Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the second is the most filmed story of all time
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Mr Stevenson, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde “One of the most telling1 characteristics of the Gothic from the 1790s to the 1890s concerns the progressive internalization of ‘evil’.”2 Moreover, Gothic literature turns inwards - reflecting, among other things, the increasing Victorian secularization of ‘evil’ through discourses of psychology and anthropology. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of the great modern myths alongside3
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has been in continual publication for over 120 years. - Indeed4, Stevenson’s tale is the second most-filmed story of all time (after Dracula). How did this great psychological horror story come into existence? What does it tell us about Victorian society and our own? Stevenson as Dr Jekyll Many of the elements in the novella5 come out of Robert Louis /’lu:i/ Stevenson’s own life story. Born in 1850 in Edinburgh, Robert was a sickly6 child who spent most of the time ill in bed in the company of his nurse, Alison ‘Cummy’ Cuningham. Cummy was a fundamentalist Christian who constantly told the child about the torments of Hell. As a result Stevenson suffered from nightmares7 his entire life. However, Robert rejected8 Cummy’s worldview which divided people into the virtuous and the sinful. One of his stated aims9 in Dr Jekyll was to show that good and evil exist in everyone. The Edinburgh Underworld In little Robert’s bedroom there was a cabinet that had been made by William Brodie. Deacon Brodie was - a respected cabinetmaker - a churchman - a member of a prestigious social club - a town councillor during the day, but the leader of a gang of murderers and robbers at night. As lock installation and repair were part of his cabinet-making business, Brodie also had access to the keys (that he copied) of Edinburgh’s best and richest houses. Unable to resist the lure10, Brodie got into the burglary trade11, and he used his ill-gotten gains12 to fund13 a secret, separate life that included - two mistresses14 (neither of whom knew each other), - five children and - a gambling addiction. Brodie lived this double life for about two decades before he was finally caught and hanged15 in 1788. When he was 30, Stevenson wrote a play, Deacon Brodie, about this man’s double life. Stevenson was also interested in the famous Edinburgh body-snatchers16, Burke and Hare. - In 1884 he wrote a short story, The Body Snatcher. The Split Personality Another influence for Stevenson was Louis Vivet, one of the first people diagnosed with multiple personality disorder17 in the mid-1880s. Vivet seemingly18 lived as two distinct people: - The first was meek19, intellectual and kind20, and was paralyzed from the waist down21. - The second was confrontational, scheming22 and arrogant, but could walk perfectly. When in one state, Vivet reportedly had no recollection of the memories of the other personality. Robert’s Double Life Stevenson studied first engineering, then law, at Edinburgh University. During this time he led23 a double life himself. During the day he was respectable but at night he would go to the Old Town for wine and women. Stevenson’s lust24 for the Old Town prostitutes was almost insatiable. - At the same time (or more probably immediately afterwards!), he tried to convince them to become chaste25. Stevenson became increasingly uncomfortable with the hypocrisy of Edinburgh’s Presbyterian society. Although the London of Dr Jekyll is not Presbyterian, - there is a similar situation to that in Edinburgh in which rich ‘respectable’ men go to the poorer parts of the city at night to satisfy their secret desires by preying on26 the poor. The Immediate Circumstances Stevenson spent years trying to think up27 a story to illustrate man’s essential double nature without success. Then, one night in 1886 he dreamt the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. A long-time sufferer of consumption, Stevenson was convalescing from a haemorrhage in Bournemouth, England with wife, Fanny, when he had the fever-induced nightmare that was the germ of Dr Jekyll. - the other two seminal myths of 19th-century British Gothic – Frankenstein (1818) and Dracula (1897) were also inspired by nightmares. Moreover, he was in a desperate situation both physically and financially (the Stevenson’s were deeply in debt) and - he had been prescribed cocaine to manage his bleeding lungs So, between the fever, the pain, his creditors and the drugs, Stevenson was not in the best mental state when he had the now-famous nightmare. In any event, he wrote the story up in three days and it was an instant best-seller. Stevenson was addicted to cocaine and he wrote up Dr Jekyll under the influence of the drug. - It allowed28 him to empathize more with the doctor! Literary Precedents Dr Jekyll also had literary ancestry. The scientist ‘playing God’ by creating a doppelgänger clearly echoes Mary Shelley’s (Dr) Frankenstein (1818). James Hogg, who also came from Edinburgh, wrote The Confessions of a Justified Sinner29 in 1824, - which explored the psychological trauma caused by Scottish Calvinism. Further afield30 Gogol (The Nose, 1836) and Dostoyevsky (The Double, 1846) had also explored the idea of a doppelgänger31. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) can also be seen as a doppelgänger tale. What these writers and Stevenson are telling us is that we are really motivated by deep-repressed passions which it would be terrifying to acknowledge32, - so we project them onto another ‘person’. The serial narrators come from Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860). Duality Stevenson’s genius with Jekyll and Hyde was to show the dual nature not only of one man but also of society in general. Throughout33 the story,
Even London itself has a dual nature, with its respectable streets existing side-by-side with areas notorious36 for their squalor37 and violence. When Dr Jekyll’s medical colleague, Dr Lanyon, witnesses Hyde transform back into Jekyll, the knowledge that the ugly, murderous beast exists within the respectable Victorian scientist sends him first to his sick-bed, and then to an early grave38. - He can’t bear39 the destruction of his stable, rational worldview. The seemingly40 decent Mr Enfield, a friend of the lawyer Mr Utterson, first encounters Hyde while “coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning” (Ch. 1). - Exactly where Mr Enfield has been, and what he has been up to41, are never made clear but it sounds far from42 innocent.
- Utterson represents the standards of conventional society and the law. Jekyll’s Home How does Dr Jekyll’s home reflect his dual nature? The home consists of a respectable well-kept43 house looking on to one street connected to a sinister neglected block, which is his laboratory. The first is a symbol of the doctor, the second of Hyde. - The twist44 is that the reputable front and the rundown45 rear form two sides of the same property. The depiction of Dr Jekyll’s house was possibly based on the residence of famous surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793), - whose respectable and renowned house in Leicester Square in the late 18th century also had a secret. In order to teach and to gain knowledge about human anatomy, Hunter required human cadavers, many of them supplied by ‘resurrection men’46 who robbed fresh graves. - These were brought, usually at night, to the back entrance of the house, which had a drawbridge47 leading to the preparation rooms and lecture-theatre. Another symbol is the door. - it becomes increasingly significant not only as the barrier between Jekyll’s public and private life but also between his two modes of existence. Degeneration Dr Jekyll can also be seen in the context of a late-Victorian fear of Degeneration. Once Darwinist evolution had become established, a subsequent fear began to emerge that humanity had reached48 its perfectible peak49 and would begin a slow slide50 back towards brutishness51. The late Victorian syphilis epidemic fuelled these fears and led to52 novels like Dracula (1897). According to Cesare Lombroso’s ‘criminal53 anthropology’, all criminals54 are, like Hyde, atavistic55 [magic word]. Hyde is described as
Notice that he is smaller than Dr Jekyll, again suggesting degeneration. Also notice how, unlike57 Frankenstein’s creature, Hyde is ‘othered’ in the text - there is no direct narration from him. Hyde is younger and more energetic than Jekyll. - This suggests evil is something that develops later in life, after a period of childhood innocence. Hyde’s known crimes are against a child and an old man, the very people that civilized society is set up to protect. - Stevenson seems to be portraying a psychopath/sociopath. Sexing Up58 Dr Jekyll In 1885 and 1886 sex and sexually transmitted disease59 were being talked about in Victorian society as never before. In 1885 the age of consent60 was raised61 to 16 and sex between men was criminalized as ‘gross62 indecency’.
In 1886 the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864 was finally repealed67. - This had allowed68 the police to arrest, examine and imprison prostitutes, while leaving their clients free to spread69 the venereal diseases the act was meant to70 control.
- By omitting the scenes of Mr. Hyde’s supposedly crazy debauchery71, Stevenson allows our imaginations to run to wild and eerie72 places. In other words, by choosing not to explicitly detail Mr. Hyde’s wickedness, Stevenson creates a spooky73, supernatural, general character that encompasses74 ‘All Things Evil’. Homosexuality In an early draft of the book, Stevenson has Dr Jekyll confess “From an early age… I became in secret the slave of certain appetites”. Stevenson, because of the era in which he was writing, could not make specific references to homosexuality, but much of the plot initially hints at Hyde blackmailing Jekyll because of the doctor’s unorthodox sexual preferences. The entire story is played out amongst a small circle of unmarried men. Even the behaviour75 of the elderly MP Sir Danvers Carew, who meets his death at Edward Hyde’s hands after ‘accosting’ Hyde ‘with a very pretty manner’ late one night down by the river, takes on a new light once the reader becomes aware of the possibility of homosexuality as an undercurrent76 in the story (Ch. 3). Elaine Showalter77 sees all the unnamed pleasures as relating to homoeroticism. - Hyde’s ‘pleasures’ are accompanied by ‘morbid shame’ - there is deemed to be ‘something unspeakable’ about Hyde, who evokes in men both disgust78 and fascination (Utterson becomes mentally ‘enslaved’ by Hyde and dreams of him appearing at Jekyll’s bedside).
Women function as moral bedrocks in most Victorian novels. - They’re supposed to be beacons81 of good moral influence.
- Utterson and Enfield go walking every Sunday and “put the greatest store by83 these excursions”, but they say nothing to each other and seem utterly84 bored by each other’s company. None of the characters, in fact, has close friendships. Mr. Utterson’s friendships play the most critical role in driving the novel forward. - Most ‘friends’ in the novel seem to be ‘non-hostile acquaintances’. Lanyon and Jekyll are first and foremost85 important to each other as professional rivals. The social constructs for these men – who have to deal with money, law, and science – may be taking them away from the communal traditions of family and friendship, and perhaps even religion, - so that they must relate to each other in a different, distanced way rather than86 talking face to face. When Mr Utterson says he inclines to Cain’s heresy, he is referring to Cain’s answer to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” - In other words he does not interfere in other people’s business. Masao Miyoshi has remarked that, “the important men in the book... are all unmarried, intellectually barren87, emotionally stifled88, joyless89”. This is certainly not a reflection of Stevenson, - who had been happily married to Fanny Osbourne since 1880. Vicarious Pleasures & Repression It is interesting that the real liberation for Dr Jekyll once he has released90 Hyde is that he can take vicarious91 pleasure from Hyde’s acts - without having to feel guilty92 about them because they are done by ‘another’. Most of the story’s revelations are made not through conversation between characters but rather through a sequence of letters and documents, addressed, sealed and enclosed in safes, so that they need to be put together like a puzzle at the end. - The men avoid completely speaking about anything of substance, and - one man will start to talk and then silence himself.
- He ultimately93 feels compelled to find a secret outlet94 for the urges he cannot share95 – Mr Hyde. Through Mr Hyde, Jekyll believes he can maintain his reputation while enjoying his darker urges. - However, Hyde’s takeover of Jekyll suggests that repression only strengthens that which is repressed, puts it under higher pressure so that it explodes. Much of the dramatic action in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde consists of damage control96. London Context The novella established the London fog as a sinister atmospheric. Portrait of a society in which everyone has something to hide. Look out for references to
Moreover, as Dan Chaon explains, “[Hyde] needs the anonymity of the masses, ad he needs the newly gas-lit streets, the flickering night-time landscape of pubs and brothels and beggars, the urban underworld that would later transform into the world of film noir.” It has been argued – by an Irishman, Patrick Brantlinger – that the description of Hyde fits the contemporary stereotype of an Irish ‘hooligan’. - From this perspective the novella could represent to British identity being torn apart as the Fenian Hyde tries to break free from Dr Jekyll, the civilized Englishman! (i.e. a Victorian version of The Faerie Queene)
- From the beginning ‘Jack and Mr Hyde were confused in the popular imagination’.101 - Richard Mansfield who famously played Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the stage adaptation, was accused of being the Ripper murderer by a member of the public!
“There seems to be a tolerably realistic impersonation102 of Mr Hyde at large103 in Whitechapel”. However, ‘Jack’ and Edward Hyde were in fact very different. - We might imagine that Hyde has attacked women, especially prostitutes,104 but this is not explicit in the novella. - The only two attacks that are explained in Stevenson’s work are Hyde trampling a little girl at the beginning of the story and his murder of an old gentleman in the middle.
- He delights in his crimes. - Therefore he is not animalistically amoral but immoral.
- in this Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has much in common with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Jekyll, Hyde and Manichaeism Dr Jekyll believes that humans have two souls – one good, one bad. - The human soul is perceived as a battleground for an ‘angel’ and a ‘fiend’. This is essentially a Manichaeist position. The potion is meant to separate and purify each element. However, it only succeeds in bringing the dark side into being; - Hyde emerges, but he has no angelic counterpart.
- If this is so, then the potion simply strips away the civilized veneer, exposing man’s essential nature. - the human condition is not in fact double but rather one of repression and dark urges, and that once the repression of those dark urges eases or breaks it becomes impossible to put back into place, allowing the ‘true’, dark nature of man to emerge.
- It has been interpreted as ‘Je kill’ (= I – in French – kill). ‘Jekyll’ may have echoes of ‘jackal’.
- however, the name also links the creature to primitive London: ‘Hyde Park’ is a name that goes back to Saxon Times (A-S hīd = hide). The Influence of Dr Jekyll Stevenson sparked108 a renewed interest in Gothic horror. Four years after Dr Jekyll Oscar Wilde wrote A Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), which also deals with109 the dual nature of Man. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897, while Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) took the exploration of the monster beneath110 the veneer111 of civilization still further. - In popular culture The Hulk is clearly a descendent of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. You may come across112 the expression ‘Jekyll-and-Hyde eating’. This curious term refers to the mixing of healthy and unhealthy foodstuffs113: e.g. His sister is a classic case of Jekyll-and-Hyde eating; everything’s low-fat and sugar-free and then at night she guzzles114 chocolate. Compare Dr Frankenstein’s and Dr Jekyll’s attempts to play God? In 1901 Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams. What is the relationship, if any, between Stevenson’s novella and Freudianism? To what extent is silence an important motif of the novella? - The most crucial silence is that the novel does not reveal what pleasures Jekyll indulges in – this is kept secret. How does the novel reflect the Victorian value system in relation to reputation and reality? - The Victorians valued reputation above reality. - Gossip and blackmail are the two great threats to reputation, so when something unpleasant comes up the ‘gentleman’ prefers silence to discussion.
The first Sherlock Holmes story – A Study in Scarlet – appeared in 1887. Much of the narrative style reads like a police report. - Notice that the novella is called The Strange Case... and the chapter headings often include the word ‘incident’ to suggest a forensic report. There is also a fascination with handwriting as a key to identity (graphology) – typical of detective novels. - From this perspective Utterson is an amateur detective. Is Dr Jekyll a Gothic novel? - Many Gothic elements (e.g. secret passageway) but - the setting is too contemporary and domestic. Bibliography
1 telling – significant 2 Andrew Smith Gothic Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) 3 alongside – together with 4 indeed – (emphatic) in fact 5 novella – (false friend) short novel 6 sickly – frequently ill 7 nightmare – terrifying dream 8 to reject – repudiate, not accept 9 aim – objective 10 lure – temptation 11 to get into the burglary trade (get-got-got) – began to rob homes 12 ill-gotten gains – illegal income 13 to fund – finance 14 mistress – extramarital female lover 15 to hang sb. – execute sb. 16 body-snatcher – sb. who steals cadavers, ‘resurrection man’ 17 multiple personality disorder – split personality, a rare dissociative condition in which two or more personalities with distinct memories and behaviour patterns apparently exist in one individual 18 seemingly – apparently 19 meek – gentle, docile 20 kind (adj.) – friendly and generous, good-natured 21 from the waist down – in his pelvis and legs 22 scheming – manipulative, duplicitous 23 to lead (lead-led-led) – (in this case) have 24 lust – sexual passion, lasciviousness 25 to become chaste – stop being sexually active 26 to prey on – take advantage of, be rapacious towards 27 to think up (think-thought-thought) – invent 28 to allow – permit, enable 29 sinner – sb. who commits immoral acts 30 further afield – further away, in more distant places 31 doppelgänger – a ghostly duplicate of a living person 32 to acknowledge – admit to 33 throughout – in every part of 34 abandon (n.) – uninhibitedness, recklessness, impulsiveness 35 restraint – self-control, self-discipline 36 notorious – infamous 37 squalor /skwolər/ – filth, insalubrity 38 to send sb. to an early grave (send-sent-sent) – kill sb. before his/her time 39 to bear (bear-bore-borne) – (in this case) stand, live with 40 seemingly – apparently 41 to have been up to – have been doing 42 far from – the opposite of 43 well-kept – neat and tidy 44 twist – surprise, unexpected revelation 45 rundown – derelict 46 resurrection men – body-snatchers 47 drawbridge – bridge over a channel that can be raised to make access impossible 49 peak – high point, maximum, apogee 50 slide – (in this case) decline, deterioration 51 brutishness – savagery, atavism 52 to lead to (lead-led-led) – result in 53 criminal (adj.) – (false friend) delinquent 54 criminal (n.) – (false friend) delinquent 55 to be atavistic – have reverted to a more primitive state 56 ape-like – similar to an ape/monkey 57 unlike – in contrast to 58 to sex sth. up – make sth. more interesting, (in this case) providing a love interest in 59 disease – illness, (in this case) contagion 60 the age of consent – age at which a person can legally start having sex 61 to raise – increase, postpone 62 gross – (in this case) serious, deplorable 63 act – (in this case) law 64 blackmailer – extortionist 65 rent boy – young male prostitute 66 blackmail – extortion 67 to repeal – revoke, annul 68 to allow – permit 69 to spread (spread-spread-spread) – propagate, disseminate 70 to be meant to – be supposed to 71 debauchery – degeneracy, depravity 72 eerie – sinister 73 spooky – sinister 74 to encompass – cover 75 behaviour – conduct 76 undercurrent – intimation, clandestine theme 77 Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (Viking, 1990) 78 disgust – (false friend) repulsion 79 to trample – walk over, crush with one’s feet 80 this aspect is changed in all the film versions of Stevenson’s novella. For example, the central character, the female servant, in the movie Mary Reilly (1996) does not appear in Stevenson’s story. 81 beacon – (in this case) sth. that offers inspiration and guidance 82 emptiness – vacuity 83 to put great store by sth. (put-put-put) – value sth. highly, consider sth. to be very important 84 utterly – completely 85 first and foremost – primarily 86 rather than – instead of, as opposed to 87 barren – infertile, sterile 88 stifled /’staifəld/ – constrained, inhibited 89 joyless – melancholy, depressing, humourless 90 to release – free, liberate 91 vicarious – indirect, through another person 92 guilty – responsible, culpable (formal) 93 ultimately – (false friend) finally 94 outlet – expression 95 to share – (in this case) talk about 96 damage control – putting out fires, damage limitation, limiting the adverse effects of an error 97 blackmail – extortion 98 indeed – (emphatic) in fact 99 stage (adj.) – theatrical 100 to strike (strike-struck-struck) – (in this case) attack 101 one reason may be linguistic: the j_k consonance between ‘Jack’ and ‘Jekyll’ 102 impersonation – imitation 103 at large – at liberty, on the loose 104 he does in all the film versions of the story 105 oddly – strangely, surprisingly 106 to take over (take-took-taken) – take control 107 to relish – enjoy 108 to spark – provoke, start, ignite 109 to deal with (deal-dealt-dealt) – (in this case) examine 110 beneath – underneath, below 111 veneer – (in this case) mask, façade 112 to come across (come-came-come) – encounter 113 foodstuff – ingredient, type of food 114 to guzzle – devour, eat voraciously Yüklə 151,72 Kb. 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