How does Stevenson Present Evil in the Novel?
This is a detective story.
There are three mysteries.
1. Who is Hyde?
2. What is his hold over Jekyll?
3. Why did Hyde kill Carew?
The answer to each of these questions leads us to ask about the nature of Evil.
My Comments
If you can’t write this much, don’t worry. You can skip the homosexual reading.
You can argue instead that Jekyll is murderous, not because he has been wronged, but because he is simply like all of us - we would all choose sinful pleasures and evil if civilisation did not prevent us. That was the Christian belief.
Why have I numbered my explanations? Because you need over 30 to get into grade 9. You wouldn’t write it like this in an exam - you would paragraph.
But everyone asks me “what is an explanation?” Take a look at them and work it out.
The Essay
Stevenson writes this murder mystery to satisfy his readers’ interest in crime and violence, to explore man’s attraction to sin, and to make us think about the true nature of evil in society.
We are first introduced to Hyde as a “damned Juggernaut”, stepping on a young girl he has knocked over, “trampled calmly over the child’s body”.
Enfield describes this and the doctor who arrives as so enraged that he wants to kill Hyde: “I saw that sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him”, a feeling Enfield shares.
Many Christian readers would take this as proof that Hyde is so evil that people have a visceral reaction and want to remove it from the world.
However, Stevenson was an atheist, and we can see that he leaves room for a completely different perspective of evil. Hyde is “damned” because he is different, other.
This is reflected in the word “Juggernaut”, derived from Hindu worship. What Hindu considers holy, Christianity associates with evil.
Stevenson also contrasts the actions of Hyde to Enfield and the doctor. Hyde is run into, and ignores the girl who ran into him, stepping “over”, not on her.
This pales in comparison to the evil thoughts of the men who “desire to kill him”.
Then they decide to blackmail Hyde, who reminds them of “Satan”: “we screwed him up to a hundred pounds” because he was “naturally helpless”. Not only does this portray the evil of middle class gentlemen, it also portrays Hyde as partly innocent.
After all, an evil man would care nothing for his reputation, and therefore refuse to pay anything.
Stevenson presents us with a range of puzzling examples of Hyde’s evil before revealing, in the final chapter, further mysteries about his nature. Taking the novel chronologically, we find out that Utterson suspects Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll for some “capers of his youth”.
His choice of the cheerful “capers” implies that among gentlemen sins are ignored. We imagine these must be sexual adventures.
The central mystery in the novel is what Hyde’s sins must be. We never find out.
Similarly, we never find out what Enfield was doing when he first encountered Hyde, having come back “from some place at the end of the world”. This is another euphemism for sin which is so unacceptable to society that it is only on the edge of civilisation.
This implies that Hyde’s brand of evil behaviour is the same as that of other men in civilised society.
A further clue that this is so is the setting. Hyde lives in Soho, which symbolises all kinds of sin. This is less than a five minute walk from the respectable Leicester Square where Jekyll lives.
This implies respectable gentlemen all have sinful desires which are so alluring they live close by Soho which makes them possible.
This is even more pronounced when we discover Hyde lives at the back of Stevenson’s house. The front is symbolically respectable, amongst “handsome houses” like the “handsome” Jekyll. The back of the house is “sinister” and “sordid”.
Stevenson is pointing out not just the “duality” of Jekyll, but also the “duality of man”: we “are commingled out of good and evil”.
This perspective suggests that dividing people into good and evil is a false way of looking at human nature.
This calls into question the Christian perspective of the novel, where evil is punished and the two main sinners, Hyde and Jekyll, are killed.
Chapter four portrays a violent murder of an MP, Sir Danvers Carew. This takes place near the Houses of Parliament, which invites the reader to imagine that no part of London is safe from evil men, just as no respectable person is safe.
The attack feels random and motiveless. However, it is witnessed by an apparently innocent maid who then takes great pleasure in dramatically recounting the story as a theatrical performance “she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that experience”.
This adds to the idea that everyone in London is attracted to evil.
Hyde’s motive to murder can only be guessed at, but the description that he clubbed Carew with “ape-like fury” plays on contemporary fear of Darwin’s theory of Evolution.
This undermines the Biblical origin story of Genesis, and therefore challenges Christian belief.
A further problem is that Darwin’s theory predicts survival of the fittest. So evolution does not mean we become increasingly civilised and moral. Instead, a greater capacity for evil and violence will be passed on if these qualities are more successful.
Jekyll’s confession in the final chapter shows that his evil has “come out roaring” as he had been kept from transforming into Hyde for some months. This implies evil is more powerful than the capacity for goodness.
However, he also tells us that Hyde is his “bravo”, enjoying the sinful “pleasures” Jekyll can experience through him.
Knowing this, we have to ask if he acts as Jekyll’s “bravo” when he kills Carew.
Although Stevenson refuses to tell us, the novel is filled with unspoken homosexuality. It explains the cause of suspected blackmail.
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