Monday 3 December 2007

Quiet lawyers...

I have been teaching The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde this term. A group of my students took a dislike to the lawyer, Mr Utterson. Here is, amongst other things, a description of him:

"A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent reputable men, and all judges of good wine; and Mr Utterson so contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed. This was no new arrangement, but a thing that had befallen many scores of times. Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the lighthearted and the loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit awhile in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich silence, after the expense and strain of gaiety."

(text taken from bibliomania)

He sounds like quite a nice man to me...

2 comments:

Annie said...

I wonder why? I read it for the first time this summer, and I quite liked Mr. Utterson.

Autumn Song said...

I liked him too, particularly that description of his quietness. They didn't really explain why they didn't like him. They just didn't...

Thank you for reading the blog and commenting, annie!