The ‘sense of man’s double being’ as Stevenson described it is also in Deacon Brodie, a play written eight years previously in collaboration with W.E Henley. The play tells the tale of a councillor who leads a double life. He is a respectable and well renowned citizen of Edinburgh during the day, but by night he dresses in suitable costume and becomes a cunning and reckless burglar. In the play, the protagonist merely dresses differently and takes on a second personality. Stevenson takes this theme of changing identity a step further in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The main character Dr Jekyll invents and then takes a drug which causes him to transform both mentally and physically into another person. 

After consuming the drug, Jekyll becomes the character Mr Hyde, and this alter ego is an embodiment of the grotesque in many senses of the word. The transformation of one person into another is no doubt an extraordinary occurrence, but it is not portrayed in a fantastically un-realistic manner. The story is set in an ordinary city setting, not unlike our own world which makes the central event seem more bizarre.

The idea of a person’s duality is also I believe a grotesque element. The drug separates all that is bad in Jekyll’s personality and this becomes personified in Edward Hyde. Hyde therefore consists of nothing else but the evil in Jekyll’s nature.

The idea of losing control of oneself is also in my opinion a grotesque idea, and this theme manifests itself in a variety of different aspects in the novel. Firstly, once Jekyll has started to take the drug and become Hyde, he feels compelled to continue becoming Hyde, despite knowing the damage he causes as this persona. Mr Utterson, Dr Jekyll’s lawyer and life long friend, is suspicious about his friend’s acquaintance with the Hyde character from the outset. This is because he is aware of Jekyll’s will, in which the doctor intends to leave his possessions to his ‘benefactor’ Edward Hyde in the event of his ‘disappearance or unexplained absence’ (p.17). After the incident of Carew’s murder by Hyde, Jekyll vows that he will never have anything to do with him again: ‘I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I am quite done with him’ (p.35). We know however that this is not true. Jekyll does admit in his ‘Full Statement of the Case’ that he felt he had to choose between the two, and that he chose the better half of him but ‘was found wanting in strength to keep to it’ (p. 79). For two months after Carew’s murder he lives as Jekyll, but he cannot control his desires and give in to his darker side: ‘in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught’ (p. 80).

As the story develops, it becomes apparent that Hyde has increasingly more control over Jekyll. To begin with, Jekyll himself is in complete control. It is he who created the transforming drug, he takes it himself, and therefore he decides when he will be taken over by Hyde. On the first occasion Jekyll becomes Hyde, the doctor comments on how much ‘smaller, slighter, and younger’ he was that Jekyll (p. 73). As the story develops however and Hyde is ‘let out’ more often, he gains strength. This in turn drains the strength of Jekyll. Utterson comments how Jekyll was ‘looking deadly sick’ after the murder of Carew, and how he did not like Jekyll’s ‘feverish manner’ (p. 35). As Jekyll as a person in his own right becomes weaker, Hyde’s personality becomes so strong that he no longer requires Jekyll to ‘let him out’ and can appear even without the Jekyll having to take the drug. This is a completely grotesque loss of control. Jekyll is not only influenced by his evil side, but it is personified and he has absolutely no control over when it will appear or what it will do. Possibly the most grotesque aspect of this is that Jekyll loses control, and yet is taken over by a side of himself.

When Jekyll is transformed in Hyde, he can perceive things as himself and as his other at the same time. Stevenson makes this apparent in the novel through his use of narrative. Narratives in which the double plays a leading role are concerned with revealing and exploring the interrelations of the "I" and the "non-I", of self and other. Jekyll can see and explain things through Hyde’s perspective, and yet he can also make objective comments and observations, for example ‘at the inn … I looked about my with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble … Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me’ (p. 84). ‘Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case’ reveals and defines how Jekyll is divided. At points in it, Jekyll can appear as one and the same as Hyde: ‘I was conscious of no repugnance … This too was myself. It seemed natural and human’ (p. 73). At other points however, he tries to deny and dissociate himself from Hyde ‘He, I say – I cannon say, I. That child of Hell ha nothing human’ (p. 84). There is a tension between the splitting and joining of the two personalities through the permutations of ‘I’, ‘he’ and ‘it’, for example:

The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified … When I would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth to do his good pleasure was a being inherently malign and villainous. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities … And thus his conscience slumbered.

(p. 75/6.- italics added by myself).

The narrative in the above section shifts from describing Jekyll as ‘I’ to ‘him’, and therefore we are never entirely sure who is in control when the statement is written, and who at the end of the statement commits suicide. This uncertainty leaves the reader in a state of uncertainty. The fact that it is ambiguous is also a grotesque element.

Hyde as a character is also ambiguous, because despite several main characters seeing him, no one can fully describe his appearance. Mr Enfield tells Utterson how he ‘never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why’, despite him being able to ‘see him this moment’ (p. 15). Utterson dreams of what he might look like, ‘even in his dreams it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes’ (p. 20). This bafflement does not cease when he sees Hyde in the flesh, instead he has even more difficulty describing him: ‘he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation … not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr Utterson regarded him’ (p. 23). Hyde remains indescribable. He is a blank to be filled by each character who meets him. This is also a grotesque element. No one can define him in any way other than the fact that there is something about him they do not like. The novel can been read as criticising Victorian double morality. Hyde represents something different to each character, therefore the impact this evil figure has is flexible.

Death and Suicide

It has been claimed that Stevenson had considered committing suicide at least three times in his life, and this grotesque theme of death is also apparent throughout the story. Suicide is implied in the protagonist’s name; ‘Je’ is of course French for ‘I’, and the fact that ‘kyll’ sounds identical to ‘kill’ must be more than coincidental. This subtle inference is supported by Jekyll’s use of morbid, death foreboding language such as ‘I had come to the fatal cross roads’ (p. 74). These techniques are employed by Stevenson to imply a sense of doom for the protagonist.