Source of book: Audiobook from the library, but I own this as well.
What would an October be without some sort of a spooky story? This classic by Robert Lewis Stevenson has entered the culture to the extent that most everyone knows about the characters. But few have actually read the book, which isn’t exactly the same as the pop culture version.
The basic plot is pretty well known. The respectable Dr. Henry Jekyll has, for reasons that puzzle his friends and acquaintances, taken up with the sinister and unpleasant Mr. Edward Hyde. His friend and lawyer, Gabriel Utterson, tells the story, and seeks to figure out the truth of this mystery.
As we come to learn, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the same person. Well, mostly the same person. Dr. Jekyll is Dr. Jekyll. But Mr. Hyde is only part of Dr. Jekyll - the evil part. Jekyll’s experiment has been to dissolve the bounds of the elements of his person, and reassemble just part of who he is into a new body, so to speak. Thus, Hyde is much smaller than Jekyll, although he grows a bit during the course of the book - Jekyll feeds the evil part of himself, as it were.
It turns out that the upstanding, respectable Dr. Jekyll has his secrets. While outwardly upright, he has been occasionally indulging certain vices. We never learn what those vices are. Stevenson gives some hints, chief of which is described as follows:
And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of me. 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.
My interpretation of this would be that Dr. Jekyll is imprisoned by his class and profession. He must maintain that “respectability” at all costs, or lose his reputation. Perhaps he wanted to go drink and sing at a dive bar. (Victorian Karaoke!) Or hang with the lower classes. Or maybe pick up a girl or a prostitute. In any case, it seems to be something that would scandalize Victorian society - but only when done by someone expected to be “serious.”
That said, one could certainly make the case that Stevenson was too prudish to actually name something sexual, particularly homosexuality, although he seems to go out of his way to be clear that the “vice” wasn’t universally considered bad or shameful.
The problem for Jekyll is how to indulge his vice, while remaining respectable. Hence, the idea of separating out his evil nature, and letting it have its fun in the body of Mr. Hyde, and returning to dormancy afterward.
And this leads to the next problem, which is that Hyde soon went far beyond the benign “vice,” and started getting vicious. He tramples a young girl, then kills a politician. This second, since he is identified, means that Hyde can no longer be out in public.
But then, Jekyll finds that he starts turning into Hyde spontaneously, not through the use of the potion. And then the key ingredient for the potion runs out and cannot be duplicated…
The book, of course, saves these revelations for near the end. We modern readers know the truth, but for its original audience, the twist must have been breathtaking.
I first read this book as a kid, and subsequently as an adult, and it reveals new layers every time. (My three younger kids had never read it, although my 17-year-old read and loved it as a small child. She’s the morbid one.)
I was struck this time by several themes which Stevenson handles masterfully. First is the way that the potion becomes like a drug. First, Jekyll uses it for a novel effect - it makes him feel good in a way. But as time goes on, he becomes an addict. He increasingly needs the drug just to feel - or be - normal. And the dosage needs to increase and increase to get the same effect. In an era when laudanum addiction was common among literary sorts (and many others, of course), the progression of opioid addiction was well known and well described. Stevenson makes an allegory of addiction, one might say, progressing from the benign vice of letting one’s hair down, to increasing viciousness and desperation. Anyone who has watched the self-destruction of an addict will find this far too familiar.
Stevenson also explores the complexity of human nature. The longer I live, the more I believe that (with very few exceptions), we are an inseparable blend of good and evil, love and fear, selfishness and altruism. Jekyll, in one of the most moving lines, wonders why he didn’t choose to separate out the “good” portion of himself. It is Utterson, the cynical yet gracious attorney, who seems to understand why: Jekyll spends his life trying to “be” the good side of himself, and thus cannot find a purer goodness to have any benefit. And indeed, modern psychology would say that by repressing everything not socially respectable creates a Hyde in all of us - repression leads to expression, often in a more antisocial way. Thus, Jekyll cannot be spontaneous and free, and his repression leads to violent outbursts by Hyde.
In this way, Stevenson’s book is much deeper and thoughtful than the more moralistic pop culture version. The issue isn’t merely “don’t feed your dark side,” but bleeds over into social hypocrisy, the subconscious, and the long-term damage caused by repression.
And, of course, it’s a great suspense novella.
The audiobook was narrated by Ralph Cosham, who is certainly British enough, and seems well at home with the stylized language of the book.
***
Not accurate to the book, but fun nonetheless, is the Loony Tunes take. Like virtually every movie adaptation, it fails to make Hyde smaller, which misses the point that Hyde isn’t the flip-side of Jekyll, but a portion of him.
Poking around for pictures, I noticed that the movie and older illustrations tend to portray Hyde as animalistic, with big teeth and hair. This is problematic both because it is innaccurate to the book - Hyde is vicious, not a werewolf - but also because Hyde is often given "negro" facial features. If I have to explain that to you, well...
However, I was fascinated to see that plenty of younger artists on DeviantArt had truly great renditions of Jekyll and Hyde, that were much truer to the spirit of the original. In this version, both are younger than the 50ish Jekyll, but are both still "him," and correct as to the age and size difference. The kids are alright, I'd say.
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