UTTERSON:
Even on Page 1, Stevenson creates ambiguity and uncertainty about Utterson, warning us that whatever assumptions we make about him are going to be shaken by the story ahead.
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Even on Page 1, Stevenson creates ambiguity and uncertainty about Utterson, warning us that whatever assumptions we make about him are going to be shaken by the story ahead.
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"At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye"
"Something eminently human" -- but the novel will set about deconstructing exactly what might be meant by inner humanity.
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"Something eminently human" -- but the novel will set about deconstructing exactly what might be meant by inner humanity.
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We are told to seek for this “human” side of Utterson in the "acts of his life" -- but within a few chapters Utterson’s acts will reveal a very different, murkier side of the character we're introduced to here.
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"He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years."
Now we're into interesting territory.
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Now we're into interesting territory.
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“He was AUSTERE with himself” is one of my key J&H quotes. It reflects the self-denial of the Victorian gentleman who avoids over-indulgence in bodily pleasure, whether food or alcohol or anything else.
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But MORTIFY is even better to explore. To MORTIFY something is to subdue or destroy it -- but the word has religious overtones suggesting a search for purity of the flesh through self-denial and self-discipline.
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This is how RLS begins the book's discussion of duality and repression. On the first page, we see a paragon of Victorian respectability repressing his own baser desires -- for nice wine, for the theatre -- in service of a societal or religious idea of proper behaviour.
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