The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Norton 2002
Robert Louis Stevenson was a fascinating figure—a proud Scot who keenly felt the humiliation his people had suffered from the English, but who also, because of his debilitating bouts with Tuberculosis, lived much of his adult life exiled from his cold and wet homeland. He spent time in France, lived for several years in America, and ended his life on an isolated ridge in Samoa, but he never forgot Scotland, writing of the last great Scottish revolt against the English in novels such as The Master of Ballantrae even as he was oceans away.
The gothic romance Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde doesn’t at first seem to offer any insights into Stevenson’s mind, but then we realize that the cesspool of a city which allows a beast like Mr. Hyde to wander unnoticed for months is none other than London, seat of a swaggering empire that extended from Edinburgh to Sydney. And what a city it is! A sprawling, decaying one, full of alleys, shadowy back entrances to respectable homes, and endless empty streets eerily lit by gas lamps. Brutal and callous. Nightmarish and hypocritical. This is Stevenson’s portrait of the city he spent his life avoiding.
One of London’s stories is that of Dr. Jekyll’s fiendish double, Mr. Hyde. Our first glimpse of Hyde finds him coldly trampling an eight year-old girl when she stumbles into his path on a midnight street. We soon discover that he becomes stronger and more vile as time passes because the city provides ample opportunities to gratify every appetite, no matter how depraved, that he can conjure up, and before long, Dr. Jekyll, the respectable gentlemen scientist, no longer has any power over the monstrous, murderous self he allows to stalk anonymously through London’s “labyrinths of lamplighted city.”
In the end, the genteel, professional men who unravel the secret of Jekyll/Hyde regret their discoveries. One man dies of shock, while another swears never to broach the subject again, locking Jekyll’s written confession away to save the doctor’s reputation. Thus Stevenson closes his novel, and another of London’s ghastly secrets stays buried, perhaps only one of many…
Reviewed by Jeffrey Clayton
Jeffrey Clayton balances the following with felicity: completing his dissertation (PhD English Literature), substituting elementary kids, and monitoring the Astros baseball team. Clayton's fount bubbles with alacrity with subjects from Trollope to Dr. Pepper knock-offs. He currently resides in the Houston, TX area.
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