Jekyll and Hyde - extract analysis
Explore how Stevenson presents Hyde as an inhuman and disturbing member of society. (extract is here)
In this extract, Stevenson depicts Hyde as animal-like and dehumanised, the mere sight of whom causes a violent response in the otherwise steadfast servant Poole. Utterson attempts to rationalise Poole’s response, but is ultimately unsuccessful.
Poole describes Hyde as ‘digging among crates’, the choice of the verb ‘digging’ rather than ‘searching’ or ‘looking’ suggesting some kind of rather primitive activity; dogs ‘dig’. This animalism is built on further when Hyde gives ‘a kind of cry’, later defined further as ‘a cry... like a rat’. The definition of Hyde’s sound as a ‘kind of cry’ has already removed it from the normal human realm of sounds. The further clarification that the sound was like a ‘rat’ cements the reader's idea that Hyde is not only inhuman, but it associates him with a disgusting animal who lives in the gutter, transmits disease and feeds on excrement.
Hyde is further dehumanised by Poole’s description of him as ‘that thing’ and ‘that thing in the mask.’ As with the description of his cry, this too is repeated and clarified as Poole justifies his position later in the extract. Victorian society strongly held that humanity was created in the image of God, so an ugly creature was always morally dubious. Therefore, this ugly creature, closer in stature to a dwarf than the ‘fine build’ of Dr Jekyll, is very clearly being described as less than human.
The description of Poole’s reaction moves the reader from seeing Hyde as merely an animal-like or lesser human, into a response that sees him as a supernatural threat. Poole’s ‘hair stood up on [his] head like quills’ when he saw Hyde and he developed ‘a sort of mottled pallor’ just from recounting the incident to Utterson. These responses remind the reader of the idea of having seen a ghost, or some other kind of terrifying supernatural encounter. Poole’s response takes the reader’s impression of Hyde over the threshold from disgust at an unpleasant human into horror and fear at an encounter with a devil.
As is so often the case in the novel, Utterson attempts to argue away the supernatural explanation, suggesting the logical non-supernatural explanation of the transformative illness. He takes Poole’s idea of a ‘mask’ and takes it literally to mean that Poole thought that Jekyll was wearing a mask. However, the reader feels strongly the truth of Poole’s description, not least because of his physical response. Poole’s fear that ‘murder’ has been ‘done’ seems more convincing to the reader.
Ultimately, in this extract we get a glimpse of Hyde through Poole’s eyes, which shows that he could never be a member of Victorian society as his physicality and demeanour are both too inhuman and disturbing to ever be accepted by it.
