In the following quotation, in fact, he presents a third possibility as well, though it’s not taken as seriously as the other two: "There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend." (p. 16) The quotation present three possible understandings of Enfield’s dislike of Hyde. The first is that Hyude is “hardly human”, “troglodytic” – that is, cave-man like or ape like. With this possibility, Enfield alludes to Darwin and his Origin of Species, conceiving of Hyde as a throwback, or a not-fully-evolved human being. This isn’t a moral judgment, but rather one of scientific classification. And if that, then it’s difficult to justify hatred based on such difference, isn’t it?
The second possible reason for his dislike of Hyde isn’t really a reason at all. In fact, it’s quite unreasonable by design. I don’t like him because I don’t like him, as the reference to Dr. Fell establishes: “I do not like thee Dr. Fell/The reason why I cannot tell/But this alone I know full well/I do not like thee Dr. Fell”.
The third reason is rather more complicated than it at first appears. Simply, Enfield reads “Satan’s signature” upon the face of Hyde, and, therefore, hates him as he would hate Satan; the reason must be, then, moral – hating the embodiment of evil (which is, in fact, how Jekyll himself refers to Hyde repeatedly). But it’s the language Stevenson uses to introduce the idea of Satan that complicates this simple moral judgment – and it’s a complication that seems to me fatal to it. References to “radiance” and “transfigures” are clearly to Christ’s transfiguration in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke in the Bible. In this story, Christ’s divinity illuminates his physical body (“clay continent”) such that his radiance shines forth to the apostles attending him – Peter, James and John. The allusion to Christ’s transfiguration in the description of the Satan-like Hyde is important, in that it tends to equate his culture’s most important symbols of good and evil. In doing so, Stevenson might be suggesting that moral judgments are not, then, justifiable – Christ might be considered indistinguishable from Satan if moral judgments don’t apply.
The idea that Stevenson wants to level any distinctions between “good” and “evil” is supported many times in the story. One way this occurs is in the profound doubt about “good” evident throughout the tale. When Enfield refers to Jekyll as “one of your fellows who do what they call good”, he places the idea of the good as being relative. The phrase “one of your fellows” makes this relativity the general condition of goodness. It comes down to personal opinion only, to personal whim. One can sense Stevenson working through the intricacies of this argument in the following paragraph: “I not only recognised my natural body from the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp of lower elements in my soul.” (p. 57) This presents a clear argument about the idea of moral judgment. Jekyll speaks of his “natural body” as having two equally natural “elements”. Neither better nor worse, but natural. His science concerns separating these elements – the two constituent parts of his being. It’s pure science (and math – division, I guess). But he can’t really stick to science in his description. Mixed up with the value-neutral phrases of science and math (“natural body”, “powers”, “form and countenance”, “elements”) are such words as “supremacy”, “lower”, implying value. He’ll continue throughout his narrative to conflate these two ways of looking at human life – and the two ways are not compatible. He will call Hyde “pure evil” in one paragraph, refer to his own “original evil” in another (of course, suggesting the Christian doctrine of original sin), and then he’ll say “I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; 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 … I learned to dwell with pleasure … on the thought of the separation of these elements.” (p. 56) This is scientific self analysis, devoid of judgment. Jekyll cannot escape being a man of his times – the conflict between the scientific and the Christian is revealed repeatedly in his language.
With this understood, the pervasive logic of the book’s argument becomes clear. When Jekyll comments in his letter, “My devil had long been caged, he came out roaring” (p. 64), not only does he return to the language of moral judgment, but he also suggests that, if you control your vices and don’t act upon them, they will explode with more violence – that is, it’s bad to be good. In his letter, Jekyll states that “It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was”, earlier describing “what [he] was” as a man “committed to a profound duplicity of life” (p. 55) It is his aspirations to be good, his constant practice of having “concealed” desires not in keeping with those aspirations, that lie at the heart of his failure. This failure is a moral one. However, when Jekyll casts his life in a scientific light, this is not failure at all, but simply the human condition more fully understood. Promptings toward socially acceptable behaviour are not “better” or “worse” than promptings towards behaviours that are not socially acceptable. Both are natural expressions of the basic human duality.
When Lanyon comes to understand that Jekyll’s science is “true” – that humans are comprised equally of two conflicting tendencies – he literally dies of the shock. Like Jekyll, Lanyon thought himself to be a scientist, but he had rejected Jekyll’s science on moral and religious grounds. His repeated references to “God” in his interjections shows that his habit of mind is still essentially Christian. In Lanyon, Stevenson suggests that the scientific and Christian cannot co-exist. I’ve tried to demonstrate that they still co-exist in Jekyll, but of course that co-existence is very limited, as Jekyll/Hyde die very quickly.
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