The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson > Reviews (8)

Of all the horror classics, those novels such as 'Dracula', Frankenstein', and 'The Turn of the Screw' which helped to shape and define the genre prior to this century, 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde' is perhaps the most powerful I can recommend. The brevity of the text, more a long novella than an actual novel, ensures that where other works invest words upon words to shock and horrify you, this one makes just a few short thrusts to do a cleaner, more powerful job.

There can hardly be a reader that does not know at least the outline of this tale, whereby Dr. Henry Jekyll finds a chemical which can separate his 'good' from his 'evil' side in the attempt to eliminate the latter in mankind. Naturally, it's an attempt that goes tragically wrong.

As a piece of literature, the story is beautifully constructed, being told from the points of view of several characters, who jump back and forth along the action to concoct one clear, final picture. Only the latter section of the novella, the written account of Jekyll himself, finally shines a light on the truth of the matter. Prior to that, the strange link between the amiable genius Jekyll and the criminally violent Edward Hyde is one shrouded in mystery. In order to get the most from the novel, it's perhaps a good idea to try to clear away your preconceptions, and take the tale as it comes.

Though written purely as a penny dreadful, a money-spinner and nothing more, the work was an instant hit (not least on Stevenson's wife, who was so horrified on reading it that she burned the first draft!). The cause of its success lies in the complexity Stevenson imbues it with. As Stephen King pointed out, it's interesting to note that some three decades before Freud published his theories on the human subconscious and conscious, here we have as clear a description of the id vs. the superego as you can imagine.

Many readers, swept up by the blistering, chilling narrative, make an early mistake in assuming Jekyll himself to be a blameless innocent, manipulated and abused by his alter ego. As I see it however, the 'moral' behind this most moral of tales is one of hypocrisy and its dangers. Jekyll is as strait-laced as they come, a man who cannot bear to admit to his secret desires and wants. He doesn't have to. Instead, he becomes Hyde, and revels in them while taking none of the blame for them. Ashamed he most certainly is, yet because he views Hyde as a distinct persona he can avoid a sense of direct responsibility for his actions (until the novel climaxes, of course).

This might all sound very familiar, and indeed it should, for 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde' is nothing less than the first werewolf novel in modern literature. Oh, Hyde might not bay at the moon or grow fangs and fur, but he embodies the primal, animalistic forces which the werewolf more overtly displays. Jekyll has no control of Hyde, yet it is Jekyll's own desires that Hyde acts upon. So who is the more culpable? In movies, Hyde is often portrayed as a hideous creature, twisted and malformed.

It is interesting to note that in the novel he is no such thing. While an observer can tell instantly that there is something disturbing and 'not right about him', he nevertheless seems fairly ordinary looking. The beast within is much the same as the beast without, it appears, and this is the crux of the novel's point. Without one, there is no other. Humanity's blackest and sweetest faces look almost the same to the casual observer. The metaphor is so much more powerful than in most lycanthrope tales (which, for my money, is why it's so hard to find a good, original werewolf novel - the metaphor is so shriekingly obvious, there's nothing much for the author to do!).

All analysis aside, 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Hyde' is a brilliantly constructed horror tale, like Frankenstein before it embodying many aspects of scientific and philosophical speculation that will appear to a wide-ranging audience. Don't be put of by its age - Stevenson understood pace and structure better than many authors today.