‘You must suffer me to go my own dark way.’
Confidence in analysis comes from a willingness to focus keenly on the ‘ingredients’ of the text in front of you; to identify a technique and explore its effects in detail.
So here is a simple approach:
- Who is speaking and where are they speaking from? (CONTEXT AND POWER) This utterance is spoken by Jekyll to his old friend Utterson warning him of his desire for privacy and autonomy. We are aware of the civility being still present, but that there is an underlying warning too. Jekyll might feel he is under threat and is consequently relying on the discretion and affection of his old friend to stop prying into his secret affairs. .
- Pick out a technique and identify its role. The request sounds like a polite command or imperative, demanding an obedience that may cause pain. ‘You must suffer,’ hence this relies on the good will of the listener to follow the wishes of the speaker. And we sense that the speaker does not expect his wishes to be defied, despite the surface civility. They are Victorian Gentlemen after all! .
- Now think of THREE EFFECTS of the technique on the reader as well as on the listener in the narrative. . Mystery, Loneliness, Grandiosity/Pride.
- Link these effects to the technique. Problematise their connection. For example, you may like to consider how Jekyll’s near imperative demands that his oldest friend grants him a privacy that must prove challenging for the speaker and the listener together. We suspect that this capacity to endure or ‘suffer’ alone may destroy their connection forever. ‘Suffer’ implies a tolerance on the part of Utterson that is so discreet that it allows Jekyll the ambivalent freedom of the solitary, sinister ‘dark way’ which sounds profoundly euphemistic and mysterious. The evident personal pride, subtle grandiosity, even hubris is suggested by the combination of the near oxymoronic, imperative plea, with the proprietorial , ‘my own’ and the implied moral malignancy and degenerate direction of the ‘dark way.’ Moral degeneracy sounds both a resigned acceptance, as well as a secret source of fascination and pride. Jekyll talks of his ‘dark way’ as an mysterious, adventure, as well as implying it may destroy him. He is speaking as a hero as well as a villain!
- Interestingly perhaps, as both Jekyll and Hyde in this is a competing act of ventriloquism, Hence the contradictory impulses contained within the one sentence. An amazingly unnerving, creepy plea by Dr Jekyll!Little wonder his audience, Utterson, finds a response futile.
