Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is an 1886 Gothic horror novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London-based legal practitioner who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and a murderous criminal named Edward Hyde.
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. The novella has also had a sizeable impact on popular culture, with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" being used in vernacular to refer to people with an outwardly good but sometimes shockingly evil nature.
Inspiration and writing
Stevenson had long been intrigued by the idea of how human personalities can reflect the interplay of good and evil. While still a teenager, he developed a script for a play about William Brodie, a Scottish cabinet-maker, deacon of a trades guild, and Edinburgh city councillor, who maintained a secret life as a burglar in order to fund his mistresses and gambling addiction, which Stevenson later reworked with the help of W. E. Henley and which was produced for the first time in 1882.Inspiration may also have come from the writer's friendship with an Edinburgh-based French teacher, Eugene Chantrelle, who was convicted and executed for the murder of his wife in May 1878. Chantrelle, who had appeared to lead a normal life in the city, poisoned his wife with opium. According to author Jeremy Hodges, Stevenson was present throughout the trial and as "the evidence unfolded he found himself, like Dr Jekyll, 'aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde'." Moreover, it was believed that the teacher had committed other murders both in France and Britain by poisoning his victims at supper parties with a "favourite dish of toasted cheese and opium".
The novella was written in the southern English seaside town of Bournemouth in Dorset, where Stevenson had moved in 1884 to benefit from its sea air and warmer climate. Living then in Bournemouth was the former Reverend Walter Jekyll, younger brother of horticulturalist and landscape designer Gertrude Jekyll, whom Stevenson befriended and from whom he borrowed the name Jekyll. Jekyll was almost certainly gay, and having renounced his Anglican vocation, and exiled himself to the Continent for several years, had clearly struggled to find his place in society. Stevenson was friends with other homosexual men, including Horatio Brown, Edmund Gosse, and John Addington Symonds, and the duality of their socially suppressed selves may have shaped his book. Symonds was shocked by the book, writing to Stevenson that "viewed as an allegory, it touches one too closely."
According to Stevenson's essay "A Chapter on Dreams", after racking his brains for days over a possible plot for the story, he had a dream that gave him "three scenes, and the central idea of a voluntary change becoming involuntary". Biographer Graham Balfour quoted Stevenson's wife, Fanny Stevenson:
In the small hours of one morning, I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I awakened him. He said angrily: "Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale." I had awakened him at the first transformation scene.
Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson's stepson, wrote: "I don't believe that there was ever such a literary feat before as the writing of Dr Jekyll. I remember the first reading as though it were yesterday. Louis came downstairs in a fever; read nearly half the book aloud; and then, while we were still gasping, he was away again, and busy writing. I doubt if the first draft took so long as three days."
As was customary, Mrs. Stevenson would read the draft and offer her criticisms in the margins. Robert was confined to bed at the time from a haemorrhage. In her comments in the manuscript, she observed that in effect the story was really an allegory, but Robert was writing it as a story. After a while, Robert called her back into the bedroom and pointed to a pile of ashes: he had burnt the manuscript in fear that he would try to salvage it, and thus forced himself to start again from nothing, writing an allegorical story as she had suggested. Scholars debate whether he really burnt his manuscript; there is no direct factual evidence for the burning, but it remains an integral part of the history of the novella. In another version of the story, Stevenson came downstairs to read the manuscript for his wife and stepson. Enraged by his wife's criticism, he went back to his room, only to come back later admitting she was right. He then threw the original draft into the fire, and stopped his wife and stepson from rescuing it.
Stevenson rewrote the story in three to six days. A number of later biographers have alleged that Stevenson was on drugs during the frantic re-write: for example, William Gray's revisionist history A Literary Life said he used cocaine, while other biographers said he used ergot. However, the standard history, according to the accounts of his wife and son, says he was bed-ridden and sick while writing it. According to Osbourne, "The mere physical feat was tremendous, and, instead of harming him, it roused and cheered him inexpressibly". He continued to refine the work for four to six weeks after the initial revision.
Plot summary
Gabriel John Utterson, a reserved and morally upright lawyer, and his lighthearted cousin Richard Enfield are on their weekly walk when they reach the door of a mysterious, unkempt house located down a by-street in a bustling quarter of London. Enfield recounts to Utterson that months prior, he witnessed a malevolent-looking man named Edward Hyde deliberately trample a young girl after a seemingly minor collision. Enfield forced Hyde to pay her family a large sum of money to avoid a scandal. Hyde brought Enfield to this door and gave him a cheque signed by a reputable gentleman later revealed to be Dr Henry Jekyll, Utterson's friend and client. Utterson fears Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll, as Jekyll recently changed his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary in the event of Jekyll's death or disappearance. When Utterson tries to discuss Hyde with Jekyll, Jekyll says he can get rid of Hyde when he wants and asks him to drop the matter.A year later in October, a servant sees Hyde beat Sir Danvers Carew, another one of Utterson's clients, to death and leave behind half a broken cane. The police contact Utterson, who leads officers to Hyde's apartment. Hyde has vanished, but they find the other half of the broken cane, which Utterson recognises as one he had given to Jekyll. Utterson visits Jekyll, who produces a note allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologising for the trouble that he has caused. However, Hyde's handwriting is similar to Jekyll's own, leading Utterson to conclude that Jekyll forged the note to protect Hyde.
For two months, Jekyll reverts to his former sociable manner, appearing almost rejuvenated, but in early January, he abruptly begins refusing all visitors, deepening the mystery and concern surrounding his behaviour. Dr. Hastie Lanyon, a mutual friend of Jekyll and Utterson, dies of shock after receiving information relating to Jekyll. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter to be opened after Jekyll's death or disappearance. In late February, during another walk with Enfield, Utterson starts a conversation with Jekyll at his laboratory window. Jekyll suddenly slams the window shut and disappears, shocking and concerning Utterson.
In early March, Jekyll's butler, Mr Poole, visits Utterson and says Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for weeks. Utterson and Poole break into the laboratory and find Hyde's lifeless body grotesquely draped in Jekyll's clothes, with the scene suggesting a suicide. They find a letter from Jekyll to Utterson. Utterson reads Lanyon's letter, then Jekyll's.
Lanyon's letter reveals his deterioration resulted from the shock of seeing Hyde drink an elixir that turned him into Jekyll. Jekyll's letter explains he held himself to strict moral standards publicly, but indulged in unstated vices and struggled with shame. He found a way to transform himself and thereby indulge his vices without fear of detection. Jekyll's transformed body, Hyde, was evil, self-indulgent, and uncaring to anyone but himself. Initially, Jekyll controlled the transformations with the serum, but one night in August, he became Hyde involuntarily in his sleep.
Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. Despite this, one night he had a moment of weakness and drank the serum. Hyde, his desires having been caged for so long, killed Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations. Then, in early January, he transformed involuntarily while awake. Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde, needing help to avoid capture, wrote to Lanyon in Jekyll's hand, asking him to bring chemicals from his laboratory. In Lanyon's presence, Hyde mixed the chemicals, drank the serum, and transformed into Jekyll. The shock of the sight instigated Lanyon's deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll's involuntary transformations increased in frequency and required ever larger doses of the serum to reverse. It was one of these transformations that caused Jekyll to slam his window shut on Utterson.
Eventually, the supply of salt used in the serum ran low, and subsequent batches prepared from new stocks failed to work. Jekyll speculated that the original ingredient had some impurity that made it work. Realising that he would stay transformed as Hyde, Jekyll wrote out a full account of the events. Jekyll concludes by confessing that he is uncertain whether Hyde will face execution or muster the courage to end his own life, but it no longer matters to him: Jekyll's consciousness is fading fast, and whatever fate awaits, it is Hyde's alone to endure.