Jekyll’s house is situated by a symbolic significance to their arrangement. The front is a regular, neat Victorian house, just like any house you would find in Victorian London, however at the back, it’s dark and mysterious, no windows, and did not show any sign of life either, e.g.“…a certain sinister block of building…” this represents the characters of Dr Jekyll and Hyde, who stemmed from the same person but have completely different appearances.
In the novella Stevenson talks about the behavior expectations of each person, specifically men. Victorian men had to be educated or act as if they were, as well as follow etiquette, go to church, and most importantly spoke politely. Even if a bad person did that, people would just be tricked by their appearances. This shows that hypocrisy was wide spread between the people in London at that era. This was symbolized in various ways, for example in “the Remarkable Incident of Dr Lanyon”, where Hyde kills Dr Lanyon and disappears, Mr. Utterson, who is a lawyer and a good friend of Jekyll, thinks that the death of Sir Danvers more than paid for the disappearance of Mr. Hyde, e.g. “I blind my honor to you that I am done with him in his world. It is all at end…” this is a symbol of hypocrisy, because Mr. Utterson is a lawyer, which means that he is upper class and educated well and also means that he should be by the law and it’s rules, and loyal to his profession etc… however, Mr. Utterson seemed to be more concerned about the disappearance of Mr. Hyde than the murder of a person he knows, when his career is to stand up for other people’s rights, but when his friend, Dr Lanyon, dies he ignores it and just focuses on Hyde’s disappearance.
Stevenson uses language in different ways to comment on the differentiation between the upper class people and the people lower than them. For example when he describes Jekyll he uses pleasant vocabulary such as, ‘handsome’, ‘well made’, ‘smooth faced’ etc… this is because Jekyll is a doctor and from the upper-class people. And when he goes on to describe any lower class person he includes some negative vocabulary, e.g. when he describes the maid he says “smoothed by hypocrisy” also, when he described Hyde he used a lot more negative vocabulary and religious terminology such as, ‘looks like Satan” “deformed” “human juggernaut” “dwarfish”. So he used pleasant vocabulary for Jekyll when the presence of Hyde is his fault, this symbolizes prejudging and making decisions before looking through them. How did any one know that Jekyll was responsible for Hyde? What would their reaction be when they do, after thinking so much of Dr Jekyll? As well as symbolizing the huge differences made between the poor and the richer people, poor people, in their way of thinking, were always bad no matter how much they tried, however upper-class people deserve to be treated with respect, as long as they acted appropriately.
Stevenson uses various ways of symbolizing Darwinism. He uses certain words that relate to Darwin's theory of evolution, and he uses those connotations especially when he is talking about Hyde to symbolize how wild, mysterious and fearless he was. For example when he described his hand “a swarth of hair” so he uses those symbols to relate him to apes, caves and elements of Darwinism in general. This in the same time could symbolized that Stevenson had the same type of mentality as Darwin, that why should we hide our origins? And that everyone has an animal-like, or a wild side in them. Also other terms were used to support his thoughts.
Stevenson implies that the society at that time was a very repressed society and people were afraid of expressing their feelings and too worried about their reputation. He symbolized that through Jekyll who showed class and education but then revealed what he tried to suppress, which was Hyde. This links to Freud’s theory, when people try to suppress a lot of their feelings and emotions they explode and turn into someone like Hyde.
Stevenson employs a lot of religious terminology to do with Christianity and Gothic beliefs e.g. “child of hell” “my devil”. And all of them relate to malevolence. This could be because Stevenson wanted to remind people about their origins. And represent his origins. Stevenson came from a Calvinist family, who believed that everyone was born bad, and will stay bad unless they sacrifice everything for God. This also reinforces the fact that we can descend to apes, and the fact that we repress the bad side in us, which is present in everyone, so there is a Hyde that hides in everyone. Stevenson also used a pun in these two words to emphasize the reality of the bad side hiding (which sounds the same as Hyding) in us.
When Jekyll creates Hyde, people might argue on whether it was for a good plan or not.
They would argue that it was a bad plan because this is playing with God’s creation, however in an other situation ambition can be a good thing, for example if some one is ambitious, he or she might work hard in order to make a difference. So Stevenson symbolizes that (ambition), through Jekyll. He shows that people can be ambitious when it comes to situations like this, they do not care what will eventually happen, because of how ambitious they are. So in general, Stevenson could be symbolizing that ambition is part of human nature, because humans look for an opportunity to get what they want, just like Jekyll hid his “dirty” paranormal temptations away from the public, but in the end he still did them through his other half, Hyde, and eventually the paranormal became normal.
Leen Rifai
