The story of Jekyll and Hyde is one of the
most well known in the English language, and few readers come to this novel
without knowing the secret behind the relationship of the title characters.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that Stevenson’s novel does not
reveal this secret until the very end. Instead, the book presents us with what
seems like a detective novel, beginning with a sinister figure of unknown
origin, a mysterious act of violence, and hints of blackmail and secret
scandal. Although the opening scene also contains vaguely supernatural
elements, particularly in the strange dread that Hyde inspires, Stevenson
likely intended his readers to enter the novel believing it to be nothing more
than a mystery story. The uncanny side of the novel appears gradually, as
Utterson’s detective work leads him toward the seemingly impossible truth.
Even as it plunges us into the mysterious
happenings surrounding Mr. Hyde, the first chapter highlights the proper,
respectable, eminently Victorian attitudes of Enfield and Utterson. The text
describes these men as reserved—so reserved, in fact, that they can enjoy a
lengthy walk during which neither man says a word. Declining to indulge their
more impulsive thoughts and feelings, they display a mutual distaste for
sensation and gossip. They steer away from discussing the matter of Hyde once
they realize it involves someone Utterson knows. The Victorian value system
largely privileged reputation over reality, and this prioritization is
reflected both in the narrator’s remarks about Utterson and Enfield and in the
characters’ own remarks about gossip and blackmail. In a society so focused on
reputation, blackmail proves a particularly potent force, since those
possessing and concerned with good reputations will do anything they can to
preserve them. Thus, when Hyde tramples the little girl, Enfield and the crowd
can blackmail him into paying off her family; Hyde’s access to a respectable
man’s bank account leads Enfield to leap to the conclusion that Hyde is blackmailing
his benefactor.
In such a society, it is significant that
Utterson, so respectable himself, is known for his willingness to remain
friends with people whose reputations have been damaged, or ruined. This aspect
of his personality suggests not only a sense of charity, but also hints that
Utterson is intrigued, in some way, by the darker side of the world—the side
that the truly respectable, like Enfield, carefully avoid. It is this curiosity
on Utterson’s part that leads him to investigate the peculiar figure of Mr.
Hyde rather than avoid looking into matters that could touch on scandal.
However, while Utterson may take an interest
in affairs that polite society would like to ignore, he remains a steadfast
rationalist and a fundamentally unimaginative man without a superstitious bone
in his body. One of the central themes of the novel is the clash between
Victorian rationalism and the supernatural, and Utterson emerges as the
embodiment of this rationality, always searching out the logical explanation
for events and deliberately dismissing supernatural flights of fancy. Enfield
approaches the world in much the same way, serving as another representative of
the common sense approach. By allowing these men and their Victorian
perspectives to dominate the novel’s point of view, Stevenson proves better
able to dramatize the opposition between the rationalism that they represent
and the fantastical subject matter that comes under scrutiny in this focus.
However, while this method contributes much to the story’s overall effect, it
also presents a challenge for Stevenson. The author must struggle to convey to
us a sense of metaphysical dread surrounding Hyde, even as he situates his
novel’s viewpoint with men who never feel such emotions themselves.
In the opening chapter, Stevenson overcomes
this challenge by highlighting his characters’ inability to express and come to
terms with the events that they have witnessed. “There is something wrong with
[Hyde’s] appearance,” Enfield says. “I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I
scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of
deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point.” In other words, Hyde’s
ugliness is not physical but metaphysical; it attaches to his soul more than to
his body. Enfield and, later, Utterson, whose minds are not suited to the
metaphysical, can sense Hyde’s uncanniness but cannot describe it. Their
limited imaginations fail them as they approach the eerie and inexplicable; as
rational clashes with irrational, language breaks down.
The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is perhaps one of the most
familiar tales in all of literature. In fact, it is so familiar that many
people assume that the tale has been in existence for longer than it actually
has been. It is also familiar because the terminology (that is, the names of Jekyll and Hyde) is now a part of our common
language and can be found in any dictionary. In fact, many people who have
never heard of the name Robert Louis Stevenson can offer a reasonably acceptable
meaning for the term "Jekyll and Hyde," and their explanation would
not vary far from those found in selected or random dictionary definitions such
as:
1.
"One who has quasi-schizophrenic, alternating phases of pleasantness and
unpleasantness."
2.
"A person having a split personality, one side of which is good and the
other evil."
3.
"This phrase refers to a person who alternates between charming demeanor
and extremely unpleasant behavior."
In fact, the names of Jekyll and Hyde have even been used in alcoholism
manuals to describe the behavior of a sober person who is kind and gentle but
who unexpectedly changes into a vicious, cruel person when drunk. The contrast
in the behavior of a drunk and sober person is therefore commonly referred to
as the "Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome."
All
of the general views or above definitions of a "Jekyll and Hyde"
personality come almost entirely from the last two Chapters of the novel. Until
then, the novel is presented as a closely knit mystery story.
Another concept to keep in mind while reading this novel is that
the above definitions and all of the assumptions made about Jekyll and Hyde are
postulated on the assumption that man is made up of only two parts — one good
and one evil. This is not necessarily Stevenson's intent, as stated later by
Dr. Jekyll, who thought that man's personality might be composed of many different facets,
and that man's evil nature was only a small portion of his total makeup.
Consequently, when the transformation from Jekyll to Hyde occurs, Hyde cannot
wear Jekyll's clothes because they are much too big for him — that is, the evil
part of Dr. Jekyll's total being, depicted through Hyde, is represented as
being much smaller than Jekyll.
Thus, man is not necessarily equal parts of good and evil; instead,
the evil portion will often express itself more forcefully and powerfully than
do the other aspects. However, for the sake of discussion, and since Dr. Jekyll
himself admitted that he could detect only two sides of himself, we will most
often refer to Hyde as Jekyll's evil "double."
The entire nineteenth century was often concerned with the
concept of man's double self, often referred to as a Doppelgänger, a term taken from German literary
criticism. This nineteenth-century genre began with a story about a type of
double, when Dr. Frankenstein created his monster in 1818 (and due to
popularizations of this story, most people think that Frankenstein is the name
of the monster instead of the scientist), and later, Sigmund Freud and others
before Stevenson, wrote about man's contrasting natures — it was, however,
Stevenson's story of Jekyll and Hyde that has so completely held the attention
of readers throughout the decades. And as noted, the popularizations of a story
will often distort parts of that story. For example, Stevenson intended the
main character's name to be pronounced Je (the French word for "I") Kill (Je-Kill=I kill), meaning that the doctor
wanted to isolate the evil portion of himself, appropriately named
"Hyde," meaning low and vulgar hide or flesh which must hide from civilization. The character's
name in the movies, however, was pronounced with the accent on the first
syllable and it has remained so.
The double is also represented in even
simpler ways in this novel. For example, Utterson and his kinsman, Richard
Enfield, are so completely different from each other that people who know them
are totally puzzled by their frequent walks together. Yet, as with the double, man is often drawn to someone
totally opposite from himself.
Utterson,
we discover, possesses those qualities that make him the perfectly reliable
literary narrator. He is intellectual, objective, and tolerant; he is also
reluctant to judge and is inclined to help people rather than to condemn them.
And even though he is undemonstrative, he has won the deep trust of many
important friends who confide in him and appoint him the executor of their
estates. Consequently, Utterson makes the very best type of narrator since he
is privy to the secrets of powerful men but is also discreet enough not to
violate any trust.
In
contrast, it is Enfield's vivacity, directness, and curiosity about life which
involves us in the story as he narrates with gusto and enthusiasm his first
horrible encounter with Edward Hyde. Thus, the reader's introduction to Hyde is
through a "well-known man about town" who delights in entertaining
people with strange and unusual stories. After this Chapter, however, Enfield,
as a narrator, is disposed of, and we will rely upon a more solid, restrained
narrator such as Utterson.
The ultimate purpose of this novel (or tale) will be to
demonstrate Dr. Jekyll's view of Hyde; yet this, as noted, is only the last
portion of the novel. Before then, Stevenson will use several narrators and
devices to present a number of opinions about Hyde. But, by using Enfield as
the initial narrator, we get our first opinion about Hyde through Enfield,
"the well-known man about town," and in describing his first
encounter with Hyde, Enfield also gives us the views of all of the others gathered
about when Hyde tramples the young girl underfoot. If we remember that Enfield
is the type of person who prides himself on being a connoisseur of the
beautiful, it might at first seem natural that he would over-exaggerate his own
personal loathing for Hyde, especially since Enfield cannot specify any single
deformity or any single distortion in Hyde's physique; rather, Enfield has
simply a general sense of nausea and extreme distaste, so extreme that he
senses that there is something unnatural about Hyde: "There was something
wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright
detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked." But if we do not completely trust Enfield's
sensibilities, then there are the reactions of the crowd of people which
gathers at the scene and remains there to make sure that Hyde does not escape.
For example, the women, upon looking at Hyde, suddenly seem to be "as wild
as Harpies," and then the apothecary who is "as emotional as a
bagpipe" turns sick upon seeing Hyde and has a strong desire to kill the
man. Others, including the child's family, all possess this intense loathing
for Hyde, accompanied with a desire to kill him.
This
first Chapter, then, presents not only Enfield's view of Hyde, but also the
views of several others and, consequently, the reader is entranced about a
person who can evoke such horrible responses in such differing types of people.
And we should also note that Dr. Jekyll is not even mentioned — in fact, this
part of London is built so strangely that it is not until quite some time later
that we are able to discern that the particular door which evoked Enfield's
narration is, in reality, the back door to Dr. Jekyll's laboratory. The novel
begins, therefore, as a type of mystery story, in spite of the fact that there
is probably no modern reader who can come to the novel without a previous
knowledge that Hyde is really a part of Dr. Jekyll; but for the original
audience, each of the subsequent Chapters involved an attempt to discover the
identity of Hyde and how he was blackmailing, or framing, or using Dr. Jekyll
in some evil and probably obscene, horrible way.
Theme:
Duality- Utterson, friendship of Utterson
and Enfield. Hint at possible disreputable nateru of the busy by street.
–appearance and reality
Even
as it plunges us into the mysterious happenings surrounding Mr. Hyde, the first
chapter highlights the proper, respectable, eminently Victorian attitudes of
Enfield and Utterson. The text describes these men as reserved—so reserved, in
fact, that they can enjoy a lengthy walk during which neither man says a word.
Declining to indulge their more impulsive thoughts and feelings, they display a
mutual distaste for sensation and gossip. They steer away from discussing the
matter of Hyde once they realize it involves someone Utterson knows. The
Victorian value system largely privileged reputation over reality, and this
prioritization is reflected both in the narrator’s remarks about Utterson and
Enfield and in the characters’ own remarks about gossip and blackmail. In a
society so focused on reputation, blackmail proves a particularly potent force,
since those possessing and concerned with good reputations will do anything
they can to preserve them. Thus, when Hyde tramples the little girl, Enfield
and the crowd can blackmail him into paying off her family; Hyde’s access to a
respectable man’s bank account leads Enfield to leap to the conclusion that
Hyde is blackmailing his benefactor.
One of the central themes of
the novel is the clash between Victorian rationalism and the supernatural, and
Utterson emerges as the embodiment of this rationality, always searching out
the logical explanation for events and deliberately dismissing supernatural
flights of fancy. Enfield approaches the world in much the same way, serving as
another representative of the common sense approach. By allowing these men and
their Victorian perspectives to dominate the novel’s point of view, Stevenson
proves better able to dramatize the opposition between the rationalism that
they represent and the fantastical subject matter that comes under scrutiny in
this focus. However, while this method contributes much to the story’s overall
effect, it also presents a challenge for Stevenson. The author must struggle to
convey to us a sense of metaphysical dread surrounding Hyde, even as he
situates his novel’s viewpoint with men who never feel such emotions
themselves.
Setting:
Creates atmosphere –mystery and sinister
things
Highlights duality -the very different door
The
black face of the door –privacy
Characterisation
Utterson is dependable –can be trusted in
the story
In such a society, it is
significant that Utterson, so respectable himself, is known for his willingness
to remain friends with people whose reputations have been damaged, or ruined.
This aspect of his personality suggests not only a sense of charity, but also
hints that Utterson is intrigued, in some way, by the darker side of the
world—the side that the truly respectable, like Enfield, carefully avoid. It is
this curiosity on Utterson’s part that leads him to investigate the peculiar
figure of Mr. Hyde rather than avoid looking into matters that could touch on
scandal.
Enfield is Utterson’s friend while being a
man of town –Utterson is likeable
U and E’s friendship –Duality and opposites
attract
Hyde is inexplicable; E literally cannot
describe him –fear of own evil
In the opening chapter,
Stevenson overcomes this challenge by highlighting his characters’ inability to
express and come to terms with the events that they have witnessed. “There is
something wrong with [Hyde’s] appearance,” Enfield says. “I never saw a man I
so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives
a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point.” In other
words, Hyde’s ugliness is not physical but metaphysical; it attaches to his
soul more than to his body. Enfield and, later, Utterson, whose minds are not
suited to the metaphysical, can sense Hyde’s uncanniness but cannot describe
it. Their limited imaginations fail them as they approach the eerie and
inexplicable; as rational clashes with irrational, language breaks down.
Language:
Humour, detailed setting, atmosphere,
inference, characterisation
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