In the 1886 Gothic thriller, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, descriptions of scenery and settings effectively symbolize the duality of Dr. Jekyll and his evil doppelgänger, Mr. Hyde. Though contained in one body, the two men are light and dark images of each other. Descriptions of scenery mirror the doppelgänger effect, revealing sinister dualities even before the reader realizes the two men are one person. Though the characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are initially described as binary opposites, clues in descriptions of scenery reveal their fundamental interconnectivity.
The text creates a sense of the dark nature of Mr. Hyde’s character by way of a description of the edifice through which Mr. Enfield sees Hyde pass. The language used to describe the edifice aligns the aura of the building with Mr. Enfield’s perception of Hyde, while the surroundings parallel Dr. Jekyll. The street itself is clean, friendly, and upstanding, but a dark protuberance of a house mars the welcoming atmosphere. The reader sees that, “… a certain sinister block of building [had] thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two storeys high; …and bore in every feature the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence”(4). By describing the area in which Mr. Enfield has seen Hyde, the narrator constructs a visual juxtaposition of dark and light. The initial description prepares the reader for further context clues provided by the scenery. The narrator makes it clear that Hyde’s doorway is out of place on the street, indicating that Hyde too does not fit into the polite structures of society. The description of the doorway of Dr. Jekyll’s house creates a similar effect, but with a more positive and inclusive tone.
As befits a proper, wealthy, upstanding gentleman (with a secret), Dr. Jekyll’s house can be both welcoming and foreboding. The narrator explains, “One house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fanlight, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked”(20). The façade presents class, comfort and stability to the world, but being “plunged into darkness”(20) foreshadows the gothic, sinister side of the Doctor that will eventually take hold. Mr. Hyde, the doppelgänger, is the darkness that surrounds the cheerful façade of Dr. Jekyll. Hyde is the corrupted nature of Jekyll, otherwise known as ‘the shadow’. As an archetype, the shadow is the hidden darkness of human nature. In her essay, “Child and the Shadow,” Ursula K. Le Guin refers to the shadow as, “…the dark side of the soul, the unadmitted, the inadmissible”(60). Dr. Jekyll cannot announce his fractured nature to society thus the repression of Hyde’s personality causes additional parts of Jekyll’s house to succumb to darkness.
The workspace shared by the two personalities is the laboratory, which itself has lost much of its vibrant air. Prior to the laboratory, however, is the garden passage that connects the house to the lab, and Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. The most important thing to note about the passage is that the garden is lifeless. Nothing living thrives in the liminal space between to two structures or the two personalities. Gardens require frequent and devoted care, either by a gardener or the owners themselves. The detail of the lifeless garden indicates that Jekyll is losing his desire to keep up appearances, especially within his home.
In an effort to visit Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Utterson traverses “…across a yard which had once been a garden to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory, or the dissecting rooms…He eyed the dingy windowless structure with curiosity and gazed around with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre once crowded with eager students and now lying gaunt and silent”(34). To both the reader and Mr. Utterson, the scenery is communicating the fact that all is not well with Dr. Jekyll. Where there were students is now silence, and where there was growth is now barren land.
Beyond the foreboding descriptive phrases “once been a garden,” “gaunt and silent,” “windowless structure,”(34) nature itself begins to obfuscate the interior of Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory. The narrator says, “…for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; And there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking decidedly sick”(35). Often read as an insidious natural force, fog shrouds places in mystery and creates an air of weightiness. Fog has encroached upon Dr. Jekyll, and, though he yearns for the warmth of the light, he cannot escape the sick chill of the laboratory fog. In the aforementioned scene, both light and darkness are present, and, in symbolic resonance with Jekyll’s struggle with Hyde, the light is struggling to push back the dark.
The laboratory is where Dr. Jekyll keeps the draught that enables his transformation. Because of the secret it contains, the laboratory becomes a symbol of Mr. Hyde’s darkness and Dr. Jekyll’s arrogance in thinking that transforming between the two could truly absolve him of anything. Jekyll himself says:
Let me but escape into my laboratory door, give me but a
second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had
always standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward
Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror;
and there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight
lamp in his study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion,
would be Henry Jekyll. (89)
The phrase “pass away”(89) shows the transitory element of changing from the socially irreproachable Dr. Jekyll to the criminally abhorred Mr. Hyde, as easy as transitioning from house to laboratory. As is common in Gothic literature, the edifice can itself become a character through abundant description and personification. The transition from house to laboratory is a direct parallel to the change between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll frequently moves between the two settings and personalities, while Hyde is also in sole charge of separate lodgings. The careful reader should not disregard the power of the laboratory as the setting in which the duality originates.
Though first presented as separate entities, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the light and shadow of the same being. The sceneries particular to each personality, as well as where the personalities intersect, show the reader Jekyll’s and Hyde’s duality before outright explaining it. As the scenery reveals the distinction between the light and dark natures of Dr. Jekyll, nature and setting create a liminal space inhabited by both men. Fundamentally connected, the scenery in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” gives contextual life to the Doctor and his doppelgänger.
Works Cited
Le Guin, Ursula K. “Child and the Shadow.” N.p.: n.p. n.d. 59-71. Print
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories. New York: Scholastic, 1963. Print.