Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Style)

Style

Point of View

Stevenson continually alters the point of view in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which creates suspense and reinforces the novel's concentration on duplicity. The novel opens with a focus on John Gabriel Utterson, Dr. Jekyll's friend and attorney, and his gradual uncovering of the horror that lies at the heart of the story. Then the nar-rative immediately shifts to Utterson's friend and relative, Richard Enfield, who first informs Utter-son of the existence of Edward Hyde. Enfield expresses the problem faced by those who encounter Hyde and try to describe him when he comments, "I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. I can't describe him." Others who see him are struck by a "haunting sense of unexpressed deformity." The characters' inability to gain a clear vision of Hyde reflects his nature. Hyde represents Jekyll's dark side, an integral part of his soul that he had repressed for years. In his assessment of Hyde, Jekyll insists, "This too was myself." Yet readers do not gain a full understanding of Hyde or Jekyll until the end of the book when Jekyll makes his confession.

Narrative

In his overview of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Stewart F. Sanderson comments on the construction of the narrative: "The pace of the narration, the deft way in which details supporting both the action and its unravelling are interwoven throughout the narrative, and the economy with which the story's terrifying atmosphere is created, combine to form a work of extraordinary psychological depth and powerful impact."

Irving S. Saposnik, in his book on Stevenson, also praises the novel's narrative construction:

The three separable narrative voices — Enfield, Lanyon, Jekyll — are placed in successive order so that they add increasing rhetorical and psychological dimension to the events they describe. In contrast to other multiple narratives whose several perspectives often raise questions of subjective truth and moral ambiguity, these individual narratives in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde provide a linear regularity of information — an incremental catalogue of attitudes toward Hyde's repulsiveness and Jekyll's decline.

Style

Several critics have praised the novel's style. Stephen Gwynn, in his book on Stevenson, insists that the novel is "a fable that lies nearer to poetry than to ordinary prose fiction." In his lecture on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Vladimir Nabokov comments, "Stevenson had to rely on style very much in order to perform the trick, in order to master the two main difficulties confronting him: (1) to make the magic potion a plausible drug based on a chemist's ingredients and (2) to make Jekyll's evil side before and after the "hydization" a believable evil." Nabokov suggests that Stevenson accomplishes these goals through his use of setting and symbolism in the novel.

Setting

Stevenson provides setting details that gain symbolic significance in the novel. His description of London helps set a mood of suspense and suggests a foreboding sense of evil. In the morning fog, London becomes

dark like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed like a district of some city in a nightmare.

Stevenson's description of the section of Soho where Hyde resides is especially ominous. As Utterson and Enfield walk through the city at the beginning of the novel, they find themselves in "a busy quarter" of London and pass a "certain sinister block of building" that "bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence." The door to Hyde's quarters, in front of which the two men pause, is "blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess. The schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages."

Symbol

Stevenson uses other symbolic devices in the story, including the names "Jekyll" and "Hyde," which are of Scandinavian origin. Hyde comes from the Danish word hide which means "a haven" and Jekyll comes from the Danish name Jokulle, which means "an icicle." Nabokov argues, "Not knowing these simple derivations one would be apt to find all kinds of symbolic meanings, especially in Hyde, the most obvious being that Hyde is a kind of hiding place for Dr. Jekyll, in whom the jocular doctor and the killer are combined." Utterson's name closely fits his austere nature and relates to one of the novel's themes — the repression of personality.

Nabokov finds another important symbol in the story. The reader eventually learns that Jekyll's dissecting room, which he altered for his experiments, has become Hyde's quarters and the place where the transformations take place. Nabokov notes, "The relations of [Jekyll and Hyde] are typ-ified by Jekyll's house, which is half Jekyll and half Hyde."

Saposnik concludes,

the topography of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde may be seen as a study in symbolic location, a carefully worked out series of contrasts between exterior modes and interior realities. Like much of Victorian life and letters, most of the story's action is physically internalized behind four walls. Utterson's ruminations, Lanyon's seduction, and Jekyll-Hyde's death all occur within the protective confines of what Stevenson in an essay termed "The Ideal House."

This Victorian home sheltered its inhabitants from public scrutiny.

Saposnik notes that as the action becomes more internal, so does the psychological direction of the novel:

Although the reader's first views of the house are external, the action soon directs him to the hall, then to the study, and finally to the ominous experiments behind the closed door of the former dissection laboratory. As Poole and Utterson break down the last barrier to Jekyll's secret, they literally and metaphorically destroy his one remaining refuge; by invading his physical sanctuary, they force him into a psychological admission whose only possibility is death.