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Tyler Duffey
Dr. Pearson
ENGL 2120
24 April 2014
Consequences of Suppression in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson criticizes
Victorian society by way of characters who are full of contractions and who are constantly at
odds with themselves. In the past, critics have primarily focused on the character Jekyll and his
evil alter ego Hyde in order to examine Stevenson’s critiques of Victorian society. While
analyzing this character is import to understanding the author’s social critiques in the story, it is
just as important to analyze the protagonist Utterson, in regards to exploring the problems of
Victorian society. Just as with Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson explores the relationship between the
outer and inner selves through Utterson. The author explores Utterson’s two opposing personas
throughout most of the story but especially in the first paragraph in which the narrator goes into
detail concerning Utterson’s personality and beliefs. While Utterson and Jekyll are similar in that
they both possess these differing personalities they are also very different characters by way of
how these personalities are expressed, and thus, how the critique society. The way in which
Stevenson critiques society with Utterson is through the characters good persona overpowering
his negative one. However, in regards to Jekyll, Stevenson critiques society by having this
characters negative personal overpower his positive one.
In the first few lines of the story the narrator presents the two opposing halves of
Utterson’s character. The narrator says that he “was a man of rugged countenance, that was
never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean,
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long dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable” (2240). The picture the narrator paints of Utterson
in the first couple of lines of this sentence is of an off-putting character. The reader is given the
impression that Utterson’s appearance and personality are both coarse, as described in his
“rugged countenance,” and the fact that his countenance is “never lighted by a smile” makes him
seem like an angry or unhappy character. Calling him “scanty and embarrassed in discourse;
backward in sentiment” make it seem as if he has little social skills or social awareness, while
calling him “cold” suggests that he is unemotional and purposefully anti-social. Put these
descriptions together and it would be understandable for a reader to think of Utterson as the
story’s villain. On top of this, describing him as “lean, long, dusty and dreary” gives the reader
the impression that he is boring; the words themselves, listed as they are, give off a sense of
monotony. However, this depiction of Utterson as a boring villain is undermined when the
narrator describes him as “lovable.” In the next sentence the narrator says that Utterson, “At
friendly meetings […] something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed
which never found its way into his talk […] but more often and loudly in the acts of his life”
(2240). Here the reader is presented with a new side of Utterson that conflicts with the first
description. It is not like his outer persona, which is anti-social and boring. Instead this persona
is lively and noble. This latter positive depiction of him is the one the reader sees throughout
most of the story.
It is not only Utterson’s personality that is subject to contradiction. His beliefs and
actions are also inconsistent, as his actions continually oppose his personal principles. Utterson
says at the beginning of the story, “I incline to Canin’s heresy […] I let my brother go to the
devil in his own way” (Stevenson 2241). However, he spends most of the book actively trying to
help his friend Dr. Jekyll and solve the mystery of Mr. Hyde. Utterson goes to Jekyll’s house to
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try and get information out of him and fails. He goes to his and Jekylls friend Lanyon to retrieve
any news he can about Jekyll. He goes to a dinner party thrown by Jekyll and stays behind after
it is over to try and get information out him, but Jekyll is unwilling to give him any adequate
details. Still not satisfied, Utterson begins to track down Hyde, waiting outside of Hyde’s house
in the hopes of seeing and talking to him. All of these actions he takes are in opposition to his
statement about letting his “brother go to the devil in his own way.” Irving S. Saposnik notes that
Utterson “given to self-mortification in order to stifle temptation, he nonetheless confines his
rigorous standard to himself. With others he is not only tolerant but charitable, as he translates
compassion into action” (Saposnik). The “self-mortification” that Saposnik is referring to is
shown in the following sentence in Jekyll and Hyde: “He (Utterson) was austere with himself;
drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre,
had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years” (Stevenson 2240-41). This passage shows
Utterson to be a very severe person in regards to his own person; however, for other people, he is
very compassionate as shown in his concern for Jekyll and his attempts to discover the cause of
his friend’s troubles. Saposnik goes on to say that Utterson, “by person and profession he
represents the best and worst of Victoria's social beings. Pledged to a code harsh in its
application, he has not allowed its pressures to mar his sense of human need” (Saposnik).
Utterson “represents the best” of what a Victorian was supposed to be in that he sets harsh
standards for himself. He “represents the worst” in that he makes and effort concerning the
personal problems of Jekyll. As Enfield says to Utterson after relating the story of Hyde to him:
“I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like a Queer Street, the less I ask.” To which Utterson
replies “A very good rule” (Stevenson 2243). Clearly in the in Victorian society taking a
personal interest in another’s personal life is not appropriate, and on some level Utterson knows
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this, but he cannot help but get involved with Jekyll and Hyde, revealing his true compassionate
nature, which contradicts the outward indifference he tries to display. Thus in both his
personality and belief systems he shows signs of internal conflict between his natural instincts
and the way he is supposed to act. On one hand he is a kind and compassionate man toward
others, something that is not shown in his words and outward appearance but in his actions. This
is his natural state. On the other hand he is coarse and severe, which is what the society he lives
in has conditioned him to be.
The rigid Victorian society has the opposite effect on Jekyll. Instead of suppressing his
good qualities it suppresses his negative ones, and they are the ones that are manifested in the
character Mr. Hyde. Concerning Jekyll’s transformation Nabokov writes “It follows that Jekyll’s
transformation implies a concentration of evil that already inhabits him rather than a complete
metamorphosis” (Nabokov 184). Instead of creating an evil persona, the potion simply frees it
from its entrapment inside Jekyll. The idea that Hyde is a manifestation of Jekylls repressed
natural urges is reinforced in Jekyll letter to Utterson at the end of the story. He says, “I was the
first that could plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a
schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty” (Stevenson 2275).
This language strongly suggest that the respectability, which Jekyll is known for is, to him,
simply a something superficial and inauthentic that he must don when he is out in public in the
light of day. The use of the word “liberty” in correlation to Hyde tells the reader, that to Jekyll,
Hyde may be the preferred of the two personas. Later in the letter, after Jekyll has described his
decision to never release Hyde again, he says, “I began to be tortured with throes and longings,
as of Hyde struggling after freedom” (Stevenson 2277). Here again we see Hyde associated with
liberty. This is because Jekyll feels trapped by the society he lives in, which does not permit the
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satisfaction of some of his more basic desires. This struggle that he has with Hyde concerning
Hyde’s freedom reflects his struggle with some of these base instincts. He does not want to be
shunned by society, but he also has these desires that need to be satisfied.
In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson uses the characters Utterson
and Jekyll to critique Victorian society but in slightly different ways. He uses Utterson so
demonstrate how the strict social rules of Victorian culture can suppress the good qualities of a
person and hinder an individual from acting upon them. Stevenson uses Jekyll to also show the
consequences of a culture demanding that individuals suppress their emotions and instincts, but
with Jekyll he shows the consequences of suppressing a human’s most base desires and
emotions. By doing this the author shows the different negative impacts that a repressive society
can have on individuals.
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Works Cited
Nabokov, Vladimir. “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1885).” Lectures on
Literature. Ed. Bowers, Fredson. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 179-204.
Print.
Saposnik, Irving S. “The Anatomy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Studies in English Literature
11.4 (1971): n. pag. Web. 22 April 2014.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ed. Greenblatt,
Stephen. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2240-2282. Print.