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Jekyll & Hyde. Chapter 10 – Jekyll’s Full Statement. Summary. Jekyll tells us that he was born to a wealthy family and was well educated. He admits people liked his light-hearted good nature, but personally, it annoyed him – he preferred to present an unchanging seriousness to the public.
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Jekyll & Hyde Chapter 10 – Jekyll’s Full Statement
Summary • Jekyll tells us that he was born to a wealthy family and was well educated. • He admits people liked his light-hearted good nature, but personally, it annoyed him – he preferred to present an unchanging seriousness to the public. • He therefore decided to conceal all of his pleasures. • He says that it was not due to his faults, but rather his aspirations that he decided to become what he did. He says he had “even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed me in those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature” (p69) • He admits that he has done degrading, horrible acts, but inevitably, he enjoyed it and did not see himself as any sort of hypocrite:“Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest” (p70).
Summary • He explains: “I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both...” (p70) • Because he has recognised the good and evil within every human, he endevoured to be able to separate the two. • His medical studies then began to focus on man’s duality. • He believed that if he was able to separate the evil from man, then he would be able to eliminate it, meaning that every human could be happy. • He saw the curse of mankind as being the fact that part of us was inherently – and naturally – evil. • He managed to find a drug that could extract this side of him. He also begins to understand and accept that this evil side of him was natural and as much a part of him as his good side. • Jekyll decided to experiment on his own body and attempt to remove the evil side of his personality.
Summary • After he had mixed and drunk the potion, he experienced severe pain. This quickly disappeared, leaving “something strange in my sensations, something undescribebly new and... Incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body... An unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.” • “I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked...” (all quotes on this slide p72) • He had no conscience; he was evil and wicked with no constraints. • He also knows that whatever Hyde did, he would “pass away like a stain of breath upon a mirror.” (p75) • When the transformation first took place, he was delighted to see he had not only changed inwardly, but also outwardly. He looked stunted, sickly and deformed – this is because this is his evil, less developed side that is showing. • Jekyll has been such a good man for so long, that this deformed side of him has rarely ever been shown.
Summary • Again, Hyde recognises it as himself – “This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit...” • “Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.” (both quotes p73). • He prepared the potion again and became Henry Jekyll. He could have extracted the ‘good’ side of him so he becomes wholly good, but he is more interested in the evil side of man. • Because he was growing old, he began to prefer being the younger, evil and free Hyde. • Because he enjoyed being Hyde so much, he even furnished a flat in Soho for him (even within the setting exists a duality) and hired an unwitting housekeeper. He also told his servants that Hyde had free reign of the house and made him his beneficiary in case anything should happen to Jekyll during one of his experiments.
Summary • Hyde became a rare luxury – men would usually have to hire villains to carry out their crimes and risk blackmail etc. • Hyde allowed Jekyll to carry them all out himself, and because – as Hyde – he was free from shame and conscience. • Although Jekyll had a natural conscience, he allowed himself to relax because it was Hyde who was committing the sins (which even appeared to shock Jekyll at times “Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde” (p76)). • He doesn’t go into a lot of detail about Hyde’s actions (why?), but talks about the time when he trampled the little girl. He explains that – especially because Utterson was there – that he quickly ran in and signed the cheque ‘Dr Henry Jekyll’. This is why Utterson was sure that Hyde was blackmailing Jekyll. • He set up an account for Hyde so that when he was investigated, it looks as if he had money. • However, two months before Sir Danvers Carew was murdered, Jekyll awoke to find himself in the desheveled body of Hyde. This worried him, because he was sure that he had gone to bed as Dr Henry Jekyll.
Summary • It is now that he begins to worry that Hyde – his evil side – has taken possession of his body. He instantly reverses it and transforms back into Jekyll within ten minutes. • He began to worry that he had lost the power when to choose to become Hyde. Hyde was now making this decision: “I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self...” (p78-9) • This is why he took double – or sometimes treble – the dosage of the drug to keep Hyde in check. • After a while, Jekyll began to realise that he was not only losing his powers of decision-making, but also the will to do so. • He is now faced with a dilemma – be the boring, ‘good’ Dr Jekyll, or be the free, conscience-less Hyde? • If he is to be Jekyll, then he has to appreciate that he could never more enjoy the depravities that Hyde gorged himself on. • Having tasted this sense of evil and freedom, would he ever be happy as ‘Jekyll’ again? • He now had to decide who he wanted to be: Jekyll or Hyde?
Summary • He rationally chose to remain as Jekyll. • He was not, however, utterly committed to the decision and kept the drugs, the apartment and the clothes. • For two months so, he was in good spirits and lived an exemplary life as the ‘good’, respected Dr Henry Jekyll. • One day, he randomly “to be tortured with throes and longings” (p80) meaning that he longs to be Hyde once again. • He succumbs to temptation (any biblical ideas here?) and drinks the mixture. • “My devil had long been caged, he came out roaring.” (p80) • One of Hyde’s first acts is to murder Sir Danvers Carew.
Summary • Hyde’s actions now appalled Jekyll so much, he decided to break Hyde’s key to the dissecting rooms and broke it under his heel; making it useless. • Jekyll was now finished with Hyde. • However, whilst sitting in Regent’s Park, his body began to change of its own free will. He became Hyde. He decided to flee to a hotel and write a letter to Poole and Lanyon, directing them to get the drugs for his potion so that he could become Jekyll once again. • His transformation ultimately killed Lanyon, but failed to work. • Whenever he slept or dozed, he would wake up as Hyde and was doomed – he was no longer able to control Hyde.
Summary • By the end of the novellala, we see Hyde in almost complete possession of Jekyll. • Jekyll tells us that it is because Hyde fears being hanged that he ‘runs’ back into Jekyll’s body for safety. • But he hates Jekyll, and writes blasphemies in his pious books (which we know are important to him). //think about the duality of Jekyll/Hyde – Jekyll enjoys his pious book, whilst Hyde enjoys blasphemy. • Jekyll is no longer to obtain the correct purity of drugs for the potion and is therefore unable to successfully transform back and forth. • He ends his narrative as Jekyll and says he has no idea what the future shall hold for him – or Hyde.
Analysis Question • He ends by saying that “I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.” (p88) • What has happened? What does he mean by this? What different meanings could this have? • How could he bring the unhappy life of Henry Jekyll to an end? • Is it Jekyll or Hyde who has brought it to an end? • Who does Utterson and Poole discover to be dead earlier on? Jekyll or Hyde?
Analysis • Chapter Ten is the full confession that Jekyll alludes to in Chapter Eight. • In giving us his background, Jekyll constantly emphasizes the excellence of his background which commands the respect of all; his honourable conduct is exemplary to the world, when contrasted with the "blazon irregularities" which he hid with a morbid sense of shame. Thus, early in Jekyll's life, he recognized a "profound duplicity of life so profound a double dealer." He also recognized early "that man is not truly one, but truly two," and then he acknowledged "the thorough and primitive duality of man." Also, very early, he saw the need to hide the shameful part of himself from the world, and the necessity to try and separate the two selves.
Analysis • Note here that many critics are not content to interpret the novella as a conflict between good (Jekyll) and evil (Hyde), but, instead, the novella points out, according to them, that evil (represented by Hyde) is only a small portion of man, a portion represented by Hyde's diminutive and dwarfish size. Certainly, Dr. Jekyll implies this when he theorizes that "man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens" — that is, evil and good and many other qualities will ultimately be found to make up the entire man. However, Jekyll and his experiments can only prove at the present moment that man's existence has two parts — one good and one evil. Jekyll's experiment, which Lanyon found so horrifying, was an attempt to separate the two components, and when he discovered the correct formula and drank it, Jekyll was approaching a robust fifty years of age; yet after his transformation into Edward Hyde, he felt younger, lighter, and more sensual. He knew from the beginning that he was to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked...”
Analysis • As often noted in the above commentaries, after the transformation to Hyde, Jekyll "had lost in stature." He was much smaller as "the evil side of [his] nature . . . was less robust and less developed than the good." This observation obviously contradicts the critics who see Jekyll/Hyde as being 1/2 good and 1/2 evil. Hyde, therefore, as the evil part of man, is less than the total man, but he is nevertheless an important part of the total man. This is represented in the scene when Hyde looks in the mirror and sees himself as "natural and human": He was "conscious of no repugnance, rather a leap of welcome." This is, of course, because Jekyll sees Hyde as a part of himself. And yet, from Chapter 1 onward, everyone who encounters Hyde is utterly horrified and repulsed by his pure evil. Ultimately, Jekyll himself will come to look upon Hyde as his "errant son" who must be punished.
Analysis • As Hyde, then, all sorts of pleasures were indulged in. It is never mentioned what the exact nature of all the secret, depraved, disreputable acts was, but most people (perhaps because of the movie versions of this novella) consider these "vulgar" acts to have something to do with sex. In the minds of the late Victorians (late nineteenth century), evil and sex were synonymous, and certainly to such a highly respectable and eminent man as Dr. Jekyll, it would have been extremely disgraceful if he were to have been discovered in some sort of illicit sex. Of course, we know that, as Hyde, he did murder Sir Danvers without provocation, but no other crimes were ever attributed to him; after the murder, however, all sorts of tales surfaced concerning his disreputable life and his vile actions. Therefore, since he was never charged with any other specific crime, most readers do assume that his vileness, vulgarity, and villainy were associated with sexual matters — matters which a dignified and respectable scientist could not be associated with, but activities which he, as Jekyll, had pursued in his early youth and now could once more enjoy in the person of Hyde, while the respectable Jekyll remained perfectly safe from detection.
Analysis • Even after the murder of Sir Danvers, and Jekyll vows to give up the "liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses, and secret pleasures that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde," the extreme enjoyment he receives as Hyde is ultimately why Jekyll cannot put Hyde aside. Jekyll thoroughly enjoys, vicariously, the various differerent, decadent activities performed by his double.
Analysis • Thus, Jekyll's enjoyment of Hyde's activities allows Hyde to grow in stature, and of the two men, Hyde is slowly gaining the ascendancy over Jekyll. The mere fact that Jekyll never gave up the house in Soho (rented for Hyde) nor destroyed Hyde's clothes is proof to us that the vow he made to Utterson in Chapter 5, after the murder of Sir Danvers ("I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with him"), was indeed a hypocritical or empty vow. Even though Jekyll did try for two months to lead a "life of such severity," the Hyde in Jekyll was constantly struggling for release. Repressed for so long, when Hyde emerged, he "came out roaring." Jekyll now has to contend with his "lust of evil," with the "damned horrors of the evenings," and with "the ugly face of iniquity" which stared into his soul. Hyde is not to be denied because, secretly, Jekyll still desires his presence and his activities. But he also knows that if he lets "Hyde peep out an instant . . . the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him." Therefore, Hyde is trapped by his own evil ways and is confined to the laboratory.
Analysis • However, when Jekyll is sitting peacefully one day in Regent's Park, in broad daylight, he feels all of the symptoms of Hyde emerging without the aid of the chemical potion. Hyde appears because Jekyll, who has so long tried to deny and suppress him, subconsciously desires that he appear again. But the appearance must be concealed, and so Jekyll/Hyde — by now, it is difficult to separate the two — conceive of a plan to get their revenge on Dr. Lanyon, who has so often ridiculed Dr. Jekyll and has refused to even contemplate the possibility of an evil side of his nature existing. Thus, the elaborate scheme involving Lanyon — the letter written by Hyde, but in Jekyll's handwriting — allows Jekyll/Hyde to achieve their revenge against Dr. Lanyon.
Analysis • From this point on, until Utterson and Poole break down the door, Jekyll/Hyde have an even stranger relationship with each other. Jekyll hates Hyde for the ascendancy that Hyde has over him, and Hyde hates Jekyll both because of Jekyll's hatred, but more importantly because Hyde knows that Jekyll can destroy him (Hyde) by committing suicide as Jekyll. The final irony is that Jekyll is the one who commits suicide (the evil Hyde, of course, would never do this), but during the act of Jekyll's dying, Hyde regains the ascendancy so that Utterson and Poole find not the body of Jekyll, but that of Hyde. • This point, with evidence, can be argued many different ways. • Think of another twopossible explanations.
