Key Quote
“"I felt younger, lighter, happier in body... a solution of the bonds of obligation"”
Dr Jekyll · Chapter 10: Henry Jekyll's Full Statement
Focus: “lighter”
Jekyll's description of his first transformation reveals the seductive pleasure of shedding moral responsibility — becoming Hyde feels like liberation, not damnation.
Technique 1 — SEMANTIC FIELD OF LIBERATION
The adjectives 'younger, lighter, happier' create a semantic field (a group of words connected by meaning) of liberation and joy — the opposite of what the reader expects from a transformation into evil. Stevenson makes a deeply uncomfortable argument: shedding morality feels good. The removal of conscience is experienced as euphoria (intense happiness), suggesting that Victorian moral codes were experienced as a heavy burden, not a natural state.
The phrase 'solution of the bonds of obligation' uses the chemical meaning of 'solution' (dissolving a solid into liquid) to describe the dissolution of moral responsibility. This conflation of chemical and moral language is deeply Janus-faced (looking in two directions): the potion dissolves both the physical boundaries between Jekyll and Hyde AND the moral boundaries between good and evil.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
Jekyll's 'liberation' is actually a profound regression: he is not becoming more free but less human. The joy he feels is the joy of a man discarding his conscience — exhilarating in the moment but ultimately destructive. Stevenson suggests that moral obligation, while burdensome, is what makes us fully human; its removal does not liberate but diminishes (makes smaller, lesser) us.
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Technique 2 — UNRELIABLE NARRATOR / SELF-JUSTIFICATION
Jekyll writes his confession retrospectively, knowing the full horror of what Hyde became. Yet his description of the first transformation is suffused with nostalgia (a sentimental longing for the past) — he cannot help recalling the pleasure even as he confesses the crime. This makes Jekyll an unreliable narrator (a narrator whose account cannot be fully trusted): his confession is simultaneously truthful and self-serving, honest and evasive (avoiding full disclosure).
The passive constructions — 'I FELT younger' rather than 'I BECAME worse' — maintain Jekyll's distance from moral responsibility. He describes sensations, not choices. This grammatical evasion mirrors his psychological evasion: even in his final statement, Jekyll frames himself as the passive experiencer of transformation rather than its active agent.
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Context (AO3)
VICTORIAN MORAL BURDEN
Victorian gentlemen were expected to be paragons of self-discipline — controlling appetites, managing emotions, and presenting a spotless public image. Jekyll's euphoria at becoming Hyde suggests that this moral performance was experienced as oppressive (unjustly harsh and authoritarian). Stevenson sympathises with the desire for release while showing its catastrophic consequences.
SUBSTANCE USE & ESCAPE
The transformation scene mirrors accounts of intoxication — the initial euphoria, the sense of freedom, the gradual loss of control. Victorian London had widespread opium use, particularly in professional circles. Stevenson himself wrote the first draft in a cocaine-fuelled three-day writing binge, adding biographical resonance to the theme of chemical transformation.
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WOW — THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE (Freud)
Freud's Pleasure Principle states that the Id seeks immediate gratification and the avoidance of pain, while the Reality Principle (governed by the Ego) defers pleasure in favour of social functioning. Jekyll's transformation enacts the triumph of the Pleasure Principle: Hyde is pure Id, freed from the Reality Principle's constraints. The 'bonds of obligation' Jekyll sheds are precisely the Reality Principle's demands — social propriety, moral codes, professional responsibility. Stevenson reveals the terrifying implication: beneath every respectable Victorian gentleman, the Pleasure Principle is straining against its bonds. Civilisation itself, Freud would later argue in *Civilisation and Its Discontents*, is built on the painful suppression of instinctual desire — and that suppression can never be permanent.
Key Words