In even greater amounts, perhaps, are the reactions that people have when they come face to face with Hyde, and ‘even from a distance’. Every single person that has met him feels ‘loathing’ and ‘fear’, and in some cases, ‘a desire to kill’, most people feel a simple ‘hatred’ of him, yet none of them know why. The extent of this feeling is described as ‘hitherto unknown disgust’- absolutely appalling revulsion to him. There is something about Hyde that is not visible, that makes people react like this, described as the ‘radiance of a foul soul’. Many people search for a ‘deformity’ in Hyde that is making them feel this way but fail to find it. Hyde has this aura of repulsion around him that makes any ‘decent’ person draw back from him. When he touches Lanyon’s arm. Lanyon feels ‘an icy pang’ that ‘goes up his spine’. Obviously, this is the height of Hyde’s effect, that when you touch him you shiver with discomfort.
Perhaps the most startling aspect of Hyde is that when Jekyll showed Lanyon that he is, in fact, Hyde, Lanyon is so sickened by the thought of it that he becomes ill and dies in a few weeks. This shows absolutely that Jekyll does a terrible thing in unleashing Hyde, and actually telling somebody caused them to die, and Lanyon is one of Jekyll’s closest friends.
These images are put into the story frequently, and the effect of this is to make the reader feel that Jekyll has released a being so foul that he deserves whatever punishment he got.
And still Stevenson piles it on. He goes into horrific detail about Hyde brutally murdering Sir Danvers Carew, this is clear evidence that he wishes us to feel that Jekyll is to blame for his own experiments. Stevenson’s description of the murder is really “over the top”, it starts off with Hyde having an ‘ill-contained impatience’. Sir Danvers Carew is merely ‘inquiring his way’ to Hyde when he ‘broke out’ with a ‘great flame of anger’. Sir Danvers Carew is surprised by Hyde’s reaction and ‘took a step back’. At that moment though, Hyde snapped, he ‘broke all bounds’ and starts ‘trampling’ on him. With his stick he is ‘hailing down a storm of blows’, and Sir Danvers Carew’s bones are ‘audibly shattered’. Hyde then runs away, leaving the body ‘incredibly mangled’ in the middle of the road. Hyde makes no attempt to conceal it, and the horrific details of the murder can only mean the Stevenson wishes us to judge Jekyll as responsible for such a crime. Even there Stevenson does not stop putting on more and more emphasis on the utterly diabolical nature of Hyde. In Dr Jekyll’s full statement of the case, he states that Hyde gets ‘delight from every blow’ and runs away, ‘gloating’ over his crime. Jekyll uses the word ‘I’, which is another of Stevenson’s ways of showing that he wishes us to think that Jekyll is directly responsible.
In Jekyll’s justification of his actions, he mentions that he ‘enjoyed’ the freedom that Hyde gave him. He fulfilled his ‘pleasures’ (which are unspecified), and soon the pleasures turned from ‘undignified’ to ‘monstrous’. When Jekyll remembered what he had done whilst in Hyde’s body he is ‘aghast’ at himself. He refers to Hyde as ‘me’ therefore showing that he is responsible because he did it. Jekyll became careless, and thought that nobody would trace him under his ‘impenetrable mantle’. Jekyll also tries to cover up Hyde’s activities by giving to charities and balancing it out. These two statements suggest that Jekyll knew that he is responsible because he is thinking about the possibility of him being caught. Jekyll also felt ‘pity’ for Hyde, suggesting that he is not at all innocent.
Jekyll pays for his crimes heavily though, and this is one of the very few times in the story when Stevenson releases Jekyll from the blame. Jekyll is put to considerable expense to pay for Hyde’s actions. When he tramples over the girl, he is forced to pay £100 to her parents. Not to mention the fact that he loses one of his closest friends by telling him and ends up committing suicide to pay for it. But I think that Stevenson wishes us to view even these with severity; firstly, Jekyll taunts Lanyon by bribing him with, ‘power’ and ‘knowledge’, in such a way that Lanyon cannot have refused to know what Hyde’s secret is. On telling Lanyon, Lanyon dies. Jekyll wants to tell him about his experiments, he wanted to show off, and he insults Lanyon by referring to himself as his ‘superior’.
Jekyll obviously enjoys being Hyde, because he suffers a horrible pain when he transforms into him, and would not bother to do it if he wanted to. Sometimes, Jekyll has to ‘triple’ the dosage in order to transform, something that he wouldn’t do unless he is willing to risk his life to transform.
In conclusion, I think that judging from the amount of description that has been put into the Hyde, and the number of references to his joy at being evil, that it is fair to say that Stevenson wishes us to feel that Jekyll is to blame for his experiments and that he pays the price for it with his death.
