Horror or Primitive Duality?

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll 

and Mr. Hyde  

by Robert Louis Stevenson

“I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”   ― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has a lot of literary legends associated with it, as would seem appropriate for such a bizarre narrative. One claims that Stevenson had nightmares about the story's gory parts at initially. Another claims that the hasty author burned the first complete draft in response to his wife's criticism. Both myths might not be true. The only thing that is known is that Stevenson's work masterfully caught the obvious paradoxes of Victorian society and illustrated the terrible results of hiding man's innate animal desires beneath the rigid concepts of "decency." This duality preceded the results of Freudian and Jungian studies of the subsequent century; however they provided an interesting addition to the literature of the doppelganger. A horrifying window into the murky recesses of the psyche is provided by Jekyll and Hyde.

This is one of those favorites of which it seems everyone knows the story even though they may only have seen one of the film adaptations of the original book.  It is their loss for the book is a minor masterpiece and the best offerings of Hollywood (my favorite is the 1941 version with Spencer Tracy but Frederic March, 1931, is a close second) wander far from the text of the book, particularly with the addition of a love interest for the good Dr. Jekyll that just is not there.  That aside, the book is high Victorian speculation about the nature of evil and man's ability to create life or at least modify it.  It reminds me of Well's The Island of Dr. Moreau, published a decade later, except Stevenson is a bit more of a romantic.  It also provides an example for the theories of Dr. Freud, who was not on the scene when Stevenson was creating his short novel.  There are many explanations for the dual personalities presented by Stevenson.  I like to think of it as a variation of the doppelganger literature of which Poe's William Wilson and Dostoevsky's The Double are classic examples.  Stevenson's story and character has entered our literary mind and vocabulary and was popular from the beginning with good reason.  

Stevenson was well-liked in his day, but writers in the early 20th century criticized him for penning profit-driven commercial fiction. Since then, he has gained recognition as one of the greatest writers of English literature. This is one of his best stories and a favorite of mine.