Victorian ideas about Civilization and Progress
In its narrative of a respectable doctor who transforms himself into a savage murderer, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tapped directly into the anxieties of the Victorian era. It was a time of fast technological progress and an age in which Britain was exploring the world and expanding its empire. By the end of the century, however, many people were beginning to question the ideals of
progress and civilization that had defined the era.
With the idea of one body containing both the good Dr Jekyll and evil Mr Hyde, Stevenson’s novel demonstrates the close link between civilization and savagery, good and evil. Jekyll’s attraction to the freedom from restraint that Hyde enjoys mirrors Victorian England’s secret attraction to allegedly
‘savage’ non-Western cultures, even as Europe claimed superiority over them. Even as Victorian England tried to reject these instinctual sides of life – such as violence, aggression and impulsivity – it found them secretly fascinating. Indeed, society’s repression of its darker side only increased the fascination. Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde shows this fascination in Jekyll’s interest in Mr Hyde, but his horrible end makes us questions the dangers of this interest
c) The Fear of the Primitive
In Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson sets up a strong contrast between the primitive, savage, animalistic self and the civilized, respectable self. One way to understand ‘primitive’ is to think of a toddler or small animal, or basic human urges – greedy, selfish, not polite. The primitive self doesn’t understand social conventions or taboos (=things you shouldn’t do). It’s easily frightened, quick to fight. In adults, there are basic lusts and desires. No understanding of law. This is represented by Mr Hyde. He is the personification not just of evil, but of ‘primitive’ human urges. He is a very extreme version of something we all have inside, but which we keep hidden. In Freudian psychology, this selfish, basic part of our nature is called the Id. The Id is usually kept in balance with the other parts of our nature. We may want to be greedy, lustful, rude, etc., but we have been brought up to be polite and have self-control, and respect other people, not just ourselves. We (unlike Mr Hyde) are civilized and ‘respectable’. We care what society (other people) think of us. In Jekyll and Hyde, society and civilization are represented (‘personified’) by Lanyon and Utterson (among others).
The Victorians feared that our primitive self was always trying to break out from our self-control. This constant battle between our primitive and civilized selves causes tension. Think about how violently the respectable characters in the book always want to stamp Hyde out. They dislike him violently, and even want to kill him. This contrast shows the conflict between primitive urges and civilization.
d) Scientific Progress, Evolution and Darwinism
Before Jekyll and Hyde was written, Charles Darwin theorised that man was a form of ape, a type of animal. This was a big problem. Animals, and ‘nature’ were thought of as brutal and primitive. Also, if man were a type of animal, this raised questions about Christian beliefs. This shocked Victorians and let to a crisis of faith and identity. Stevenson shows this tension by showing how people are terrified by Hyde’s ape-like, primitive behaviour. In Hyde, Stevenson shows us the horror of the troglodytic man-as-ape in contrast to the more pleasing idea of man as god-like.
In the novel, religion and science are strong themes which are often in conflict. Jekyll’s ‘fantastic’ experiments are so shocking to the respectable, conventional Dr Lanyon that they kill him, and indeed, end up killing Jekyll. At the darkest moments of the novel there are many appeals to God, none of which seem to be answered. There is no happy ending in this book. The dark experiments of science only end in death, destruction and despair.
e) The Duality of Human Nature
Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde centres upon an idea of humanity as dual in nature. Stevenson waits until Jekyll’s letter in Chapter 10 to explore this idea of dual human nature explicitly, only after showing us all of the events of the novel, including Hyde’s crimes and Jekyll’s ultimate death. Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and he imagines the human soul as the battleground for an “angel” and a “fiend,” each struggling for mastery. But his potion, which he hoped would separate and purify each element, succeeds only in bringing the dark side into being— Hyde emerges, but he has no angelic counterpart. Once unleashed, Hyde slowly takes over, until Jekyll ceases to exist. If man is half angel and half fiend, one wonders what happens to the “angel” at the end of the novel. Perhaps the angel gives way permanently to Jekyll’s devil. Or perhaps Jekyll is
simply mistaken: man is not “truly two” but is first and foremost the primitive creature embodied in Hyde, brought under temporary control by civilization, law, and conscience. According to this theory, the potion simply strips away the mask of civilisation, to reveal man’s essential nature. Certainly, the novel goes out of its way to paint Hyde as animalistic—he is hairy and ugly; he
conducts himself according to instinct rather than reason; Utterson describes him as a “troglodyte,” or primitive creature. Yet if Hyde were just an animal, we would not expect him to take such
delight in crime. Indeed, he seems to commit violent acts against innocents for no reason except the joy of it—something that no animal would do. He appears deliberately and happily immoral rather than amoral; he knows the moral law and basks in his breach of it. For an animalistic creature, furthermore, Hyde seems oddly at home in the urban landscape. All of these observations imply that perhaps civilization, too, has its dark side. Ultimately, while Stevenson clearly shows human nature as possessing two aspects, he leaves us to question whether we are truly both good and evil, or whether we have to pretend to be good to hide the evil lurking beneath.
f) The Importance of Reputation
For the characters in Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, preserving one’s reputation emerges as all important. The significance of this value system is evident in the way that gentlemen such as Utterson and Enfield avoid gossip at all costs; they see gossip as a great destroyer of reputation. Similarly, when Utterson suspects Jekyll first of being blackmailed and then of sheltering Hyde from the police, he does not make his suspicions known; part of being Jekyll’s good friend is a willingness to keep his secrets and not ruin his respectability. The importance of reputation in the novel also reflects the importance of appearances, which often hide a sordid underside. In many instances in the
novel, Utterson, true to his Victorian society, strongly wishes not only to preserve Jekyll’s reputation but also to preserve the appearance of order and decorum, even as he senses a vile truth lurking underneath.
Key Themes and Symbols
a) Violence Against Innocents
The text repeatedly depicts Hyde as a creature of great evil and countless vices. Although the reader learns the details of only two of Hyde’s crimes, the nature of both underlines his evil and depravity. Both involve violence directed against innocents in particular. In the first instance, the victim of Hyde’s violence is a small, female child whom he tramples; in the second instance, it is a gentle and much-beloved old man. The fact that Hyde injures a girl and ruthlessly murders a man, neither of whom has done anything to provoke his rage or to deserve death, emphasises the extreme immorality of Jekyll’s dark side when it is unleashed. Hyde’s brand of evil represents not just a lapse from good but an outright attack on it.
b) Secrecy and Silence
Repeatedly in the novel, characters fail to speak or refuse to articulate themselves. Either they seem unable to put the horrifying sights they have seen into words, such as the physical characteristics of Hyde, or they deliberately avoid certain conversations. Enfield and Utterson cut off their discussion of Hyde in the first chapter out of a distaste for gossip; Utterson refuses to share his suspicions about Jekyll throughout his investigation of his client’s situation.
Moreover, neither Jekyll in his final confession nor the third person narrator in the rest of the novel ever provides any details of Hyde’s evil behaviour and secret vices. The characters’ refusal to discuss the shocking and immoral reflects the Victorian belief in hiding sins in secret. Victorian society believed in reputation above all and preferred to repress or even deny the truth if that truth threatened to expose immorality.
c) Urban Terror
Throughout the novel, Stevenson establishes a link between the urban (city) landscape of Victorian London and the dark events surrounding Hyde. He achieves this effect through the use of nightmarish imagery, in which dark streets twist and coil, or lie draped in fog, forming a sinister landscape to conceal the crimes that take place there. Chilling visions of the city appear in
Utterson’s nightmares as well, and the text notes that: He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city…. The figure [of Hyde] … haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly… through wider labyrinths of lamp-lighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming.” In such images, Stevenson paints Hyde as an urban creature, utterly at home in the darkness of London—where countless crimes take place, the novel suggests, without anyone knowing.
d) Jekyll’s House and Laboratory
Dr Jekyll lives in an expensive home, characterised by Stevenson as having “a great air of wealth and comfort.” His laboratory is described as “a certain sinister block of building … [which] bore in every feature the marks of profound and sordid negligence.” With its decaying walls and door and air of neglect, the laboratory quite neatly symbolises the corrupt and immoral Hyde. Similarly, the respectable, wealthy-looking main house symbolises the respectable, moral Jekyll. Moreover, the connection between the buildings represents the connection between the duality they represent. The buildings are adjoined but look out on two different streets. It is not at first clear that the two doors are part of the same residence, just as we are at first unable to detect the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde.
e) Hyde’s Physical Appearance
According to the vague and indefinite remarks made by his overwhelmed observers, Hyde appears repulsively ugly and deformed, small, shrunken, and hairy. His physical ugliness and deformity symbolises his moral hideousness and warped ethics. Indeed, for a Victorian reader, the connection between such ugliness and Hyde’s wickedness might have been seen as more than
symbolic. Many people believed in the science of physiognomy, which held that one could identify a criminal by physical appearance. Additionally, Hyde’s small stature may represent the fact that, as Jekyll’s dark side, he has been repressed for years, prevented from growing and flourishing. His
hairiness may indicate that he is not so much an evil side of Jekyll as the embodiment of Jekyll’s instincts, the primitive and animalistic core beneath Jekyll’s polished exterior.
Abstracted from here
THE SHAKESPEARE OPTION 