Stevenson insists here that sex is not in itself sinful, and that it is “inverted lust”—the corrupt Puritan love affair with a sexuality it ostensibly condemns—rather than sexuality that produces the “diabolic” in man. Hypocrisy, not sexuality, is here held to blame for the production of the monster Hyde, and Stevenson uses the word “hypocrisy” as a shorthand for the entire system of repression and respectability exposed in the story of Jekyll and Hyde.
While Enfield tells Utterson the name of the villain—Hyde—he is unwilling to disclose that of the respectable man he has conjecturally identified as a victim of blackmail. But this information is unnecessary: Utterson has already recognized the name Hyde as the beneficiary of the troubling will of his friend and client Dr. Henry Jekyll, which provides that in the event of the latter’s death or disappearance of more than three months, all of Jekyll’s possessions will pass to Edward Hyde. This idea strikes Utterson as fanciful at best, dangerous at worst. The notion of blackmail still in his head, Utterson digs at the problem of Enfield’s story to the point of insomnia: “Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures” (pp. 14- 15). The “scroll of lighted pictures” is an inherently sensational medium (the title character of “Markheim” is physically overwhelmed by the memory of a long-ago picture show featuring famous murders of the nineteenth century (p. 232). While the technology for cinematic film had yet to be developed, magic lantern shows were common throughout the nineteenth century, and the picture show represents an addictive mass-market pleasure akin to gin or laudanum. What is described here sounds almost like a drug-induced fantasy. Hyde operates on Utterson’s imagination like alcohol or opium on the addict, enslaving his mind and producing visual scenes of hallucinatory intensity. (Perhaps Stevenson’s story exerts a similar fascination over the mind of the reader: The language of Richard Mansfield’s biographer certainly suggests that the theatrical adaptation itself represented a kind of drug, and that Mansfield regularly “gave the public less of ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ than was wanted, and so kept the appetite stimulated” [Wilstach, p. 152].)
Indeed, after a night of strange dreams in which Utterson is able to see Hyde’s figure but not his face (his identity, symbolically speaking), “there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer’s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde” (p. 15). Like Bluebeard’s wife, drawn to the prohibited chamber of horrors under a kind of compulsion, Utterson has been infected by his proximity to Hyde with a curiosity that brings him into psychological danger. We may question Utterson’s judgment here: On the basis of the small scraps of information he possesses, is the lawyer really justified in “haunt[ing] the door in the by-street” (p. 15) with the goal of discovering Hyde’s identity, or has he become a stalker?
When Utterson finally lays eyes on Hyde, his observations only confirm the sense of mysterious deformity noted by earlier witnesses:
Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him (p. 18).
This sighting gives Utterson little insight, however, into the basis of the relationship between Jekyll and the “ ‘hardly human’ ” Hyde. He remains convinced that the root of it must be blackmail resulting from some lapse in Jekyll’s past: “ ‘He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, pede claudo, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault’ ” (pp. 19-20). Utterson clearly feels solidarity with Jekyll, on the grounds of their shared professional status and of the generous premise that sin can be effaced by many years of virtuous living. He worries, however, that Jekyll may have already given himself over completely into Hyde’s power—a fear supported by the evidence of the will.
When Utterson next sees Jekyll—memorably described on his first appearance as “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness” (p. 21)—he presses Jekyll to confide in him. Jekyll resists: “ ‘Indeed it isn’t what you fancy; it is not as bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I will tell you one thing: the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde’ ” (p. 22). Jekyll’s words sound rather like an addict’s increasingly implausible denials of dependence on the drug. Like Utterson, the reader suspects that Jekyll expresses a fantasy, not a reality, and that it will be almost impossible for Jekyll to rid himself of Hyde. Under pressure, Utterson promises Jekyll that he will support Hyde’s rights in the will, though even this concession leaves the lawyer deeply uneasy.
More than a year passes before the story’s next major incident, recounted in the chapter titled “The Carew Murder Case”: “a crime of singular ferocity . . . rendered all the more notable by the high position of the victim” (p. 24) . The murder is witnessed by a maidservant who sees every detail of the violent encounter between Hyde and Sir Danvers Carew, “an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair” (p. 24) who represents all the civic virtues Hyde loathes. When Sir Danvers steps back in the face of Hyde’s rage, the narrative recounts, “Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway” (p. 25). Utterson is called in because the victim lacks identification but has in his pocket “a sealed and stamped envelope ... which bore the name and address of Mr. Utterson.” Utterson not only identifies the victim but recognizes in the murder weapon, “broken and battered as it was ... [a stick] that he had himself presented many years before to Henry Jekyll” (p. 26). It is curious not just that Utterson’s name is found on the corpse—we never learn the contents of the letter—but that the stick itself originally came from Utterson, confirming the reader’s sense that Utterson is somehow psychologically implicated in Hyde’s crimes. Does Hyde’s violence spring from an impulse suppressed not just in Jekyll but in Utterson as well? As Utterson and the police inspector travel together to Hyde’s residence, through the dramatic setting of a fog that renders morning twilight and Soho “like a district of some city in a nightmare,” we learn that Utterson “was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law’s officers, which may at times assail the most honest” (p. 26).
At Hyde’s lodgings they find a pile of ashes in the hearth containing the remnants of the murder weapon and of Hyde’s own checkbook, that essential accessory of identity in the modern world. Yet Hyde himself has vanished:
His family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders (p. 28).
In contrast, Utterson finds Jekyll at home the same afternoon, visiting him in “the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or dissecting rooms” (p. 29). It is no coincidence that Jekyll’s chemical experiments are conducted in a former dissecting room and surgical theater. Though it is not explicitly mentioned, Stevenson’s description invokes the violent and sordid history of anatomy: Not all resurrection men (as they were often called) obtained cadavers like Burke and Hare by murdering their victims, of course, but they very commonly robbed graves to obtain corpses for dissect
ion, with the full knowledge and complicity of the surgeons who purchased them. (Stevenson’s preoccupation with Burke and Hare features more prominently in “The Body-Snatcher,” also included in this collection.) The shades of Burke and Hare hang over Jekyll’s workplace, representing the coupling of medicine and murder in the dark of night: “The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of the garden.” The place is dingy and windowless, “the theatre, once crowded with eager students and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw” (p. 29).
Jekyll himself looks “deathly sick” when Utterson is admitted to see him, and when the lawyer asks him whether he has been mad enough to hide the murderer, Jekyll swears a solemn oath that he is done with Hyde: “ ‘I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with him in this world’ ” (p. 30) . In support of this, Jekyll also gives Utterson a letter to clear him of any suspicion in the murder:
The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed “Edward Hyde”: and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer’s benefactor, Dr. Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked this letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he had looked for; and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions (pp. 30-31) .
Yet Utterson’s attention is also caught by a number of suspicious details. Though Jekyll claims the letter was hand-delivered that day, the doctor’s butler testifies that nothing came by messenger to the front door. Moreover, Utterson’s head clerk happens to be “a great student and critic of handwriting” (p. 32), and Utterson hands over the letter (of interest because it is “ ‘a murderer’s autograph’ ”) to him for analysis. Utterson’s clerk is in the vanguard of the new science. Police technology had only recently begun to develop the practices of document examination, by which handwriting was identified and forgery detected. The clerk’s interest may also be connected to the practice of graphology, the study of handwriting based on the premise that an individual’s “hand” expresses his or her personality. A dinner invitation meanwhile arrives from Dr. Jekyll, and when the clerk compares it with the letter signed by Hyde mentioned above, he comments on “ ‘a rather singular resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: only differently sloped.’ ” Utterson locks the note in his safe: “ ‘What!’ he thought. ‘Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer!’‘ And his blood ran cold in his veins” (p. 33).Utterson continues to misunderstand the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde, of course; the best evidence that the two men are really one is that they share the identical handwriting, a clue to the ultimate working out of the plot that Stevenson hides here in plain view.
Now that Hyde himself has vanished, tales of his past misdeeds surface, but Utterson is moderately comforted by the present state of affairs: ‘The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde. Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll” (p. 34) . Jekyll seems relieved of the burden of what Utterson still takes to have been blackmail: ”He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer ; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service ; and for more than two months, the doctor was at peace” (p. 34). After two months of business as usual, however, Utterson is repeatedly denied entrance at Jekyll’s, and he finally has recourse for support in their mutual friend Lanyon, estranged from Jekyll for some time. Utterson has not understood the gravity of the falling-out between Jekyll and Lanyon, for Lanyon has said little about it beyond expressing his anger that Jekyll has become ” ‘too fanciful’ “ and spouted ” ’unscientific balderdash’ “ (p. 14), leading the lawyer to put it down to a scientific disagreement between two medical men.
He is shocked to find Lanyon on the verge of death and refusing to speak of Jekyll: “ ‘I beg that you will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead,’ ” Lanyon says (p. 35). Jekyll himself subsequently refuses to have any contact with Utterson, expressing the following wish by letter:
“I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence” (p. 36).
The mystery is compounded when Lanyon dies shortly afterward, leaving for Utterson a letter with a sealed enclosure marked “ ‘not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll.’ ” Utterson has been pushed by this time almost to the breaking point: “A great curiosity came on the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to the bottom of these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his dead friend were stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost corner of his private safe” (p. 37). Yet while he does not act on this curiosity, Utterson is hardly the same man as before: “It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may be doubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired the society of his surviving friend with the same eagerness” (p. 37) . Finally, on a walk following a route similar to the one on which Utterson first heard Enfield’s narrative about Hyde, the cousins come upon Jekyll in the courtyard behind the house where Hyde appeared. As they watch, “the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below” (p. 39).
In the last part of the main narrative Utterson receives a visit from the butler Poole, whose master, Jekyll, has been shut up in his cabinet or private office for the best part of a week. Utterson returns with the butler to Jekyll’s house, where they find the staff gathered in mortal terror. Utterson follows the butler into the laboratory, through the surgical theater, and to the foot of the staircase leading to Jekyll’s cabinet. The voice that answers their spoken inquiry sounds nothing like the doctor‘s, and the butler is convinced that his master has been murdered. The inhabitant of the cabinet, whoever he may be, has been calling out all week for a supply of a mysterious drug that ’is wanted bitter bad, sir, whatever for,’ ” in the butler’s words to Utterson. ” ’For God’s sake, find me some of the old,’ ” Jekyll has written in the note requesting the equivalent of his previous supply, as opposed to the “ ‘impure’ ” sample he has lately received (pp. 43-44). Utterson has a rational explanation for what Poole thinks he’s seen, a masked creature “ ‘digging among the crates’ ” in the operating theater in the vain hope of discovering a supply of the drug: Jekyll must have been seized (the lawyer suggests) “with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer” (pp. 44-45), probably syphilis or some other sexually transmitted disease. But the butler knows what he saw: a “ ‘masked thing like a monkey,’ ” “ ‘much of the same bigness’ ” as Mr. Hyde (p. 46). The language used to describe Hyde consistently makes him out to belong to a different species than the human beings in the story, tapping into an unattractive contemporary discourse of difference and degeneracy that is highly raciali zed. (Stevenson’s 1885 story ”Olalla,” not included in this collection, offers another interesting exploration of the idea of degeneracy and casts light on aspects of his depiction of Hyde.) What can the two men do but force their way into the cabinet? The individual they be
lieve to be Hyde calls out for mercy, but they hack their way in with an axe.
What they find is a sight at once ordinary and uncanny. Amid a quiet domestic scene, the fire glowing on the hearth and the kettle whistling—it seems an inadvertently comical detail that the villainous Hyde should drink such an ordinary beverage as tea—they find the body of Hyde, dressed in the much-too-large clothes of Dr. Jekyll and dead by self administered cyanide. When they search for the body of Jekyll, however, the two men have no luck: “Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.” All they find are the signs of a chemical experiment and one or two other disturbing artifacts: “There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand, with startling blasphemies” (p. 50) . They also find yet another envelope for Utterson: a will, written in terms similar to the last, though “in place of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement, read the name of Gabriel John Utterson” (p. 50) . It is accompanied by a note from Jekyll dated that day, which gives the two men some hope that the doctor may still be alive, and a third enclosure, a substantial packet of papers that Utterson is instructed to read after he opens Lanyon’s sealed narrative. In the final scene of the story’s third-person narration, Utterson tells the butler that he will go home and read the papers, then return at midnight, at which point they will notify the police. Yet the reader never sees Utterson again: The story’s remaining pages are entirely occupied by the first-person narratives of Lanyon and Jekyll, and there is no positive evidence that Utterson ever goes to the police at all. What, after all, could he tell them?
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classi Page 3
