Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
“My dear [Family Book Club],—When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and first read the” report of…
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
8/10
As this story is so widely diffused and embedded in culture, when reading it, I attempted to disregard any homage or parody of which I was aware. This proved to be an excellent decision and the text surprised me in many ways. The first surprise was its length. I had always assumed that this cultural milestone would be an extensive and extremely detailed text, rather than something that could be read in an hour or two. The second was its structure and themes. I was expecting straight horror but instead got action, science fiction, mystery, and a thriller all rolled into one. Nabokov disagrees with my appraisal of the text as a ‘mystery’ and asks readers to “consign to oblivion any notion” that they have of it as such. Sparky Sweets, PhD, describes it only as “a primo example of gothic lit”. Ultimately, I concluded that it is a pity pop culture has done this story to death and awarded it such a high score for its enduring significance and innovativeness, being published originally in 1886.
In Jekyll’s letter at the end of the novella, he recognises a “profound duplicity” in himself. He continues, “Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature”.
He says that his research drew him nearer to ‘that truth’ which doomed him like a “dreadful shipwreck”, “that man is not truly one, but truly two”. Jekyll says that his ‘scientific discoveries’ regarding his transformations led him to the realisation that “of the two natures that contended in the field of [his] consciousness, even if [he] could rightly be said to be either, it was only because [he] was radically both”. Nabokov says that “all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil” and supports this notion as an important takeaway for readers.
Jekyll worries, saying that “All things therefore seemed to point to this; that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse”. His concern is, “To cast in [his] lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which [he] had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless”. Jekyll is really only a ‘better self’ and neither aspect of him is either truly good or evil. On this Nabokov says, “Jekyll’s morals are poor from the Victorian point of view. He is a hypocritical creature carefully concealing his little sins. He is vindictive, never forgiving Dr. Lanyon with whom he disagrees in scientific matters”. His transformations then are not complete, but an ‘evil’ aspect of his personality is magnified. Sparky Sweets, PhD, contends that “Stevenson’s jam is a warning about living in denial. No one can keep that dark side hidden forever, so you should be true to yourself and recognise the good and bad parts. Only then can a brother find balance”.
Initially Jekyll loves to transform. “I was the first that could plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty”. It is only later that he begins to have a bad time with unexpected transformations. It must have been scary for him to go to “bed Henry Jekyll” and awaken Hyde. He says, “In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self”.
One can only imagine his despair when learns that the first supply of salt for his “transforming draught” was impure and that “it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught” and meant it could never be reproduced.
Jekyll’s final letter concludes the novella with these haunting words: “Half an hour from now, when I shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end”.
Jekyll’s monstrous alter ego is so fully formed that not only does it choose the surname, Hyde, but adopts the first name, Edward. Nabokov says, “one would be apt to find all kinds of symbolic meanings, especially in Hyde, the most obvious being that Hyde is a kind of hiding place for Dr. Jekyll, in whom the jocular doctor and the killer are combined”.
The reader learns very little of Hyde, other than that he is a magnification the ‘evil’ inherent in Jekyll. The text says, that he was “sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone”. It can be reasoned from this that he is a sadist and that trampling the girl and murdering Sir Danvers Carew brought him pleasure. Hyde also wants to live. Jekyll says of this, “his love of life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him”.
One of the questions not clearly answered in the novel relates to the appearance of Hyde.
It is said by Mr. Enfield, when speaking to Mr. Utterson, that “He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment”.
Later, after he leaves Utterson, the text reports Mr. Hyde as “pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice”.
It is evident in the text that Utterson and his associates are genuinely concerned for Jekyll. Utterson thinks, “Poor Harry Jekyll… my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations”. When he recalls the inclusion of Hyde to his will, he worries that, should Hyde suspect its existence, “he may grow impatient to inherit”.
They are pleased when, it appears to them, that he is becoming himself again while Mr. Hyde is ‘on the run’ for murder. “Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the doctor was at peace”.
While the text was short, there was an abundance of examples of excellent writing.
When describing an unpleasant part of London, the text says, “The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare”.
In a letter appealing for Dr. Lanyon’s assistance with retrieving the drawer with the contents to return to Jekyll, it is written, “Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told”.
Nabokov praises the alliteration in the writing, citing this passage, “It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street…”
Nabokov, too, praises the book for the “certain richness of tone in the description of the horrible sensations Jekyll undergoes during his hydizations”. He also compliments the construction of the world in which the story takes place, saying, “Stevenson musters all possible devices, images, intonations, word patterns, and also false scents, to build up gradually a world in which the strange transformation to be described in Jekyll’s own words will have the impact of satisfactory and artistic reality upon the reader—or rather will lead to such a state of mind in which the reader will not ask himself whether this transformation is possible or not”.
With regard to criticism, Nabokov points out that the character of Enfield, “a stolid matter-of-fact young man”, when describing his return home from “some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning”, is possessed by “Stevenson, the artist” who cannot resist lending him beautiful descriptive phrases. Instances such as this are highlighted where the “hidden artist” is brought out of very conventional characters in a manner that “can only be explained by the abrupt intrusion of the author with his own set of artistic values and his own diction and intonation”.
Nabokov also cites another literary critic, Stephen Gwynn, who observes that there are no women, so to speak, in the text. “Mr. Utterson is a bachelor, so is Jekyll himself, so by all indications is Enfield, the younger man who first brings to Utterson a tale of Hyde’s brutalities. So, for that matter, is Jekyll’s butler, Poole, whose part in the story is not negligible. Excluding two or three vague servant maids, a conventional hag and a faceless little girl running for a doctor, the gentle sex has no part in the action”.
Finally, with regard to the unspecified pleasures that Dr. Jekyll has pursued in the past, that Stevenson omits for ‘safety’, Nabokov questions whether this “denote[s] a certain weakness in the artist?” He concludes that it does and conjectures that this may refer to the “homosexual practices so common in London behind the Victorian veil”. It is suggested, too, that this may be the reason Utterson first assumes that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll, as he could not do this if the bachelor was consorting only with “ladies of light morals”.
This novella was a little light in the comedy department. One of the only gags was by Utterson who thinks, “If he be Mr. Hyde… I shall be Mr. Seek”.
Additionally, a ‘burn unit’ is not required as there is only light scalding between Jekyll and Lanyon.
Dr. Lanyon says of Jekyll, “it is more than ten years since [he] became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind…” and describes his research as “unscientific balderdash”. The beef between these men continues throughout the text and, later, Dr. Jekyll describes Lanyon as a “hidebound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant”. He continues by saying that he was “never more disappointed in any man”. Lanyon, however, gets the last bit of disrespect in, when he says of Jekyll, I “am quite done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead”. Cold blooded.
“Your unworthy and unhappy friend,
‘HENRY JEKYLL’”.
