Hyde is listed among the characters with "unspecified disabilities" Holmes Such a category is appropriate because while there are several references to Mr. Hyde as being "deformed somewhere" or of giving "an impression of deformity," nothing specific about this deformity is ever stated Stevenson 9, This lack of detail may be difficult for a television- and movie-oriented audience in need of descriptive images, but it probably would not have been significant or impeding for Victorian readers.
As Holmes states in her introduction, Victorians did not particularly distinguish between mental and physical disability; rather, most people assumed a "meshing" of mind and body, where the two were equally connected as well as equally healthy or ill Therefore, Mr. Hyde did not need a particular physical or mental trait, to be considered disabled, but only the suggestion of one.
Physical deformity or impairment has often been traditionally seen as connected to a bad mental or spiritual state of being.
This connection, within disability studies, is referred to as the moral model of disability. This model of, or attitude toward, disability is not necessarily a conscious choice, but simply the fact that "somewhere in the backs of our minds we associate disabilities with sin, evil and danger" Bowe This attitude appears in the text in reference to Mr.
Hyde as in the statement that "evil…had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay" Stevenson Just as Victorians did not particularly distinguish between mind and body, the moral model does not regulate which comes first, the evil or the disability.
As a result it is not clear if Hyde is disabled because he is evil or if he is evil because he is disabled. The two are not necessarily perceived to be the same, but are so intensely linked in the back of our minds that it becomes hard to not make the assumption of their coexistence.
Given this societal connection between evil and disability, it is important to now explore disability adds another layer of fear and aversion toward Mr.
Hyde that is not present when viewing him as simply evil. In Victorian England, and still somewhat today as well, the male body is, as James Adams explains it, a "central locus of masculine authority," meaning a man's "status thus derives from, and is made visible in, his body" Adams , In a time when "athleticism and physical stamina" were associated with "true masculinity and moral strength," the disabled body was considered unmanly, and often un-human LaCom Throughout Strange Case of Dr.
Hyde , Mr. Hyde is referred to in ways that take away not only his manhood, but his personhood as well. For example, Mr. Enfield states "It wasn't like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut" Stevenson 7. Utterson declares that Mr. Hyde "seems hardly human! Lanyon calls him "a disgustful curiosity" Through such descriptions, Mr. Hyde becomes not a man, not a person, but some thing to be feared and hated. It is through viewing Mr.
Hyde's disabled body as monstrous and sub-human that Dr. Lanyon can state that "there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me — something seizing, surprising and revolting" It is also through this view that the disabled body becomes something to fear, for it not only represents evil as already established, but as deviance, the unexplainable and the unknown.
Despite seeing people with disabilities as abnormal or inhuman and associating them with sin or evil, Victorians did not always necessarily fear them in the way Stevenson's characters and readers fear Mr. English society at the time had ways of exerting legal and social control in order to keep people with disabilities contained thus subduing the instinct to fear them.
By keeping people with disabilities in prisons, workhouses and freak shows Victorian society created a boundary between the "normal" and the "abnormal," allowing those on the normal side to feel safe from the possible evil and monstrosity of the abnormal LaCom , In Victorian England, people with disabilities "were decidedly constituted as a social problem in need of a program of management" Holmes which often took a paternalistic form such as "in factories and workhouses, where managers often described their employees and inmates as children and themselves as father figures" LaCom Echoes of such paternalism exist between Dr.
Hyde, where Dr. Jekyll claims to have "had more than a father's interest" while he says "Hyde had more than a son's indifference" Stevenson Hyde, however, rejected Dr. Jekyll as a controlling father figure, coming into existence without Jekyll's permission while he slept. Jekyll puts it, "I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse" In short, Hyde was taking over.
He was rejecting Dr. Jekyll as a father figure. Rather than being confined and controlled, as people with disabilities were at the time, Mr. Hyde crossed the boundaries and dared to enter "normal" society and wreak whatever havoc he could on those who mocked, feared or rejected him.
I never saw a man so disliked. This quote from Enfield shows that he is greatly appalled and disgusted by Hyde's appearance, suggesting that he is other-worldly and doesn't belong in the reputable society of Victorian London. The repetition of 'something' exaggerates how deformed Hyde is , as Enfield can't quite put his finger on it.
Hyde murders Carew and tramples on a little girl causing her legs to break. The use of the simile 'ape-like fury' describes Hyde as an animal capable of rages , not a human. This shows that Hyde doesn't care about his actions and has no control over his fiery, animalistic behaviour.
Towards the end of the book, Hyde becomes the dominant side to Dr Jekyll's personality. Since Hyde represents the purely evil in man or in Dr. Jekyll , he is, therefore, symbolically represented as being much smaller than Dr. Jekyll — Jekyll's clothes are far too large for him — and Hyde is also many years younger than Jekyll, symbolically suggesting that the evil side of Jekyll did not develop until years after he was born.
Hyde also creates terror; the servants are extremely frightened of him. When they think he is around the house, the servants cringe in horror, and some go into hysterics. As the novel progresses, Hyde's evil becomes more and more pronounced. He bludgeons Sir Danvers Carew to death for absolutely no reason other than the fact that Sir Danvers appeared to be a good and kindly man — and pure evil detests pure goodness.
Since Hyde represents the evil or perverse side of Jekyll, and since Jekyll does, vicariously, enjoy the degradations which Hyde commits, Hyde gradually begins to take the ascendancy over the good Dr. A conflict between them erupts, as though the older Dr. Jekyll is a father to the errant and prodigal son.
He wants to punish this son, but at the same time, he recognizes that Hyde is an intimate part of himself.
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