Duplicity of the City Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Duplicity of the City: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Mahinur Akşehir Literary London 2011 Representations of London in Literature: An Interdisciplinary Conference, University of London, London, England, 20-22 July 2011 Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is above all a novella which carries the Gothic atmosphere to an urban setting, namely London, bringing a new dimension to the Gothic genre. However, the representations of London as a Gothic setting is not simply dark and gloomy in the novella, but the reader can encounter developed and promising face of the city, as well, depending on the character that is at the center of the action. This duality in the representation of the city parallels the dual characterization of Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde and thus the veiled duplicity or schizophrenia of the Victorian society. In this sense, in this Gothic novella, the city is being used to function as a macrocosm of the characters in the novella functioning as a foil character that highlights certain characteristics of different personas that embody various aspects of Victorian socio-political milieu. Gothic fiction gained popularity one more time in the nineteenth century due to the anxiety concerning the dark face of civilization; however with great change. Most of the basic elements of gothic fiction changed due to the cultural and social environment that feeds the genre in terms of subject matter. For instance, the feudal undertones, villainous aristocrats, fragile ladies, dark, gloomy and remote settings were no longer used in gothic fiction as elements to evoke fear and terror in the reader. Instead, as Fred Botting asserts in his book entitled Gothic: Domestic, industrial and urban contexts and aberrant individuals provided the logic for mystery and terror. Haunting pasts were the ghosts of family transgression and guilty concealment; the dark alleyways of cities were the gloomy forests and subterranean labyrinths; criminals were the new villains, cunning corrupt but thoroughly human. Prisons, social injustice and rebellious individuals were not Romantic sites or heroes of gloomy suffering, but strange figures threatening the home and society. Traditional Gothic traces were strongest in representations of scientific innovation, being associated with alchemy and mystic powers. The lingering dark Romanticism that surrounded accounts of scientific or individual excess was both a threat to social mores and a sign that, in the increasingly normalized and rationalized worlds of family and commerce, there was something missing: a spiritual passion which, in opposition to the more real horrors of everyday corruption, was nostalgically represented in Gothic terms or in the ghost stories a contrast between narrow reality and lost, metaphysical dimensions. (123-124) What evoked fear in the people of Victorian London was not mysterious dark powers anymore but the cruel and violent attitude of the modern state which appears to be rational and respectable whereas it is corrupt and dangerous just as the Jekyll-Hyde character. Botting summarizes this situation saying: “rational and respectable…eclipsed by dark and obscure arena of mystery, violence and vice” (Botting 138-139). Small details about the dingy image of the city of London and especially about the lab of Dr. Jekyll, which in a sense can be read as the representative of the world of science, like the windowless lab of Jekyll, dirt and marks on the wall suggests being neglected, corruption and regression. Such a representation of the city indicates far more darkness, primitiveness and corruption than the original gothic setting. (139) This change in the Gothic tradition was a result of a rebellion of the imagination against the tyranny of rationality. The emergence of the gothic novel parallels with the beginning of the transformation of the structures of the society by the forces of industrialization. Britain was going through a process of change from an agricultural society to an industrial one and the city of London was a destination as the new industrial and commercial center. The old ways of social structure changed swiftly into new social codes of work, morality, and so forth. Due to the capitalistic and industrial order there occurred a depressing sense of alienation and isolation in people. The alienation worked in several ways. First they became alienated to themselves, by being dehumanized by mechanistic work and harsh and long work hours; second they became alienated to the products that they produced by the mechanization of the labor; and third they became alienated to the nature by being disconnected from the natural world by the urban centers. Hence dehumanization and mechanization dominated the nature of human behavior. As all these factors are considered it should not be surprising that the Gothic tradition turns its face from the feudal codes and elements to the modern ones. In Kilgour’s words: As the nineteenth century progressed, the damaging effects of industrialism became increasingly clear and had much to do with the emergence of a new site of Gothic horror: the city. In Victorian Gothic, the castles and abbeys of the eighteenth century give way to labyrinthine streets, sinister rookeries, opium dens, and the filth and stench of the squalid slums… The savage and primitive are shown to exist in the very heart of the modern, civilized metropolis. (22) Kilgour calls this change in the contemporary world of the reader in the nineteenth century the Domestication of Gothic. Historical facts like the decline of the imperial power of England, the unrest in its colonies, corruption in moral values, social and psychological effects of the industrial revolution, crime and disease in overcrowded cities, the takeover of the middle class values and poverty caused some kind of social crisis in the nineteenth century that led to the reemergence of the gothic fiction in a new domesticated form as Kilgour labels it. The city, especially London as the center of the civilized world, is represented as the capital of this world of crisis with which that the primitive, the dark, the gloomy, the violent reappears right in the middle of the civilized world. As can be observed there is a double-sidedness in London which is “represented as a site of cultural decay and source of menace” though being considered to be “heart of the supposedly civilized world” (40). What is more striking about the representation of the city in decay, is that the source of this decay, horror and violence is not the dark underworld of crime behind the curtain or the poor people but the newly empowered middle class characters. These supposedly civilized and respectable people are usually the originators of the violence in the nineteenth century (40). The growing anxiety regarding the dark sides of the civilized world was triggered by the awareness of people concerning the contradictions and incongruities of the late nineteenth century socio-political milieu. Of course, as mentioned before, these contradictions and incongruities were all centered on the urban center, London, and so did the newly reemerged gothic genre. As the dark face of the modern world began to appear the new urban Gothic fiction became a perfect tool for exposing and questioning it. The ideals of civilization and progress were proved to be double-sided and relative and it was seen that civilization brought an even worse kind of barbarism along with itself. The incongruities and contradictions of the civilized world began to be questioned more and more and many of the questionings revolved around the city life and the urban experience of the modern man with all its injustices, class distinctions, and wild capitalistic mechanism. The duplicity was a result of the fact that there was progress in science and industry on the one hand, and corruption, poverty, alienation, dehumanization caused by these, on the other. Furthermore, the duplicity is not only in the field of social and economic issues but also in the field of social relations. Victorian age was a very conservative and pious age on the surface, but it was also an age of scandals. Prostitution was the lead among other scandalous scenes. The respectable middle class men would turn out to be Mr. Hyde’s behind the curtain of the London fog and they would carry corruption and sexually transmitted diseases to their respectable mansions. So Stevenson’s double character Jekyll and Hyde can be considered to be the everyman of the Victorian period. This emphasis on Jekyll/Hyde character as a Victorian everyman is supported even by the representation of Jekyll’s house. As described in the story, as one enters the backdoor, one encounters a block of apartments which are impossible to tell whom they belong to. This obscurity contributes to the idea that any and every one of the dwellers are capable of committing the crimes which also attributes the duplicity and schizophrenic nature to every single dweller of London and even London itself. So the schizophrenic combination of respectability and corruption comes together in one body during the Victorian period as the novel suggests and the city provides the appropriate environment to this duplicity by being schizophrenic to the same extent with its socially differentiated parts. Another emphasis put through the representation of Jekyll’s house is the schizophrenia of the Victorian age. The “blistered and disdained” backdoor of the house is the representative of the respectable city’s concealed corruption. This door is the way through which the corruption mingles with respectability. The location of the house is very meaningful in this sense. The location of the house is a previously esteemed but currently fallen from grace quarter of the city. It is dwelled by all kinds of men from scumbags to humbugs. Jekyll’s house is the only one that remains respectable and that seems wealthy. Jekyll as the representative of science stands for the respectability of science and scientific pursuits. However, the wretched backdoor to the corrupt realm also suggests that science itself can be abused for immoral intentions and be corrupt. Even the description of the house and its environments give us quite an idea about the Victorian sociocultural environment. Thus, it can be said that the city and different social districts of the city here are used as a foil characters that exposes the extent of the corruption of the Victorian age. The city in the novella as a setting is being used to embody, to represent the characters that they host as the performers of certain deeds committed. The most obvious example of this in the novella is the one of Mr. Hyde and Soho. Mr. Hyde lives in Soho and the representation of this part of London is rather dark and eerie paralleling the evil deeds of Mr. Hyde. This cloak of darkness in this part of London both helps Hyde to hide and contributes to the gloomy effect of the text, thus functioning as a foil that would double up the effect, so to say. Any characteristic of the city is used as a highlighter of the features of the characters personalities. One example concerning this issue is the fog. The fog plays a very important part in that it contributes to the dingy atmosphere of the story. However, it is even more important considering the fact that it is used as a characteristic of the city reflecting the deceptiveness and double-sidedness of the characters. It serves like a veil that conceals the evil of the city just like Dr. Jekyll is used as a mask for the evil intentions of Hyde. Light on the other hand represents safety. The fog can also be interpreted as the repression that overshadows the Victorian characters which forces them to conceal their real selves which cannot be leashed after one point and come out in a more fierce way. Muddy and foggy London streets refer to the death of the light or the sun and this in a way represents death or the apocalypse. Or perhaps they represent dirt in general but not just material dirt but spiritual, moral or intellectual dirt which causes a lack of sight. The lack of sight or not seeing clearly is used as a very dominant motif in the novella in that it creates the appropriate atmosphere and in that sense it refers to people’s inability to understand, comprehend, or see what really is going on in 19th century London. The inability to wake up from the illusion of progress and success and see what lies beneath the thick fog and how people are unable to cut through the fog that blocks the path to the real enlightenment. The fog in the story also represents that fact that people are living in dark concerning their most basic selves, the simplest versions possible of themselves, their real natures. The fog of civilization makes them forget what they really are and Stevenson reminds his readers what they originally are and what they are capable of. Stevenson, by creating Jekyll/Hyde character and by highlighting the duplicity, also tried to break the belief in moral and rational superiority of the human being. It became obvious that no matter in which context or in which conditions, the human being was apparently instinctively primitive and ferocious and has no superiority to other animal species in this respect. No matter how modern, civilized, cultivated one is, deep inside they keep the very ancient instincts of violence and primitivism which became much more dangerous with all the opportunities modern industrial world presents to people. In this savage harsh industrial world human beings are forced to be even more violent and ferocious to be able to survive in the civilization. In this sense the evil under Jekyll’s respectability can be considered to be the reflection of this fact. Or perhaps it is simply the outcome of the repressed instincts and feelings in a worse condition. This way or that, it is obvious that what the reader encounters in the novel is the opposition of the civilized and the primitive is represented in a single body. The representation of the city is not always a dark one tough. Light and dark can coexist in London which takes the reader to the conclusion that the duality of the characters are embodied in the representations of the city both as foggy, and eerie and as developed commercial center. Even the opening of the novella serves this duplicity. The novella begins with the story the door which is a passageway or a threshold between two opposing worlds. The door leads to Dr. Jekyll’s lab from the dark world of Mr. Hyde. So it can also be considered as the passageway between two lives, between good and evil, between two moods of schizophrenia. So the idea of duplicity is supported even at the very beginning of the novella by the image of the door. This effect of duplicity is developed even further as the story thickens. The center of action is a street in London. What creates the duplicity in terms of this setting is that the description of the street, as well as the rest of the London, keeps shifting from beautiful to ugly, from well-kept to dangerous and vice-versa. We encounter the powerful, poetic descriptions and dreary, sinister ones of the same setting. We face the two faces of the schizophrenic modern city which is both established commercially, industrially and scientifically and peaceful and dark and gloomy in a gothic sense. The opposing sides of the city also have a symbiotic, intermingled, interdependent relationship in the sense that the established crowded atmosphere of the modern city provides Hyde a perfect means of concealment. The complicated structure of the modern city gives Hyde a liberty to perform his vicious acts. And on the other hand this viciousness that Hyde performs is a representation of the viciousness of the modern city as well. The many layered many faced modern city gives him a great opportunity to lead his dual life. So both faces of Victorianism and British imperialism can be observed here in the descriptions of the city. The description of the modern London which is at the peak of its development is like a garden of Eden on the one hand and the hell itself on the other. Similarly, the respectability of Dr. Jekyll and corruption of Mr. Hyde is combined in one self in the novella and that the city provides a perfect environment for this duality to survive because the city itself is of the same kind. The division of Jekyll-Hyde characters personality parallels the division of the city into different socio-cultural districts. The location and description Jekyll’s house supports this duality and ambivalence. The house is located at a formerly elite part of the city but now is invaded by lowly people. As clearly seen in Scatasta’s work: We don’t know exactly where the house of Jekyll is, but probably it is in the West End where many doctors had their houses. At the beginning of the novel it is described as the only proper house in the square which has lost its ancient dignity… It can be clearly seen … that richness and poverty are side by side: behind the delusive surface of prosperity and wealth, there lies the true reality of poverty, desperation, and crime. (Scatasta 144) By creating such a setting Stevenson points to the socio-cultural distinctions of the Victorian period and also he highlights how thin the line between the barbarism and civilization can be and how evasive the Victorian concepts like the respectability and corruption can be. The city, in this sense can be considered to be a kind of macrocosmic projection of the Jekyll character. The city represents the character and functions as a foil to him and what’s more the city itself is the character. As very well known, the representations of places can be very powerful tools of legitimizing or undermining social power relations. When considered from this point of view, it is highly probable that Stevenson wanted to criticize the socio-economic situation of the Victorian urban environment in the first place by using the gothic as a genre and then by creating such a setting for his story. The small details in the description of the city, lays bare the sociocultural milieu of the Victorian period. The imagery of the city as growling, for instance, is a sign of the primitive, dark, wild, merciless social environment of the age. Soho, the part of the city that Mr. Hyde lives in is described as dark and nightmarish which again reflects Soho’s social structure at that time. And lastly the description of Jekyll’s laboratory as sinister is a sign of the dark face of science which bears innumerable dangers and immoralities in the name of progress. London in the story is the best representative of the conventional Victorian life with its restraint and order and simultaneous chaos and unpredictability beneath the veil. As Saposnik asserts, Michael Sadleir describes London as a jungle very chaotic and unpredictable. In Sadleir’s own words: “There was no knowing what kind of a queer patch you might strike, in what blind alley you might find yourself, to what embarrassment, insult, or even molestation you might be exposed” (qtd. in Saposnik 717). Apparently behind that developed looks civilized London has a very different face. In that sense it resembles the people that live there. The double quality of Victorian people is projected onto the city as well. In brief, this doppelganger story tells us a lot about the duality of human nature and the divided selves it harbors due to the restrictive and cruel socio-cultural Victorian environment. The notion of human nature as being innately good and modernistic beliefs concerning scientific progress are being questioned in the novel and the representation of the city is as foggy, windy, dark, deserted on the one hand and clean, crowded, promising on the other is used as a very important tool in strengthening the effect of this criticism. It can even be said that the city is portrayed as a foil character that represents the other characters it harbors. London in this sense is both magnificent and eerie just like the schizophrenic Jekyll/ Hyde. This fragmented structure of the city is even supported by the fragmented structure of the plot line. Works Cited Botting, Fred. Gothic. London: Routledge, 2007. Kilgour. Maggie. The Rise of the Gothic Novel. London: Routledge, 2006. Punter, David and Glennis Byron. The Gothic. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. 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