Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a simple narrative, straightforward in its execution but complicated in its implications. Mr. Hyde is a complex metaphor, standing in for the dark underbelly of 19th century society. Thomas C. Foster, thankfully, lays out ways in which this metaphor is expressed in his How To Read Literature Like A Professor - including the roles of physical deformity, sexual metaphors, and geography.
The most basic, and in fact textual, metaphor presented in the novel is Hyde’s role as a stand in for the darker sides of human nature. His physical deformities (as addressed by Foster in Chapter 21 of How to Read) mark him as dark and twisted. Even Hyde’s small stature and subsequent growth, as Jekyll’s dark side is fed, marks Hyde as being the doctor’s core, the poisonous center that all of Jekyll’s good nature is simply wrapped around. Hyde is the base instinct of man, the darkness that causes Jekyll’s incongruities. This is …show more content…
Take, for instance, a passage from early in the novel as Utterson rides through the city: “A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours...for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be the glow a rich, lurid brown...and for a moment the fog would be quite broken up and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths.” This London is both light and dark, both “good” and “bad”, Stevenson is remarking on the truth of society: no matter how hard we might try to cover up our impulses, the desires that we might feel are wrong, they will be acted upon. That is the nature of man, that is the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the strange case of us
The most basic, and in fact textual, metaphor presented in the novel is Hyde’s role as a stand in for the darker sides of human nature. His physical deformities (as addressed by Foster in Chapter 21 of How to Read) mark him as dark and twisted. Even Hyde’s small stature and subsequent growth, as Jekyll’s dark side is fed, marks Hyde as being the doctor’s core, the poisonous center that all of Jekyll’s good nature is simply wrapped around. Hyde is the base instinct of man, the darkness that causes Jekyll’s incongruities. This is …show more content…
Take, for instance, a passage from early in the novel as Utterson rides through the city: “A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours...for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be the glow a rich, lurid brown...and for a moment the fog would be quite broken up and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths.” This London is both light and dark, both “good” and “bad”, Stevenson is remarking on the truth of society: no matter how hard we might try to cover up our impulses, the desires that we might feel are wrong, they will be acted upon. That is the nature of man, that is the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the strange case of us