The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

maidservant. She muses at her bedroom window in the light of the full moon and feels a rare sense of peace and well-being. She is impressed by the figure of Carew, whom she sees as an “aged beautiful gentleman” (68) full of courtly “old world” manners. These feelings contrast starkly with the brutal murder that follows. Stevenson describes Carew’s appearance and manners as a way to create sympathy and shock at his senseless killing. The maid, who might have been a merely incidental character, acquires more dimension when Stevenson tells us that she narrated this experience later “with streaming tears” (68).

The Hyde mystery, which until this point had been dealt with by ordinary citizens, now becomes a matter for the police. Utterson and police inspector Newcomen work in tandem. Stevenson reveals that the police inspector’s “eye lighted up with professional ambition” (70); for him, the Hyde case is not purely a matter of intimate personal import, as it is for Utterson. This marks the moment when Hyde’s career attains wider, public significance. Newsboys announce his crime in the street, and citizens read about it. This is a turning point in the narrative because now the police and the public are aware of Hyde’s menace. It is likely to come to a bad end eventually.

This chapter also presents two female characters: the maid, and the “ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman” (71) who opens the door to Utterson and Newcomen at Hyde’s house. Like the maid, Stevenson provides specific details about her character: “She had an evil face, smoother by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent” (71). This line conveys the irony of the frequently deceptive appearance of human beings (also applicable to Jekyll). A moment later, her face flashes with “odious joy” at the prospect of Hyde getting in trouble.

The point about appearances and reality is made again as two gentlemen examine Hyde’s room. Although “furnished with luxury and good taste” (72) and aesthetically pleasing, it is the den of a vicious murderer. The room has been ransacked, with clothes lying about and recent embers in the fire. The room itself might symbolize the violent state of disarray of Jekyll’s/Hyde’s life.

As Utterson and Newcomen investigate the murder, Stevenson’s scene painting once again creates a menacing atmosphere: “A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven” (70); “The dismal quarter of Soho… glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration …dingy street…muddy ways…slatternly passengers…like a district of some city in a nightmare” (71). Such imagery has entered popular culture as part of the “gothic” atmosphere associated with London in this period.