The Theme Of Chapter 10 In Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

How is the Gothic theme of multiplying torments shown by Stevenson in Chapter 10?

Chapter 10 of “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” is blandly titled “Henry Jekyll’s Full statement of the Case”. However the contents of this final chapter of the book is not so bland. Given from Dr Jekyll’s perspective, the account gives the reader long awaited details which had hitherto been shrouded under mystery and enigmas. The details of Dr Jekyll’s capitulation to evil.

Stevenson begins the chapter by describing Dr. Jekyll’s feelings after he had done the experiment for the first time. In contrary to the book and to the whole gothic genre, these feelings were feelings of jubilance and victory. Jekyll says, after his first “transformation” into

Mr Hyde, that he felt, “indescribably new” and how he was “exulting in the freshness of these sensation.” These quotations, out of context, seem like positive ones. However, in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, these quotations build up an uneasy feeling inside the reader. This is because they start to understand what Mr Hyde actually is. Until this point, Mr Hyde had been a malevolent monster from the realms of fiction. Except now they understand Mr Hyde is very real. He is the evil part that lurks deep below in all of us, chained by our consciences and our “bonds of obligation”. Dr Jekyll, a civilised man who lived a respectable, conventional life, by meandering too close to “the mystic and the transcendental”, had released Mr Hyde from those chains and from that point onwards, Harry Jekyll never stood a chance.
Jekyll knew “at this first breath of the new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked”. To the readers horror, this thought “delighted [Jekyll] like wine”. The experiment had released Jekyll from the constraints of an unapproving Victorian society and transformed him into a ruthless, wild creature with the freedom to do as he pleased. Dr Jekyll felt free.
These “indescribably new” feelings of freshness will be his undoing.

This is the false hope before the unfortunate ending, a scenario typical of the gothic genre. From this point until the end of the book, Dr Jekyll’s torments will crescendo beyond his control.

Between the start of Chapter 10 and page 76, nothing had gone wrong for Jekyll. He was becoming addicted to evil though, each night committing ever more nefarious deeds. For Jekyll this was easy. He could change from one self to the other simply by drinking a potion. Except on page 76, something extremely peculiar occurs. Dr Jekyll, or so he thought he was, woke up and lay content in a dozy state. Then, his eye fell upon his hand. Or rather a “lean, corded, knuckly” hand. The hand of Mr Hyde. Upon this sight “terror woke in [his] breast”. “How was this to be explained?”
With this paragraph, Stevenson shows how Dr. Jekyll doesn’t understand what is happening and is beginning to lose control of this situation . More importantly though, it shows us that Hyde is gaining control. That terror and the irrational is overpowering logic and

reason.

After administering the potion to transform himself back to Mr Hyde, Jekyll wrote in his account, “Small indeed was my appetite”.

Stevenson, by using this simple sentence emphasizes Jekyll’s shock and uneasiness at what has happened. He is still wondering how the situation is to be explained and he shudders at the prospect of it happening again. Jekyll wrote, “I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.”

Following these events, Dr. Jekyll decides he wants to remain Dr. Jekyll. This was a tough decision to reach. Jekyll wrote that if he remained as Jekyll, “Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence”. Stevenson shows here that Jekyll has become addicted to the evil, ruthless, carefree ways of Mr Hyde, and like a drug addict, the road to recovery will be long and strenuous.
For two months Jekyll was “true to his determination” except he “began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling for freedom”. This proved too much to bear for Jekyll and he “swallowed the transforming draught.”
Dr. Jekyll wrote, “My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring”. This sentence is particularly gothic and emphasizes Jekyll’s multiplying torments because it shows that Hyde, a character conjured from hell, comparable with the devil himself, is back; more ferocious, energetic and angry than

ever.

This devil, who had been imprisoned for two months, struggling after freedom, had been released and the build up of evil energy with it. “The spirit of hell awoke from me, enraged”. In this “delirium”, the murder of Sir Danvers occurred. Suddenly, following this he was “struck through the heart by a cold flood of terror”. With this sudden realisation, “A mist dispersed” and his “lust of evil was gratified”. Hyde had realised the atrocious act he’d just committed. And with this knowledge proceeded, unfazed to his house in Soho to destroy his papers, before returning back to Jekyll’s house “with a song upon his lips”.
Stevenson uses these shocking events with hellish descriptions to further emphasize the multiplying torments in Jekyll.
Stevenson, with Jekyll’s relapse, signifies the point of no return for Jekyll. Hyde has a new found fury and rage and Jekyll has become a hopeless, powerless “slave” to him.

By page 85, Jekyll knew nothing more could be done. He describes it as his “continually impending doom.” Hyde had taken everything from him. His friends, his conscience, and now his sleep! For now, he writes, “If I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Mr Hyde that I awakened” Jekyll had become a creature, eaten up as if by a fever.
Stevenson emphasizes here how Jekyll’s torments are reaching the final stages of its climb. Jekyll was no longer in charge. He was pushed and shoved aside by Mr Hyde’s fury. Now, “It seemed only by great effort as of gymnastics, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll.” “He would leap now, almost without transition, into a soul boiled with causeless hatreds.” This quotation is particularly gothic because, as Jekyll would now, the punishment for a soul boiling with causeless hatreds is an eternity in hell. There was only one way out for Harry Jekyll. And with this Stevenson’s crescendo of torments is complete It was Jekyll, not Hyde who would have to face “the terrors of the scaffold”.

Henry Jekyll is a typically gothic protagonist. Similar to Victor Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll is an audacious scientist who took a step too far into the mystic and transcendental. And for this act, the gothic genre will cause suffering both physically and mentally. For Dr. Jekyll however these torments are different to the average gothic novel but by no means less sinister. Because it’s not the devils and demons on the outside which cause Jekyll’s tragic demise, but the demons and devils on the inside.