Why has the mild mannered Dr Jekyll suddenly begun to associate with the ugly and violent Mr Hyde? And why are they never seen together? When Jekyll’s old friend Utterson tries to solve these mysteries he uncovers a horrific story of suffering and brutality that eventually leads to the terrible revelation of Mr Hyde’s true identity.
A Victorian Classic
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have been a familiar story for more than a decade now, intriuging me in all theor different adaptations. I also bought the book years ago while in Edinburgh, trying to pay tribute to the Scottish literary heritage. Unfortunately, it took me until now to stsrt the story, this time in form of a audio book. Thanks to Spotify, most classics are available to be heard for free. I certainly took advantage of that and listened to a podcast episode throughout the beginning of one of my shifts, accompanying the preperation of cinnamon rolls with the twisted tale of this classic.
Sci-Fi meets Philosophy
In a way, this story is science-fictional and deeply philosophical. If we had the chance to cut the bad chatacter traits off our good ones, what would that result in? Robert Louis Stevenson takes it quite literally and creates two different people in one body. One of them rightously follows the path of science and morality, while the other explores the human underworld by night, committing crimes and harming people. One cannot deny how, for Stevenson, education results in morality and Mr. Hyde represents the opposite of it: physical deterioration and selfish, uncontrolled behavior. Of course, one could read into the story that the latter only follows to the former’s experimentation with human nature and denial and abandonment of one’s own negative traits. This classic certainly serves as a interpretative puzzle to be discussed in classes and courses or in book clubs.
Not quite there but still ground-breaking
The story most-closely follows not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but a friend of the former, who recalls being surprised by a change in Dr. Jekyll’s will, suddenly mentioning and promising inheritance to Mr. Hyde. As he finds this most obscure and further gets to know of some rather mischievous behavior of Mr. Hyde, he decides to get tp the ground of this decision. Doing that, he eventually uncovers the unimaginable. The setting of the whole story certainly is Victorian and gothic, dark and twisted, but I missed actually living thelugh some of Mr. Hyde’s misdeed. In modern interpretations, his actions almost seem exaggerated now. The story did not quite feel like a detective story or a murder mystery or something alike, but there certainly was tension and excitement when listening to the tale. Especially as I have known the characaters in different adaptations but did not know of their final fate.
In Conclusion,
I am glad to check this classic of my list, especially as this character has been on my mind for almost a decade already. The story was tense but unfortunately told from a rather removed point of view so that I felt relatively little affected by the happenings and intriuging developments.
The author:
Robert Louis Stevenson (born November 13, 1850, Edinburgh, Scotland—died December 3, 1894, Vailima, Samoa) was a Scottish essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books, best known for his novels Treasure Island (1881), Kidnapped (1886), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). Source