Edwards Hyde

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Manon Audigé

GCSE English language and literature

This assignment will explore Mr Hyde, in R.L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, first published in 1886. This character is central to the plot as he serves to illustrate Stevenson’s main themes of the dangerous attraction to our dark side, the intrinsically human or bestial sides of man and the duality of our nature.

First published as a gothic horror story, this novella contains conventional gothic aspects as well as unconventional ones, both representing different sides of split personality. Mr Hyde seems to be a stereotyped gothic monster for he is referred to as “extraneous evil” and a “curse of mankind”. This is gothic-like in that it corresponds to the dark, evil, obscurity that qualifies this genre. On the other hand, Mr Hyde is subtler than a stereotype in the sense that he is not purely evil as in gothic literature. Hyde can speak “civilly enough”, these rare occasions being little bursts of his other side. For the dark character of Hyde shares his body with a good character, making him unconventional and interesting. This irregularity is created to correspond to real life. The fact that “man is not truly one, but truly two” as represented in this novella means that all human beings have a good part in them as well as a bad one. Mr Hyde symbolizes this for he incarnates the evil side of Dr Jekyll, and thus his secondary personality.

The gothic dimension of this novella is also present in the atmosphere around Hyde. Stevenson’s use of pathetic fallacy serves to create an “atmosphere of evil”, a very effective way of creating a dark atmosphere whenever Hyde is present, in keeping with his character and acts. Indeed, this technique of the gothic genre of this story is prevalent whenever Hyde is around, like the “first fog of the season”, the “great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven” in a “district of some city in a nightmare. Hyde has just committed the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, and this use of language reinforces the sinister situation.

Throughout the novella, the appearance of Mr Hyde is never more than an incomplete sketch, and he therefore remains a mystery. He is often said to give “an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation”. Mr Hyde seems to have some kind of defect, although no one really knows what it is. This description is given at the very beginning of the novella, setting the intrigue right from the start, and making the reader wonder who this man is. This lack of description could well be a way to universalize Hyde. By not telling the reader what he looks like, Stevenson turns Mr Hyde into a global representation of evil. It could be therefore assumed that Stevenson wrote this story to teach the reader a lesson about man’s intrinsic evil side.

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The little information we do have about Mr Hyde is very symbolic of the character’s mind. The “dwarfish figure” of this “really damnable man”, along with his “downright detestable” appearance all make Hyde seem indeed very displeasing and ugly, as he is said to have “Satan’s signature upon (his) face”. Stevenson uses pejorative vocabulary to describe Hyde in the rare occasions in which he does, in such a way as to make Hyde as detestable as possible. His exterior, although we cannot picture it, is ugly and deformed. His face is said to be “the face of a man ...

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