THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
★ ★ ★ ★ - My first time read of this horror classic - surprised to find that it's less about dual sides of one's identity & more about 'what if your worst intrusive thoughts were a person?'
“I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mistlike transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired.”
title: The Strange Adventures of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
published: 1886
publisher: Vintage Classics
genre/subgenre: classic literature—Victorian horror/sci-fi novella
setting: London
main themes/subjects: rudimentary Victorian ideas about psychiatry & psychology, ideas about cures & control rather than in management, understanding, & compassion, intrusive thoughts & “baser urges” or evil &/or violent compulsions?, DID (kindaaa?), Victorian moral dichotomy of good & evil, expectations of social conduct & propriety, original sin & the nearly irresistible forces of temptation, contradictions that exist within our single personality & identity, physiognomy, the effects of the obligations of profession, respectability, society, & humility on the psyche &/or our non-conforming parts, mental illness, classism
“Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.”
my thoughts:
Possibly quite surprisingly, I have never read this classic before (though I am of course obviously familiar with the story) in spite of its connection to or association with dissociative identity disorder—a diagnosis I happen to have. However, upon finishing the novella I thought that Hyde felt less like a distinct personality and more of like if your worst intrusive thoughts were a person, which is a very interesting subject but not nearly the same as the manifestation of a dissociative identity...
There is of course much else going on in this short novella that gives more context to this discussion / thought experiment as well:
Victorian ideas about the necessary dichotomy of good & evil & their constant friction, morality, expectations of social conduct & propriety, original sin, the nearly irresistible forces of temptation, etc.
Ideas about what our basest urges are / look & feel like.
Contradictions that exist within our single personality & identity.
Physiognomy
The effects of the obligations of profession, respectability, society, & humility on the psyche &/or our non-conforming parts.
I feel like the reader is also tasked with thinking about what counts as evil? Are we tempted to do murder because it is evil & we desire to do evil? or do we come to murder due to the pent up repression of other expressions of self & desire that are also deemed evil by society but that are not in fact in and of themselves evil (i.e. queerness, subversions of gender expectations, sex, not going to church, political differences, anti-royalism etc etc...)?
RLS’s book is more commonly viewed as a clever encapsulation of the internal struggles & toll on the body caused by the staid asceticism & oppression of Victorian era sociocultural beliefs & expectations as well as the misguided, repressive, & myopic worldview of the Victorian upper classes.
Although the idea of being able to take on the physical appearance of (one of) your alter(s) by drinking a potion is certainly an intriguing thought... Would it really “spare” me(/the rest of us) though? It did get me thinking about what an embodiment of my own worst intrusive thoughts might be like & I’m essentially picturing a mix of Harley Quinn, a feral child, pretty much all the characters in Penny Dreadful but especially Billie Piper’s, Debbie Jellinsky, Amy Dunne, Miranda Priestly, & Sauron... 😈 wby?? 😉
i would recommend this book to readers who are interested in the use of the sci-fi / horror genre in Victorian gothic literature to explore themes of classism, morality, identity expression, science, medicine, & mental illness. this book is best read… late at night, in the study, pulled up close to a crackling fire, wrapped in a blanket, & with a sifter of brandy on a table nearby.
“…for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.”
final note: I’m curious about whether or not any of Stevenson’s other works are worth reading? I think I’ve only read maybe one or two of his short fiction in some of the various anthologies I have of Victorian era ghost stories…
CW // classism, ableism, violence against a child & an old man
season: Spooky Season
music pairing: Spooky Strings Music…
further reading:
Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” (1839) in The Complete Tales & Poems
Charles Dickens’s uncompleted The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)
“Green Tea” in In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853)
The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The Snake Pit by Mary Ward (1946)
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg (1964)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)
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‘“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”’
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