"Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson

This short novel, or novella, whose full title is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, was written by Scotsman Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886. It is one of his best-known books and has remained in the public imagination for well over a century; its sheer eeriness and brilliantly shocking twists have inspired numerous popular adaptations.

As time goes on, this novella could be read in several ways. There is the most known one, that of split personality, but also could be a pathological angle of investigating the nature of mental illness. In these days, where science, technology and medicine is much more advanced, the story could also be read as a warning on the extreme use of mind altering chemicals, drugs or alcohol and the self destructive properties of such actions.

But Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde could also be read as a philosophical book which deals with the knowledge that we are all on death’s door. Death, in this case, is represented as a man of flesh and blood. A psychoanalyst could also, somewhat justifiably, could read the story as the psychotic and narcissist fantasy of Dr. Jekyll.

As would seem fitting for a tale as strange as this, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde comes with a number of literary legends attached. One states that gruesome scenes from the story first appeared to Stevenson as nightmares. Another suggests that the impetuous author torched the first full draft after criticism from his wife. Neither myth may be true. The only certainty is that Stevenson’s book very cleverly captured the clear contradictions of Victorian society, demonstrating the awful consequences of keeping man’s natural animal instincts locked away beneath the strict ideas of ‘decency’. Jekyll and Hyde is a terrifying glimpse into the dark depths of the mind.

Exploring the idea of duality, Lang describes ‘the double personality in every man’, noting that this duality device had been used widely by Edgar Allan Poe. Duality is proposed as the moral of the tale – indeed he states that the moral is the tale, and that they are as inseparable as Jekyll and Hyde.

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