Part 2 of 3-
The first chapter of the story raises the question that will linger and remain a mystery until the final two chapters of the work narrated, first by Dr. Jekyll’s friend, Dr. Lanyon and then by Henry Jekyll, himself. That primary question is to the nature of the relationship that exists between Edward Hyde and Dr. Henry Jekyll. Along with the shadowy setting and dark mood established in this chapter, the gothic element that is the unknown is introduced. What is it that links these two beings of conflicting personalities together? Mr. Enfield’s story to Utterson about the incident he witnesses at the strange door allows for the introduction of the “dark earthly figure” into the plot.
The opening chapter, “Story of the Door,” confronts one of the key gothic motifs of the book. Mr. Enfield’s brief narration to Utterson about the events he witnessed near that door, are not only designed to introduce the character of Edward Hyde into the story, but also to give the door an added significance to the plot in gothic terms. In this chapter, Enfield establishes the character of Hyde as wicked and ‘Satan like.’ After a young child runs into Hyde on the street, he stomps on the girl, until Enfield and the girl’s parents seize him and demand retribution. Hoping to escape this predicament, Hyde offers to pay off the family with compensation and leads them to the door outside the building where he resides. He unlocks the door and enters, returning a few moments later with a check bearing another man’s signature, which the reader later learns is Jekyll’s.
So both the setting of the plot, within a dark, sordid city, and the mystery surrounding Hyde are quickly laid out in the first chapter and provide the book with gothic elements that are visual and built with suspense. The door, too seems to have added meaning and contributes to the theme of doubles or split selves running throughout. The door serves as a kind of sanctuary for Hyde, in that it is windowless with only one visible entrance. When he feel the threat of the mob that has gathered on him, he enters through the door and comes out with the solution that will save him and assure his survival, that being a signature from his “more civilized” alter-ego. The door seems to represent the threshold between the two split psyches of the civilized Doctor Jekyll and the primitive Mr. Hyde, whose animalistic instincts are to maintain survival.
To Jekyll the outside world becomes the gothic horror of the book. The streets of London, with their shadowy and ‘sinister’ buildings have become almost entirely the world in which Hyde is ruler, especially at night. It is where most of the violence of the story occurs. Jekyll must take refuge indoors, until even there he begins to feel enclosed upon. In a later scene when Enfield and Utterson are again taking a walk around town, they pass Jekyll’s premises and try, unsuccessfully to persuade him to join them on their walk. Here it can be observed by Jekyll’s response to the invitation, that his own identity is becoming blurred.
Structurally, the narrative brilliantly mimics the backward devolution of Jekyll to Hyde in the progression of the plot. The story is told backwards so that the readers must work their way towards the eventual confession of Henry Jekyll in the final chapter. This is a unique variation to a key characteristic of gothic fiction, in which the suspense is built up to the final climax where all or most of the mysteries are finally resolved. This is a structure of the story that even the characters willingly abide by. An example being when Utterson is called to Jekyll’s house by his butler and Utterson insists on returning home to read the letter of Dr. Lanyon before reading Jekyll’s letter detailing his full and revealing confession. Everything has its set order throughout the book and the final two chapters provide the domino effect in the revelation of all the unanswered questions.
In the closing chapter, Jekyll narrates in the letter the details surrounding his metamorphosis from doctor to Hyde. “I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.” (62). From this passage, the reader is witness to the loss of human existence within Dr. Jekyll. His spiritual side is ‘drowsed’ to sleep and now powerless to control the barbaric chaos of his other self. In a sense, Hyde’s full emergence continues the theme of devolving in that it returns Jekyll to an ‘infantile state of mind.’
In the form of Edward Hyde, this state could be described in psychological terms as a form of Auto-Eroticism. Those in this child-like state are incapable of maintaining a normal life as a citizen. Seeking what Freud would call the “pleasure principle” is the only aspirations of this individual being. Qualities emerge that are anarchic, sadistic, aggressive, self-absorbed and relentlessly pleasure-seeking in nature. All of which are characteristics exhibited in the form of Hyde. The study of gothic elements opens the window onto further examination in the areas of social and psychological theories.
“For as we have seen, in Freud the subject who emerges from this process (auto-eroticism) is a ‘split’ one, radically divided between the conscious life of the ego and the unconscious, or repressed desire.” (Eagleton 145) Hyde exudes that repressed desire and acts out those impulses that are typically locked a way deep in the unconscious mind. For Freud, once these unruly and insubordinate impulses are repressed, the mind (in the stage of adolescence) forms what he calls the ‘super ego’, which serves as a voice for the conscience. Ideas of morality and law develop and impulses for immediate satisfaction are postponed. He touches upon this extensively in his essay ‘The Uncanny’. “The subject of the ‘uncanny’ is undoubtedly related to what is frightening—to what arouses dread and horror…the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to excite fear in general.” (Leitch, 918) In it he hypothesizes that the ‘double’ appears as a delightful companion, only to betray itself and pursue evil persecution, often resulting in its’ own demise.
In Freudian terms, using psychoanalysis, Jekyll has not just devolved from man to beast; he has also devolved from man to child in Hyde’s endless pursuit for simple pleasure, with little concern for the consequences of his actions. “Between these two, I now felt I had to choose…to cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper.” (59). As this passage suggests, despite Jekyll’s attempts to repress the “Hyde” in himself, he is no longer capable of burying the other side of temptation internally.
Freud’s psychoanalysis would characterize these events as the ‘death drive.’ In that theory he remarks that the final goal of life is death. Jekyll’s actions at the end of the book mimic this belief in that the only escape he sees for himself is in demise. Dr. Lanyon, after witnessing Hyde’s transformation into Jekyll; also reiterates that notion that only death can relieve the shock that has eroded him. “I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous.” (50). Hyde’s reemergence and the subsequent removal of Jekyll, mirrors the aspect of psychoanalysis that says that we (unconsciously) “strive onwards only to be constantly driven backwards, struggling to return to a state before we were even conscious.” (Eagleton 139).
Jekyll’s deep-seeded desires struggling to break free from society’s civil limitations are what drive him to these experiments in the first place. Freud’s theory would argue that these strong urges for unrestraint behavior that Henry Jekyll repressed had the overwhelming potential to produce a split in the psyche from the very beginning. His reasoning in that assumption is due to his belief that it is deeply integrated in every man, because all beings were inherently wicked from birth. He would have displayed little surprise then in Jekyll’s devolution. He likely would have attributed Jekyll’s metamorphosis into Mr. Hyde as his personal escape from civility and accountability that hindered him throughout life as a respected doctor.
There is no question that Jekyll and Hyde provides the reader with numerous psychoanalytic interpretations. It remains a vast and influential part of the critical writing on the novel. It also gives the readers a deeper understanding of the underlying psychology that was prevalent during this period of time.
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