The narrative of the respectable doctor who transforms himself into a
savage murderer, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, described the anxieties of
Stevenson’s age.
The Victorian era was a time of great technological progress in which
European nations carved up their empires. By the end of the century many people
were questioning the ideals of progress and civilization that had defined the
era, a growing sense of pessimism and decline pervaded artistic circles. Many
felt that the end of the century was also a sort oftwilight
of Western culture.
The notion of a single body containing the erudite Dr. Jekyll and the
depraved Mr. Hyde, shows the inextricable link between civilization and
savagery, good and evil.
Jekyll is attracted by the freedom from restraint that Hyde enjoys,
Victorian England’s secret attraction to “savage” non-Western cultures, despite
Europe’s claimed superiority: the
Western world came in contact with other peoples and ways of life, finding
aspects of these cultures within itself, and both the desire and fear to
indulge them, such as open sensuality, physicality, and other irrational
tendencies. Victorian England asserted its civilization over and against these
instinctual sides of life, yet found them secretly fascinating, and society’s
repression of its darker side increased the fascination. As a product of this
society, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde manifests this fascination.
Dr. Henry Jekyll - A respected, wealthy doctor, a member of the community, known
for his decency and charitable works, yet secretly dissolute and corrupt since
his youth. Jekyll undertakes experiments intended to separate his good and evil
selves from one another. Through these experiments, he brings Mr. Hyde into
being, finding a way to transform himself in such a way that he fully becomes
his darker half.
Mr. Edward Hyde - A repugnant man who looks faintly
pre-human. Hyde is violent and cruel, everyone describes him as ugly and
deformed, yet no one can say exactly why. Language itself seems to fail around
Hyde: he is not a creature who belongs to the rational world of speech or
logical grammar. Hyde is Jekyll’s dark side, without the bonds of conscience.
It is not clear whether Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are a single character.
Until the end of the novel, they seem nothing alike, almost opposite in type
and personality. Stevenson uses this contrast to state that every human being
contains opposite forces within him or her.
Jekyll or Hyde must be considered as one single character, and their
relationship involves a complicated dynamic. Jekyll appears moral and decent, however
he never fully embodies virtue in the way that Hyde embodies evil. Jekyll
undertakes his experiments with the intent of purifying his good side from his
bad and vice versa, but he separates the bad alone, while leaving his
Jekyll-self as mixed as before. Jekyll succeeds in liberating his darker side,
freeing it from the bonds of conscience, yet Jekyll is never free from this
darkness.
Jekyll ascribes his results to his state of mind when first taking the potion:
he was motivated by ambition and pride when he first drank the liquid, implying
that, if his motives had been pure, an angelic being would have emerged.
Once released, Hyde gradually dominates both personas, until Jekyll becomes
Hyde more and more often. By the end of the novel, Jekyll no longer exists and
only Hyde remains. Hyde apparently possesses a force more powerful than Jekyll
originally believed. The emerging of Hyde is not a chance event, as if he was
lying in wait.
Hyde is first a latent force within Jekyll, then a tyrannical external
force subverting Jekyll; perhaps Hyde is the authentic nature of man, repressed
but not destroyed by civilization, conscience, and norms. Perhaps man doesn’t
have two natures but a single, primitive, amoral one barely constrained by the
bonds of civilization: once those bonds are broken, it is impossible to
reestablish them, the dark, instinctual side of man is strong enough to devour
anyone foolish enough to unleash it.
Mr. Gabriel John Utterson - A well respected lawyer in
the London
community, Utterson is reserved, dignified, lacking in imagination, and
resembles Victorian society in his devotion to reasonable explanations and
his denial of the supernatural. Utterson represents the
perfect Victorian gentleman, seeking to preserve order and decorum, devoted to
reason and common sense, and even at the end, he continues to look for an
explanation that preserves reason.
Dr. Hastie Lanyon - A reputable London
doctor and, an embodiment of rationalism, materialism, and skepticism.
The Duality of Human Nature
The theme of the dual nature of humanity emerges in the last chapter, where
the complete story of the Jekyll-Hyde relationship is revealed. The duality of
human nature is the central theme and the properties of this duality are to be
considered.
Jekyll imagines the human soul as the battleground for an “angel” and a
“fiend,” each struggling for mastery, but his potion brings the dark side into
being, Hyde emerges, but no angelic counterpart, and slowly takes over.
The Importance of Reputation
In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, preserving one’s reputation emerges is
very important. The importance of
reputation reflects the importance of appearances, facades, and surfaces, which
often hide a sordid underside. Utterson, a true member of Victorian society,
wishes to preserve Jekyll’s reputation and the appearance of order and decorum.
Violence Against Innocents
Hyde is a creature of great evil and vices. The reader learns the details
of two of Hyde’s crimes, which underline his depravity, both involving violence
against innocents. The first victim of Hyde’s violence is a small, female child
whom he tramples; the second is a gentle and much-beloved old man. The nature
of his crimes emphasize the extreme immorality of Jekyll’s dark side unleashed.
Hyde’s brand of evil is not just a lapse from good but an attack on it.
Silence
In the novel, characters fail or refuse to speak. The two kinds of silence
in the novel indicate two different notions about the interaction of the
rational and the irrational. The characters’ refusals to discuss the sordid
indicate an attribute of the Victorian society, prizing decorum and reputation
above all and repressing or denying the truth if that truth threatens the
conventionally ordered worldview. Involuntary silences imply something about
language itself, by nature rational and logical, a method by which we map and
delineate our world.
Urban Terror
Throughout the novel, Stevenson establishes a link between the urban
landscape of Victorian London and the dark events surrounding Hyde, through the
use of nightmarish imagery, in which dark streets twist and coil, or lie draped
in fog, forming a sinister landscape. Stevenson paints Hyde as a urban
creature, at home in the darkness of London
where countless crimes take place, the novel suggests, without anyone knowing.
Jekyll’s House and Laboratory
Dr. Jekyll lives in a prosperous-looking house, symbolizing the
respectable, upright doctor, his laboratory is described with a decaying facade
and air of neglect, symbolizing the corrupt and perverse Hyde. The connection
between the buildings corresponds to the connection between the personas they stand
for: the buildings are adjoined but look out on two different streets. Because
of the convoluted layout of the streets in the area, the casual observer cannot
detect that the structures are two parts of a whole and cannot detect the
relationship between Jekyll and Hyde.
Hyde’s Physical Appearance
Hyde appears repulsively ugly and deformed, small, shrunken, and hairy, which
symbolizes his moral hideousness and warped ethics. For the audience of the
time, the connection between ugliness and wickedness was not just symbolic, as physiognomy
was considered a science which could identify a criminal by physical
appearance. Hyde’s small stature may represent the fact that, as Jekyll’s dark
side, he has been repressed for years, prevented from growing and flourishing.
His hairiness indicate that he is the evil side of Jekyll and the embodiment of
Jekyll’s instincts, the animalistic core beneath Jekyll’s polished exterior.
