The murder of Sir Danvers Carew is a critical point which brings the tension to a higher stage. Our feelings towards Hyde become colder and even fearful as we see how violent and heartless is. “At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted” – this paragraph suggests that the unpleasant incident was of such terror that could make someone lose his consciousness by watching it. As readers find out about these things, we could be feared even by our own evil dark side. Would we be able of such actions if our bad side takes over?
“The moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.” This key quote represents that Jekyll, at that point thought that if he doesn’t take the potion to turn into Hyde, he’s be rid of him forever. He thought that he controlled his transformations. But as we know at the end of the book, Hyde’s powers ‘take’ over Jekyll, and he loses control of his personality.
For the reader, at that point at the beginning of the book, we could think that Hyde is subordinate to Jekyll, and if he decides to lose contact with him, he’d obey and stay away from Jekyll – or even kill him. Certainly, we feel there is a secret between them.
A very important aspect of the book is Hyde and Jekyll’s houses, how they represent their minds. The allegory is that if you notice Jekyll’s mansion is situated in a respectable city, with nice rooms, furnished with good taste and lots of doors and windows, there are many ways of getting in Jekyll’s mind, he was a trusted and honourable person, contrasting with Hyde’s house, which had only one door, situated in Soho, a poor region with prostitutes. The single door represents that there are little ways of knowing what’s in Hyde’s mind, you cannot get close to him, he is hated by everyone and he is hidden, as his name sais. As the house is small and inaccessible, this is how Hyde is; he is represented by the place he lives in, dark, small and closed inside.
The door connecting to Jekyll’s lab, the door through which Hyde had entered in chapter one suggests that there is a connection between Hyde and Jekyll in their minds, personality. Even though their personalities are contrasting, there is a common path which they share in their minds, which might even disappear, if Hyde takes over Jekyll.
Also in allegorical terms, when Poole and Utterson break down Jekyll’s door, it suggests that they broke inside his mind; they entered and are going to find he’s secrets.
This adds suspense and mystery to the story, as we know that when someone breaks in someone’s private space, it has big consequences and we want to find out what Jekyll is hiding or who is in the laboratory that time.
When Utterson and Poole see Jekyll at the window and they see “an expression of such object terror and despair, they have seen a terrified look on the face of Jekyll, which looks like Hyde. Hyde is the terrified side of Jekyll, the scared one which Jekyll tries to protect and hide.
In the last chapter, when Jekyll reveals the whole story, which is full of suspense as introduces new concepts about life and opposites.
For Victorian people the ideas of having two different personalities made them think about themselves and were fascinated about it. They might have thought they could transpose themselves as well or use drugs.
“Both sides of me were in dead earnest”, suggests that Jekyll knows he has two sides, “bipolar twins” and this makes us think about us, whether if somewhere inside us there is our opposite hidden somewhere. This helped keeping the suspense up, especially for a Victorian audience which were fascinated even scared of this.
Maybe this is what determined Jack the Ripper to commit his crimes – his desperate search of his evil side.
“I felt younger, lighter, happier in body”, Jekyll felt like this because Hyde was for his first tie free in this world which revealed to him. Younger because he was like a newborn on that day: “a stranger in my own house”. Lighter – we know that Hyde was shorter than Jekyll – this might suggest that the bad inside Jekyll is in small proportion, he wasn’t dominant, “less robust, developed than the good that I just deposed.” Jekyll keeps using “it” instead of “him” when talking about Hyde. The allegorical meaning of this is that Hyde could be a familial, a creature which connects to Satan for Jekyll. There is even a Biblical reference in his autobiography: “diabolical nor divine” which describes Hyde and Jekyll. He sustains the idea that “man is not truly one but truly two” and “the through and primitive duality of man” which apparently we all have. This book directly opens to us, talk to us.
But even though Jekyll seems like he knows everything about this duality personality, at the end of the chapter we find out that he loses control over Hyde “how was it to be remedied?”, this rises up the tension in reader’s souls. If you develop too much a side of your personality, you cannot get rid of it, repress it anymore, maybe that’s why you need to go through a complicated process to bring up your other personality, like using a salt potion with the exact concentration.
Victorians thought that criminals had a specific look, so this book opened their minds as in people can have different sides and it doesn’t matter how you look like.
But as we see, Hyde looks different, worse than Jekyll and he is the criminal. Does Jekyll need to be transformed to look evil, to look like a criminal to satisfy the Victorian’s idea of specific appearance of criminals to be able to commit a crime? This is another issue that creates suspense and challenges minds in the book.
When Jekyll said: “I did not even exist” this is his desperate shout of fear when he realise his evil side is too developed to control it anymore. He feels suppressed.
Like in Frankenstein, the doctor is killed by his own creation. This is exactly what happens in this book as well. The doctor, Jekyll, suppressed by his creation, Hyde ends up dead. Except that he suicides, but the allegorical meaning is the same. And who knows, maybe after a while he would have been taken over forever by Hyde, even without his involvement of taking his life.
This means that maybe man is not able to create life without catastrophic drawbacks.
The secrecy in the novel is powerful, even the noblest of the man (a doctor, Jekyll) has something hidden from the others – his enemy Lanyon.
In conclusion, Stevenson’s novel has a huge impact on every reader, targeting audiences of different ages. The themes he uses were high appealing for Victorians, as fascinated about crime and creation of life, but as well for a modern audience as we didn’t solved the life’s mysteries yet.
