Stevenson explores evil through Mr. Hyde; he does this by creating an image of him as an animal or a beast “ape like fury”. This also fits in with the idea that people should suppress their emotions and instincts and so the only living things that would experience or show fury are animals.
In the text anyone who meets or sees Mr. Hyde reacts with horror and repulsion “…unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him.” The language Stevenson uses is very powerful and emotive. He does not simply put they were scared of Mr. Hyde, he writes that they were disgusted by him. People are only disgusted by things that are very wrong or evil, Stevenson uses this to represent that Mr. Hyde is evil. In people’s reactions Stevenson is also showing the hypocrisy in man. This is because Mr. Hyde is a part of Dr. Jekyll and everyone has his or her own Mr. Hyde inside of them, so by wanting to kill him and by being disgusted by him they are also disgusted by that same part of themselves.
In the story Mr. Hyde attacks a young girl in the street. When he does this he is described by Stevenson through Utterson as a Juggernaut. A Juggernaut is an engine and this creates a picture in the reader’s mind of Mr. Hyde going very fast and of grinding, screaming machinery but it also shows that he has no conscience. By comparing Mr. Hyde to a machine Stevenson is showing that he has no feelings, it also represents that he was not born naturally but created by Dr. Jekyll as machines are by humans. Stevenson may have linked Mr. Hyde to a machine because at the time in which he lived people were very wary of science and believed that it was in effect ‘playing God’ which was very wrong to them. This may in turn be a sign of Dr. Jekyll’s ultimate fate because he was doing something so wrong and not taking responsibility for it that in the end it would catch up with him and he would be punished by God. In the description of the attack on the girl Stevenson has also used a certain amount of pathetic falacey as he writes that it took place “about three o’clock of a black winter morning”. Pathetic falacey is when nature reacts and mirrors human emotions and what is going on in human lives. Thus this then shows that Mr. Hyde is evil and that bad things are going to happen. Stevenson has made the attack happen in the winter, this is important because it continues the theme of duality that is present in this novella. This is because winter is the opposite of summer and in the winter things are dead but in the summer they are alive, these seasons can be compared to good and evil, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However the use of seasons also shows us that Stevenson did not think of good and evil as total opposites and that they are not the only things that are relevant. For example although the year can be broken down into just winter and summer, there is also autumn and spring. So there is not only good and evil but also many others including higher/lower and spirit/body, all of which are present in a person.
When Mr. Hyde attacks Carew, Carew is described as “an aged and beautiful gentleman” This description shows that Carew is good as beautiful is a word often used to describe saints and churches which are good and not evil, the word gentleman also shows that he is good as in Stevenson’s time it was used to describe middle class men, who were considered to be better than others and because of their breeding (who their parents were) were considered by themselves and others to have just been born better than others. Already in the text the reader has discovered that Mr. Hyde is evil and so it is to them a meeting of good and evil. Mr. Hyde is described as having a “great flame of anger” As in Victorian times people were supposed to control their emotions and suppress their instincts and the fact that Mr. Hyde doesn’t do this shows that he is not a gentleman or a member of society.
Jekyll’s house is a representation of the theme of duality that runs through the text. This is because there are basically two houses connected in an L shape, each with their own front doors and from one of the frount doors you cannot tell it is connected to the other. This shows the duality of Dr. Jekyll’s life and the way he has hidden the negative aspects of himself. This can be compared to the two faces of a coin, they are both totally different but somehow the same and if you are looking at one side you cannot see the other.
In the text there are several narrators and Stevenson does not use a linear narrative, this is very effective as the original Victorian readers would not know what was going to happen at the end and so by telling the story through Enfield, Utterson, Lanyon and at the end Jekyll himself Stevenson is building up suspense and mystery until the climax that is Jekyll’s confession. Today almost all the readers of this novella will know the story as it is so famous and widely told but that does not mean it is irrelevant today. There are many warnings from Stevenson that are still relevant to a modern day audience such as; suppression can lead to violence, drugs are wrong and don’t play God. This last one is particularley important and relevant due to the advances of science, which have seen scientists able to clone human embryos. As we can see in ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ and also in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein” people who play with nature and do not take responsibility for their work and creations ultimately end up creating evil things which they do not understand or know how to control. It could be said that Stevenson wrote the story as a warning to Victorian society about repression and science or maybe it was just an interesting mystery story, which happens to have like many fictions and stories to have become almost true.
To conclude I think that evil is effectively portrayed in ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. Stevenson does this by focusing mainly on the themes of duality and suppression of and in human nature.
