Hypocrisy is a main theme in the book because frankly, Jekyll is a hypocrite. To his friends Jekyll acts as the respectable doctor he was brought up to be but behind closed doors Jekyll was creating a monster. The door is a symbol of this, its an mysterious door which Hyde goes through at the beginning, Utterson and Enfield are both very curious about where the door leads to and we later discover that this door is the door to Jekyll’s laboratory at the back of his house. Jekyll loves the feeling of being Hyde, at the beginning, although the pain that comes with it is almost unbearable Jekyll endures it just so he can get that high of being Hyde. There is one paragraph which describes the process Jekyll went through when he first tasted the potion, it is a mixture of positive and negative descriptions of the transformation, he says “I felt younger, lighter, happier in the body,” but then he also says, “there was a grinding in the bones,” so it’s a situation of taking the rough with the smooth. It is a combination of good and bad effects, they work together to and enhance the other and make it seem more dramatic. The sensations he experienced that were bad were mainly physical changes and the good things were emotional.
Lots of the things written about in the book have double meanings or are not what they seem. For example Jekyll’s house, it is split into two separate parts. The front is neat and shiny but the back where his laboratory is, is all dilapidated and rundown. This, in my opinion, represents the double side of Jekyll’s personality, there is the real Jekyll who is a respectable doctor and there is the derelict half, which is where Hyde lies in a bottle waiting for Jekyll to release him. The story is set in the back streets of London to make the story even more thrilling because if it is set in an actual place it seems more realistic the weather here always seem to be wet and windy. This is a use of pathetic fallacy where the wind has taken on the feelings and emotions of; I would say, Jekyll’s emotional turmoil. He is confused and unsure about what to do and this shown in weather. However there is a part in the book where Jekyll seems to be OK briefly the weather is clear and sunny, as Utterson says. Nevertheless he gives into temptation and the weather becomes turbulent and this is where everything starts to go downhill. Utterson and Enfield are on a walk and they go past Jekyll’s window. They see Jekyll at the window but when he turns around they describe the face they see as a monster. This ties into the religious side of things because earlier in the book Stevenson described Hyde as Satan and a beast inside Jekyll that needs to be freed. Another link to religion is that Jekyll’s experiments questioned some religions and values and also Hyde was not a religious man at all, he destroyed anything that Jekyll valued, related to religion.
All these hidden meanings are linked to secrecy and horror, which was the favoured genre of that time; it may be linked to the wildness and darkness of Jekyll’s character. The incident with the key being ground into the floor shows the loss of Jekyll’s control over Hyde. The scene where Hyde is discovered dead could be evidence of a psychological battle between the two. We find out in he final chapter that Jekyll decided to commit suicide, so why is Hyde found dead?
The use of different narrators is very helpful especially in the revelatory chapters because they can say exactly what happened in their own words. It also lets the chapters where the mysteries occur to stay mysteries until the end. This is an excellent technique to use, it creates suspense and anticipation because the only way you can find out what happened is if someone tells you and as the book is in the third person there is no way of finding out unless Stevenson had written it as it happened but that would not have been very interesting.
Another reason for Stevenson revealing all the answers may have been because of the pressures of writing in the Victorian era where all feelings were repressed and not shown. So a reason for Jekyll and Hyde’s death not being exposed might have been because it wasn’t the sort of thing to be published in those days it was too impulsive. This book could have been an escape for Stevenson, Jekyll has deep desires, which he can only express through Hyde, and Stevenson could be expressing his thoughts about society through the Jekyll and the book.
In conclusion all the themes and genres are linked it would be hard to place this book in one category, all the themes work together to make a book full of secrets.
