Hyde’s ugliness prompts a similar loss of words. When
Utterson finally converses with Hyde and sees his face, like Enfield,
he proves unable to comprehend and delineate exactly what makes
Hyde so ugly and frightening. Significantly, though, one of the
words that the fumbling lawyer comes up with is “troglodyte,” a
term referring to a prehistoric, manlike creature. Through this
word, the text links the immoral Hyde to the notion of recidivism—a
fall from civilization and a regression to a more primitive state.
The imperialist age of Victorian England manifested a great fear
of recidivism, particularly in its theories of racial science, in
which theorists cautioned that lesser, savage peoples might swallow
up the supposedly -superior white races.
The description of Jekyll’s house introduces an element
of clear symbolism. The doctor lives in a well-appointed home, described
by Stevenson as having “a great air of wealth and comfort.” The
building secretly connects to his laboratory, which faces out on
another street and appears sinister and run-down. It is in the laboratory
that Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde. Like the two secretly connected
buildings, seemingly having nothing to do with each other but in
fact easily traversed, the upstanding Jekyll and the corrupt Hyde
appear separate but in fact share an unseen inner connection.
These chapters also introduce us to the minor character
of Dr. Lanyon, Jekyll’s former colleague. Lanyon’s labeling of Jekyll’s research
as “unscientific balderdash” hints at the supernatural bent of the
experiments, which contrasts powerfully with the prevailing scientific
consensus of the Victorian world, in which rationalism and materialism
held sway. In his reverence for the rational and -logical, Lanyon
emerges as the quintessential nineteenth-century scientist, automatically
dismissing Jekyll’s mystical experiments. Later events prove that
his dogmatic faith in a purely material science is more akin to
superstition than Jekyll’s experiments.
