The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

By Robert Louis Stevenson

Dangerously evil, horribly deformed and lacking in a medical degree Mr Edward
Hyde leaps from the body of respectable Dr Henry Jekyll, brought forth by a potion of
tainted powders. Hydes evil is writ on his person, Jekylls decency announced by his
grand ondon townhouse and sober companions, yet they are each a part of the same
whole, !closer than a wife, closer than an eye.
"e can no longer read #obert ouis $tevensons The Strange Case of Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the state of e%citement described by a contemporary reviewer
in The Times as, !passing from surprise to surprise in a curiosity that keeps growing,
because it is never satisfied.
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Morally opposed, mortally linked, the inspiration for
movies, ballets, plays, operas, cartoons and sculptures, their names have been given to
moody workmates and mild mannered killers. 'ts difficult for the modern reader to
remember that the nature of the bond between the good doctor and his alter ego isnt
revealed until the second last chapter of the book. $o is there any point in reading the
novel at all( )h yes, most definitely. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
transcends the clich*s of bone+grinding grimaces and bubbling test tubes, which
despite encapsulating the popular image of the book constitute the weakest
components of its plot. ,he business with the powders is, as Henry James put it, !too
e%plicit and e%planatory
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,he genesis of $tevensons shilling shocker is the stuff of literary legend. ike
those other monstrous gothic tales The Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein and Dracula
the central vision of the novel came to its author in a dream. $tevensons wife, .anny
)sbourne recalls,
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Robert Louis Steenson The Critical Heritage, Ed. /aul Mai%ner, #outledge, 0eegan and /aul 1&23&4
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The House of Fiction, Henry James, 5reenwood /ress 1&2674 /.&89
ouise "elsh & The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
!'n the small hours of one morning ' was wakened by cries of horror from him.
', thinking he had a nightmare, wakened him. He said, angrily, !"hy did you wake
me( ' was dreaming a fine bogie tale.
$tevenson takes up the story in his essay, !: ;hapter on Dreams<
!' dreamed the scene at the window and a scene afterward split in two, in
which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in
the presence of his pursuers. :ll the rest was made awake and conscious.
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=ut .anny claims that when $tevenson presented her with the finished work
she was disappointed, protesting that hed missed the allegorical potential of the tale,
!he had Jekyll bad all through and working on the Hyde change only for disguise.
$tevensons stepson loyd )sbourne makes his own contribution to the creation myth
recounting that his stepfather responded to the criticisms by flinging the manuscript
on the fire. !'magine my feelings > my mothers feelings > as we saw it bla?ing up@ as
we saw those precious pages wrinkling and blackening and turning into flame.
$atisfying as it is, this flaming passion is open to dispute and loyds
subseAuent account of a three+day feverish rewrite !si%ty four thousand words in si%
days 1presumably on the seventh day $tevenson rested4 is contradicted by the
authors letters, which indicate a si%+week period of editing.
The Times reviewer conBectured, !Either the story was a flash of intuitive
psychological research, dashed off in a burst of inspiration or else it is the product of
the most elaborate forethought, fitting together all the parts of an intricate and
inscrutable pu??le.
C

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#obert ouise $tevenson !: ;hapter on Dreams /.&9D, in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde and Other Tales, Ed. #oger uckhurst, )%ford 1-DD94
C
Ensigned reviewer in The Times, -6
th
January &339, reproduced inRobert Louis Steenson The
Critical Heritage, /aul Mai%ner 1&23&4 /.-D6
ouise "elsh - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
,he answer is of course that it was both. ,he themes for Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde had been cumulating within $tevenson since he was a boy and their realisation
in this short novel was a result of e%perience, hard crafting and repeated failure.
#obert ouis 1pronounced ewis4 $tevenson was born in &36D in Edinburgh
into a family of lighthouse builders and engineers. ;onscious of duty, god fearing,
hard working, inclined to moroseness, his father ,homas $tevenson could well serve
as a model for Jekylls lawyer Mr Etterson, who !was austere with himself@ drank gin
when he was alone to mortify his taste for vintage@ and though he enBoyed the theatre
had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years.
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;alvinism with its suspicion of pleasure was a dominating influence in young
ouis life. His nurse :lison ;unningham, was a strict /resbyterianism whose
conviction in hellfire 1and in the efficacy of strong coffee as a sleeping draught4
enlivened her young charges dreams. !;ummie disapproved of plays and novels, but
had a talent for storytelling and fired the sickly childs imagination with tales of
;ovenanting and righteousness.
ater $tevenson was to agree with a reviewer who had described his ethics as
a hindrance to fiction, !the categorical imperative is always with me, but utters dark
oracles. ,his is a ground almost of pity. ,he $cotch side came out plain in Dr Jekyll.
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$tevenson may not have been able to throw off his ;alvinist upbringing, but he did, at
least in his youth, have a good bash at it.
:t seventeen he began studying the family profession at Edinburgh
Eniversity, but it was the !other Edinburgh, the city of dark wynds and late night
howffs, rather than the rigours of engineering that drew him. :n early poem sums up
his youthful allegiances.
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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, #obert ouis $tevenson, Ed 0atherine inehan, Forton
;ritical Edition 1-DD84 p.7
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Ernest Mehew 1Ed4 Selected Letters of Robert Louis Steenson, Gale Eniversity /ress 1&2274 /.8D2
ouise "elsh 8 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
)h fine, religious, decent folk
'n virtues flaunting gold and scarlet,
' sneer between two puffs of smoke,
5ive me the publican and the harlot.
$tevensons e%uberant bohemianism became more than a rebellion against
;alvinism. $tultifying though the religion of his forebears was it was more than the
letter of it that he gibed at. He was revolted by the hypocrisy of Hictorian society.
Dr Jekyll acknowledges that many !a man would have bla?ened such
irregularities as ' was guilty of. 't is not the potion that opens the door to Hyde but
the doctors, !imperious desire to hold my head high, and wear a more than commonly
grave countenance before the public.
:s academic #obert Mighall points out it is Jekylls, !overdeveloped sense of
sinfulness that constructs Hyde.
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Hypocrisy runs through the book and it is not only
Jekyll who is concerned with appearances. ,he supposedly amoral Hyde is
blackmailed into compensating the family of a child he attacks and when the doctor is
implicated in a murder committed by his alter ego, the respectable Mr Etterson
conceals incriminating evidence from the police.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was one of the first gothic novels
located in a contemporary setting and it is intimately concerned with the failings of its
own age. ,he antics of Jekyll and Hyde fitted the times so well that when Jack the
#ipper started his bloody campaign a stage version of the book had to be closed in
order to protect the actors.
'nevitably critics mused on what vice inspired Jekyll to create Hyde to sin for
him in pro%y. : Aueer reading of the te%t is tempting. $tevensons awkwardness in
drawing female characters could be responsible for their absence in Jekyll and Hyde,
after all they barely feature in Treasure !sland and "idna##ed. Henry James
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Robert Louis Steenson The Critical Heritage, Ed. /aul Mai%ner, #outledge, 0eegan and /aul 1&23&4
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ouise "elsh C The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
considered that the !gruesome tone of the tale is . . .deepened by their absence. :nd it
is true that the entirely male society of the novel, where women are not only 1with the
e%ception of a briefly mentioned maid4 never present, but never discussed, adds to the
skewed, dreamlike atmosphere of the book. =ut it isnt merely a desire for glamour
that has led mainstream screen adaptations to give Dr Jekyll a female love interest.
,heir absence adds to the ambiguity surrounding his debauching. 't seems likely some
contemporary readers, unaware of the denouement, initially suspected Jekyll and
Hyde of being se%ually involved.
Jekyll tells Etterson !' sincerely take a great, a very great interest in that young
man. !' thought it madness, muses the lawyer, !and now ' begin to fear it is
disgrace. 't turns me cold, he says, !to think of this creature stealing like a thief to
Harrys bedside.
Hydes greatest outrage comes when he meets elderly $ir Danvers ;arew
walking down by the river late at night. ,he old man approaches him !with a very
pretty manner of politeness. ,he witness doesnt hear what $ir Danvers says, but
Hyde responds furiously, clubbing the old man to death. "e might easily be reading
of a homophobic murder.
't is probable that $tevenson was aware that some of his readers would incline
towards a gay subplot@ indeed he might have intentionally led them in this direction.
=ut he refused to give a name to Jekylls sin, writing in defiance of an early stage
adaptation,
!,here is no harm in a voluptuary@ and none . . . in what prurient fools call
!immorality. ,he harm was in Jekyll, because he was a hypocrite . . . ,he Hypocrite
let out the beast in Hyde > who is no more se%ual than another, but who is the essence
ouise "elsh 6 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
of cruelty and malice, and selfishness and cowardice, and these are the diabolic in
man
't is foolish to trust an authors pronouncements on their work. : Aueer
reading works. 5othic is a genre where monsters stand in for !others of all variety
and it is difficult to think of a bigger outsider than Hyde. =ut by refusing to make
Jekylls vice e%plicit $tevenson succeeds where he doesnt in the means of
transformation. ike the best monsters the doctors sin is all the better for not being
seen.
$tevenson writes, !' had long been trying to write a story on this subBect, to
find a body, a vehicle for that strong sense of mans double being which must at times
come in upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature.
,he converted anatomy theatre in which Dr Jekyll works, the sly back
entrance into the building, whose facade is the model of respectability, are both
present in the short story, !,he =ody $natchers. /artly inspired by "illiams =urke
and Hare who provided a regular supply of e%ceedingly fresh cadavers to one of the
leading anatomists of &3-Ds Edinburgh, Dr #obert 0no%. "e never meet 0no%, but
hes the motor behind the outrages and his surface of propriety is mirrored in his
assistant .ettes who decides he can collude in the acAuisition of corpses while
keeping his own morality intact. ,he result is of course, awful. )ther tales e%plore the
attraction and personification of evil. 'n !Markheim a young man commits murder
and is then overcome by horror, which is relieved when he gives into the embrace of
the devil and in !,hrawn Janet a book+educated minister is forced to accept the
supernatural presence of the devil as an actuality.
=ut perhaps it is $tevensons interest in Deacon =rodie, a respectable
Edinburgh burgess by day, thief by night that best e%presses his Auest for Dr Jekyll
ouise "elsh 9 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
and Mr Hyde. History made folklore@ Deacon =rodie was the first customer of the
very guillotine that hed introduced into the city > though legend says he cleverly
cheated death. :s a boy $tevenson was told that a chest in his childhood home had
belonged to the double dealer and he was to spend years collaborating with ".E
Henley on a play about the deacon.
$uccessful in the art of travel writing, poetry, novels and essays, theatre is the
one literary discipline in which ouis didnt shine. =rodie is simply bad, removing all
tension from the tale. =y acknowledging as Jekyll does that, !man is not truly one but
truly two, $tevenson arrived at a more comple%, ultimately successful rendering of
the theme.
Dr Jekyll attempts to fling his sin into another body, but the cynicism of this
act engenders evil. 'f badness lingers in Jekyll is it possible that there is a little
goodness in Hyde( /oole the butler says that once he heard Hyde, !"eeping like a
woman or a lost soul . . . ' came away with that upon my heart and ' could have wept
too.
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$tevenson also has sympathy for the devil, and this is part of what makes The
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde such an e%citing an une%pected read, even for
those who think they know the story already.
3
J I H, /.83
ouise "elsh 7 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde




ouise "elsh 3 The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde