(6) ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON –

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL & MR HYDE (1886)

 

Or is that the strange case of Dr Ego and Mr Id?

Dr Jack and Mr Ripper?

The Abominable Hulk?

Yes – I know the novella preceded both Freud for my first reference and Jack the Ripper for my second (although not by too much), not to mention the Incredible Hulk. And yes – I know that the Abominable Hulk is to play into subsequent adaptations in which Hyde tends to be, well, hulking although in the novella Hyde is smaller than Jekyll, at least initially.

“The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of the most famous pieces of English literature, and is considered to be a defining book of the gothic horror genre.” It has had a momentous impact on popular culture and imagination- with Jekyll and Hyde becoming a vernacular phrase as well as a trope for the duality of a person with a dark side, particularly transforming from one to the other.

“When a character and his evil twin, evil counterpart or shadow archetype are really the same guy after all. Or, sometimes, a completely different character is sharing body space with another. The point is, the villain lives outside the hero’s body and therefore hides in plain sight.”

That’s the broader trope – in the novella, it is very much Doctor Jekyll’s dark side, which he unleashed, whether inadvertently or deliberately, by creating a serum he intended to contain or separate his darker urges “that were not fit for a man of his stature”.

One thing that amuses me is that Jekyll is fifty years of age or so, while his darker side Hyde is younger, making the whole novella something of Jekyll’s mid-life crisis and ending as badly as many such crises do. I mean, if only he’d just got himself a sports car or trophy wife instead of creating a serum…

The other thing that amuses me is that Utterson, the novella’s hero investigating the strange case, is a lawyer, as all good heroes should be.

Apparently, frameworks proposed for interpreting the novella include “religious allegory, fable, detective story, sensation fiction, doppelganger literature, Scottish devil tales, and Gothic novel”. Doppelganger literature – dare I quip doppelgangbang?

The book has seen numerous adaptations and parodies, although most omit the mystery of the strange case since it is now well known that Hyde is the flip side of Jeyll. Given that you don’t need him to solve the mystery (so that the famous twist is usually the starting point or clear from the outset), Utterson tends to get dropped or demoted as protagonist.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)