JH 2: Faces

Faces--all different, strange and intruiging--are like windows. Peering into them, a person's true nature is revealed--their personality, their fears, their past struggles. Facial features can expose the evil just below the surface, or the hapiness and light that radiates from within. Perhaps that is why our faces and our outer appearances are judged so harshly; people can see what we try so desperately to hide, the good and the bad.

In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, faces are an endlessly used motif. The face of Hyde is shockingly revealing, described as beastly and malformed, giving off a sense of evil and terror that most who observe it cannot explain. Hyde savagely murders a man in a fit of rage, unknowingly leaving behind a witness. The girl, a maid, describes her experience and the prelude to the murder as, "...the moon was shining on his face, as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindess of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content" (46). The face of the old man opposes that of Hyde's so strongly, that it is no surprise that Hyde chose him as the victim of his own fury. Hyde, like the maid, could clearly see the goodness that Carew's features exuded, so his evil rose up from the depths to destroy it. There is nothing more apparent to the outside world than the personality that is emitted from our expression, the expression that evidently determines who we are.