Mr Hyde description is vague and ambiguous. He is described as being ‘pale and dwarfish’. To everyone that looked at him, he seemed to be very ugly and said that ‘he gave an impression of deformity without any namable malformation’. This engages the reader because the writer leaves their imagination to create a picture of what Hyde looks like. Utterson gives a very harsh description of Hyde. ‘unknown disgust, loathing and fear’ are some of the words he uses to describe him. In the oxford dictionary ‘horror’ is defined as ‘an intense feeling of loathing and fear’. The term ‘troglodytic’ was a very early form of man. This reinforces the term ‘dwarfish’ because the very early form of man was very short. It was Charles Darwin’s theory that said that man had evolved from apes. Much of this is included in the text. Hyde is described as being ‘ape-like’, ‘monkey like’ and ‘squeal like a rat’. This is directly connected to Charles Darwin’s theory. This suggests that Hyde is the beast in man and that everyone has a beast within them.
Fog is a tradition used in mysterious stories and is a gothic horror setting. The reader anticipates what will happen next and this creates suspense. It obscures the readers view. Much of the story is set in darkness/fog. It also creates mystery and information is occulted. This makes the reader very tense. It leaves the reader on the edge of their seat. This will engage the reader and encourage them to read on. Examples of this are ‘first fog’ and ‘reinvasion of darkness’ that are both used in Carew Murder Case. Also, part of the story is set at midnight. This is the change from one day to another and is like the transformation of Jekyll to Hyde. ‘in the small hours’ and ‘the early part of the night’ are some quotations from The Carew Murder Case.
The actual transformation that occurs from Jekyll to Hyde is not revealed until Dr Lanyon’s Narrative. It is so shocking that Dr Lanyon actually dies from the incident. This is because Lanyon sees the evil within himself and within everyone. This also shows that the Victorian morality was a very respectable one. As Hyde drank the potion ‘a cry followed’ and ‘he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table’. In this sentence a triadic cluster is deployed to intensify how Hyde reacts to the potion and he also cries for help, suggesting a powerful reaction to the drug. His ‘infected eyes’ suggest he has a disease. The first clue that is given to show he is transforming is his ‘features seemed to melt and alter’. Immediately after this Lanyon had ‘sprung’ to his feet. He then raised his arm to cover his eyes and his mind ‘submerged in terror’. This was the reaction of Lanyon and he was horrified. When the transformation is over he describes Jekyll as ‘pale and shaken, and half fainting’ and ‘like a man restored from death’. Victorians were shocked by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because of a number of things. Firstly, they questioned the medical profession. Burke and Hare were selling fresh corpses to a University. The University thought that they were robbing graves, but did not know that they were actually murdering people. This inspired another book that R.L.Stevenson wrote entitled ‘The bodysnatchers’ And when the stage version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was being played at the west end, a mass murderer by the name of Jack the Ripper was brutally killing prostitutes. He was thought to have been surgically trained due to the way he cut the bodies open. Press reports said that he was a real life Hyde. A lot of film versions showed Hyde killing women, often prostitutes. These cases increased the horror of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because of the association with real life murder cases. People confused Jack the Ripper with Hyde.
Secondly, the Victorians are still renowned for their respectability, but they were shocked by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This was because of the characters which seemed respectable were in actual fact indulging in secret desires. Jekyll had ‘dark pleasures, whereas Utterson had ‘black secrets’ and Enfield was ‘in London at 3am’. The novel suggested that the Victorian society were hypocrites because under their respectable surface were secret desires.
Another point is Christian beliefs were strongest in the 1880’s. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was a book about the struggle between good and evil and suggested everyone was partly evil. But the Victorian society were not as willing to accept this as the modern society is. Also the modern society is more willing to indulge in these secret desires. This is because today’s society is less religious than in the 1880’s.
Finally, in 1859 Charles Darwin wrote the book entitled ‘Origin of the species’. This caused uproar because for the first time in history people began to question religious beliefs. The whole of the Victorian community was horrified by the idea that humans had evolved from apes. This links into Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because there was a lot of reference to this evolutionary theory. Hyde was described as being ‘ape-like’ and ‘troglodytic’. The point that Stevenson was making was that there is a Hyde in everyone and Hyde represents the beast in man.
The conclusion I have come to is that, in the 1880’s, people didn’t have entertainment like TV and films. They were entertained from books. When Jekyll and Hyde was published, it entertained many Victorian readers. It scared them because they had no other source of entertainment apart from books and so they wouldn’t know about these horrible things. However, nowadays the modern society watches horror films on a daily basis and it is getting even harder for film producers to ‘scare’ the reader. For example, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is now a cartoon series. Children watch it at home and laugh at it. They are not scared by it. It seems tamed to us now. Because of all these modern inventions books are now getting less and less popular. This is why we are not horrified by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Adhal Mahmood