The story has an ominous and intense mood, created in part by its depiction of emotion. In keeping with the Gothic tradition, emotions are explicit and theatrical. Take, for example, when Lanyon sees Jekyll transform:
“O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again, for there before me [...] stood Henry Jekyll.
Stevenson’s language here is largely direct and unadorned, but Lanyon’s reaction is intense, even hysterical. The contrast between the style and content of this scene has a chilling effect. The stripped back description (which does not give the reader the tone, volume, or duration of Lanyon’s exclamation) delivers Lanyon’s reaction without any distracting embellishment or digression, creating a poignant sense of discomfort for the audience.
Henry’s reaction in Chapter 7, as he transforms in front of Lanyon and Utterson at the window, is equally affecting:
But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the gentlemen below.
In a story that relies heavily on metaphor, simile, and personification, there is little figurative language to be found here (with the exception of the expression’s ability to “fr[ee]ze the blood” of the men below). Henry’s reaction is, once again, extreme; there is, interestingly, no effort given to describing how his face changes (how it may be contorted, what his features may be doing), only that it moves from a smile to a look of “abject terror and despair.” The end result is, powerfully, left up to the reader’s imagination to conjure. Scenes of heightened emotion increase the tension in the story as they appear, and add gravity and seriousness to the supernatural spectacle of Henry’s transformations.
The story has an ominous and intense mood, created in part by its depiction of emotion. In keeping with the Gothic tradition, emotions are explicit and theatrical. Take, for example, when Lanyon sees Jekyll transform:
“O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again, for there before me [...] stood Henry Jekyll.
Stevenson’s language here is largely direct and unadorned, but Lanyon’s reaction is intense, even hysterical. The contrast between the style and content of this scene has a chilling effect. The stripped back description (which does not give the reader the tone, volume, or duration of Lanyon’s exclamation) delivers Lanyon’s reaction without any distracting embellishment or digression, creating a poignant sense of discomfort for the audience.
Henry’s reaction in Chapter 7, as he transforms in front of Lanyon and Utterson at the window, is equally affecting:
But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the gentlemen below.
In a story that relies heavily on metaphor, simile, and personification, there is little figurative language to be found here (with the exception of the expression’s ability to “fr[ee]ze the blood” of the men below). Henry’s reaction is, once again, extreme; there is, interestingly, no effort given to describing how his face changes (how it may be contorted, what his features may be doing), only that it moves from a smile to a look of “abject terror and despair.” The end result is, powerfully, left up to the reader’s imagination to conjure. Scenes of heightened emotion increase the tension in the story as they appear, and add gravity and seriousness to the supernatural spectacle of Henry’s transformations.
