Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE: Short Notes.

 

 

 

 

‘Clearly Stevenson’s work is a great success as a horror story but it goes well beyond that.’

 

 

Why do you think ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ was such a success when it was first published, and remains so? And in what ways is it more than a horror story?

 

 

 

1) The setting of the novel lends itself to horror. We are in London, lost in seedy labyrinthine streets, enveloped by fog, searching for a man who doesn’t want to be found and whose very presence seems ‘utterly’ monstrous to behold? We meet this ‘creature’ as he stamps maliciously upon a terrified child and this complete transgression of any ‘civilised’ form of behaviour catapults us into horror.

 

2) The seemingly gratuitous murder of the ‘white haired gentleman’ again intensifies the atmosphere of horror and immorality. Innocence is terribly juxtaposed to the sordid and fails to triumph. However we cannot read the novel without being enthralled and it is an interest that seems to go further than a merely mechanical sense of fear.

 

 3) The novel is profoundly mysterious and enigmatic and part of this complexity is dependent upon the organisation and narratorial technique of the novel. After all, the ‘reality’ of Hyde and Jekyll is always just beyond us, always relegated by the characters in the novel to hyperbolic exclamations of horror that are never directly resolved or spoken. In other words the monstrousness of the novel is never finally faced or named. It is literally unutterable/unspeakable which makes it immediately necessary to look at the main ‘detective’ of this unsettling 19 th C novel. 

 

 

4) How significant is it that a profoundly ambivalent ‘reader’ is the central agent of detection in the novel? He is called ‘Utterson’ yet seems profoundly secretive and difficult to reach either within the novel by his friends or without the text by the reader. What does Utterson really ‘utter’ afterall?

 

5) ‘Something eminently human found its way into his talk’ …this is ironical as the novel is concerned ostensibly with the horror of inhumanity, yet the opening underlines the awkwardness of such a concept in this particular historical moment and society? (cf Darwin and changing beliefs in the religious life) Yet this device works highly effectively for the lawyer as a symbol of ‘lawfulness’ must be trusted by the reader even when we are perplexed as to his actual motivations and convictions? Utterson repeated reluctance to ‘utter’ anything except repugnance and distaste for Hyde, serves to accentuate the malignancy of Hyde whilst also rendering it elusive and very much dependent upon the reader’s own fears and imaginings. For we never KNOW what is it precisely that makes Hyde so sickening and this intensifies the horror.

 

6) However, in a novel dominated by male characters who seem to spend rather a long time out in the early hours, walking without apparent or admitted purpose, it is quite possible to read RLS’s novel as a coded examination into the world of taboo sexuality, specifically homosexuality, at the end of the 19^th C…often referred to as the age of ‘decadence’, the ‘fin-de-siecle’.

 

7) This would explain Jekyll ‘unhealthy’ interest and attachment to Hyde and also the reasons that Enfield’s walks with his ‘cold’ friend Uttterson are described as the ‘jewel’ of their week? Why Utterson enjoys indulgently the ‘misdeeds’ of young men? Relate this back to the ‘unspeakability’ of Hyde and we can see why the novel continues to fascinate as the very core of the fascination remains UNSAID!!! 

 

8) Horror can be a socially endorsed way of being judgmental whilst secretly being fascinated and even desirous of the very thing that is being rejected? When Hyde obtains a cheque to pay off the young girls family from his mentor Jekyll both Enfield and Utterson agree that ‘blackmail’ must be  probable. Blackmail at this time would be very likely if Hyde and his friend were practising homosexuals.  RLS was well aware of this.  

 

 

7) Furthermore, we can see Utterson as very much a symptom of the secrecy in the novel. The novel is relayed through the accounts of several narrators, including of course Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde himself. This multifaceted means of narration serves to prolong the suspense of the novel, and thus contributes markedly to the Gothic Horror of the text.

 

 

8)  Who is the final teller of the tale? Ironically the last voice we hear is the voice of Jekyll, yet we know that he died as Hyde, and that we are only reading this document through the ‘eyes’ and voice of Utterson who signifanctly never comments upon it. Each time we read the end of the novel we are aware of this ‘missing’ voice or commentary and the fact that Utterson fails to utter a word about Hyde or his other Jekyll , leaves the reader in a state of bewilderment as no ‘stable’ ‘ordinary’ voice remains. We are just left with the very much resurrected, ‘undead’ Jekyll/Hyde who finishes his own novel after all?

 

 

  9) I am aware of the problematic identity of the ‘teller of tales’ in the novel. ( RLS was known in Samoan as the teller of tales) The series of different narratives destabilises the possibility of any final true account in the novel. This is particularly interesting if you think of the fantastic nature of the subject matter: physical metamorphosis through scientific intervention with more than a hint of evil possession. The novel is interrogating 19th c beliefs and their possible collapse, and this inherent instability is brilliantly depicted in this eminently transgressive novel. Hyde’s face like so much of Victorian Age does not bear too close a scrutiny!!