wants to protect his friend’s reputation

  • Even Lanyon puts restrictions on who can know the truth

    • Can only be opened after death of Jekyll

Setting and House

• House is representative of Jekyll

  • "For even in the house the fog began to lie thickly; and thee, close up to the warmth, sat Dr Jekyll, looking deadly sick

  • Even as Jekyll becomes more evil, the house does too embodying pathetic fallacy

• House of Hyde

  • Evil.

  • "Blistered and disdained"

    • Connotations of hell

    • Boy "had tried his knife"

    • Ideas of the original sin

• Setting

  • Set in London within a respectable individual

  • Creates much more horrifying tale for readership

  • No traditional distancing of place and time

• Psychogeography

  • Use of location reinforces dichotomy of Jekyll and Hyde

    • Vice ridden Soho vs neighbourhood of Jekyll

  • Soho is an enclave of poverty within wealthy West End of London

    • Allegorical for Hyde within Jekyll

Drugs

• Drugs were legal

• Drugs in the book were presented as evil

  • "Maladies that both torture and deform"

  • Fears of overdosing

• "Fortress of identity"

  • Drugs apparently break them

  • His whole book speaks of how this is a social construct

  • By speaking negatively of drugs that cause this, he is saying that drugs can free you

Science

• Theme of evolution

  • Our desires are animal-like

  • Originate from monkeys and apes

  • Unreason vs reason

    • Animals have no reason so cannot be evil whereas humans do, and by actively disregarding this they are evil

• Stevenson further understood (more widely) Darwin's ideas

  • People don’t become better and more moral

  • They become better at surviving

• Scientific experiment

  • Lends plausibility to supernatural nature of Hyde

  • Adds elements of realism and modernity

• Use of letters

  • Adds veracity and suspense as outcome never truly known

  • Heightens emotional impact with first-person immediacy that are also trusted individuals

    • Physicians and lawyer

• Irony of scientific progress

  • Lead to evolution where Hyde is presented as animalistic

  • Is the physical expression of moral lowness according to post-Darwinian thought

Repression and Homosexuality

• Many authors would hide more controversial themes within gothic genre as it would not be widely accepted otherwise

• Male friendship as a proxy for homosexuality

• It is never described what Hyde explicitly does

  • Readers never learn of more murders or crimes despite frequent transformations

  • “Quiet pleasures” were more private vices than public scandals

  • Warning against repression and seclusion

• "Queer street"

  • Homosexual relationship between Jekyll and Hyde from Enfield

• Repression in Utterson

  • Dreamt of Jekyll asleep

  • Where "[Jekyll] must rise and do [Hyde's] bidding"

    • Sexually charged

    • Euphemism

    • Utterson cannot even admit to himself what he is thinking

    • Bed is undressed in the same way that Utterson wishes he could be

    • Jekyll “had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, but awakened as Edward Hyde”

      • Most quintessential sexual location

      • Homosexual duality has been realised

  • Belief that all men has "capers of his youth"

    • Is so normalised to Utterson that all men have homosexual relationships

• All characters are unmarried

  • Tragedy of our society is that we do not accept them as they are

• Repression in Jekyll

  • Mystery surrounding his bizarre relationship with Hyde

    • Suffered from the “perennial war among [his] members”

    • Metaphor of war suggests violent internal conflict, emphasising how repression fractures and divides identity

    • Religious allusion of “members” with biblical language links to his feelings of sin and guilt

    • Indulged in “undignified pleasures” which he “concealed”

    • Euphemism of “pleasure” hints at a taboo and shameful act

    • Confessional tone in final chapter shows emotional burden