Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

To truly appreciate the greatness of the short psychological thriller and science fiction novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one must approach this 19th century novel with new eyes, unfettered by the recent film versions of the tale, and of the common cultural knowledge of what transpires over the novel's last few pages. Even people who have never read the book or seen a film version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 'know what happens' at the climax and 'know' the truth or spoiler ending, that the two protagonists or adversaries are the same man, both warring for one body. Even people whom have watched Looney Toon cartoons and seen other parodies of Stevenson have become aware of the novel's cultural significance--to say someone has a Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde personality means they are of a divided self, one good and one bad half both in character.

In other words, as a work of art and fiction today the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde labors under the unfortunate burden of most readers knowing its surprise ending, and as a novel of tense and taunt prose, built upon suspense, this is a huge mark against it as a literary artifact of interest. But the novel's first readers would not have had this benefit, or detriment, when reading the mystery. Instead, the contemporary readers of the novel would have wondered why such a strange and deformed man was lurking around Dr. Jekyll's lair. They would have assumed, no doubt, that the good doctor was going to be murdered, much like the story's narrator, rather than the peculiar, nefarious truth--that the odd Mr. Hyde was Dr. Jekyll's strange, divided, doppelganger of a self. Hyde is of course a murderer, and this status causes Jekyll to commit suicide to 'kill' Hyde, before his evil self is convicted for the publicly humiliating crime--or goes forth to kill again.

The novel begins when a lawyer, named Utterton, hears of a young woman being trampled by an evil stranger named Dr. Hyde. To pay off the girl's parents, the man Hyde gives a check with the name of a respectable gentleman across the front. Dr. Jekyll has willed all of this money to this man, making the matter of even greater concern--what hold does Hyde, a first reader of the novel would have asked, have upon this respectable Dr. Jekyll? The reader's only clue as to the chemically generated nature of Hyde is when Dr. Jekyll's estranged colleague, Lanyon, makes vague allegations against his former friend and medical professional, saying that Jekyll is involved in ridiculous and dangerous experiments that have to do with the human soul and personality. Even then, when Dr. Jekyll is confronted with Hyde's murder of a member of Parliament, the fact he presents a letter from Hyde in a handwriting like his own could hint at fraud, rather than physical duality of self and character.

Then, perhaps a better way of discussing the novel is to say, one must not approach it with new eyes, but with old eyes, or those of a contemporary Victorian reader. Dr. Jekyll's quest to purify the soul, to make himself worthy of his chaste ideal of what a scientist and man should be, despite his dark desires, seems to be uniquely Victorian in its scientific method--by limiting and purging the body, he hopes to render himself perfect. However, by doing so he drains himself of all of his essential vitality as a scientist. He creates a