—from Century Illustrated (April 1888)
FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW
The [book by Stevenson] which has most of a dream’s vivid pictorial quality is undoubtedly The Strange Case ofDr.jekyll and Mr. Hyde. What piece of prose is less likely to be forgotten? To begin with, the central idea, strange as it is, at once comes home to everybody. The double personality, which the very habit of a dream-land existence must have forced in upon Mr. Stevenson, corresponds with facts of which we are all obscurely conscious. It heightens immensely the interest of a book thus to carry an allegory on the very face of it, provided that the allegory does not interfere with the illusion, but speaks the moral with the poignancy of life itself. Further, this is the only case where Mr. Stevenson, working by himself, has used a mystery; and most skillfully it is used in the opening chapters to stimulate curiosity.
—December 1894
THE NATION
‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ despite the unifying effect of its strong and serious art, bears unmistakable testimony to what we have vaguely called the uncertainty of this middle period. The book is at once an apologue, a wonder-story, and a genuine romantic fiction of a high type. Fables are out of fashion, and we should prefer, therefore, to call ‘Dr. Jekyll’ a psychological fiction; but this would be mere juggling with names. ‘Markheim’ is openly an apologue, and ‘Dr. Jekyll’ carries as patent and intentional a moral as ‘Markheim.’ The curiously comparative might even construct a form of proportion with the nineteenth century and ‘Dr. Jekyll’ on one side and on the other the eighteenth century and ‘The Vision of Mirzah.’ The plot itself combines extravaganza with serious romance. In those parts in which the work is genuine and impressive, ‘Dr. Jekyll’ marks a high state of Stevenson’s romantic power. The weak point, at once detected by the critics, is a mere bit of fantastic detail, worked into the inmost structure of the fiction. We refer to the chemical hocus-pocus-a desperate expedient, not quite consistently carried out.... The trick of “transcendental medicine” was perhaps the only trick that would do the business, but it was a poor trick. Jekyll changing into Hyde in his sleep, he knows not how, is terrific; Jekyll taking the draught is not even impressive. One wishes that the means of the transformation had been left unexplained. But this was not Stevenson’s way. He is habitually complaisant to the reader who “wants to know.”
—January 9, 1896
BRADFORD TORREY
Stevenson could afford to be generous; he had always good things enough and to spare. His was a mind incessantly active. He was always covering paper. If only disease would leave him strength enough to hold the pen, he could be trusted to keep it going. Ideas thronged upon him; books by the dozen, one may almost say, stood waiting for him to make them. The more wonder that, with all this excess of fertility, he could yet rewrite and rewrite, and then write again, still on the search for perfection. Surely the artist was strong in him.
—from the Atlantic Monthly (June 1902)
QUESTIONS
1. The Nation criticizes Stevenson for his use of “chemical hocus-pocus” in explaining Dr. Jekyll’s transformation. How better could he have resolved his tale? Would the story have been stronger if Mr. Hyde never changed back?
2. . “Man is not truly one, but truly two,” says Dr. Jekyll. Is he right? Do you feel in yourself a Hyde struggling to get out?
3. How would you define the part of the self that Hyde represents ? All that we yearn for but deny ourselves? Whatever is taboo or forbidden? Lust?
4. . What would you say is the source of the Hyde component in one’s personality: Original sin? An evolutionary urge that is no longer adaptive? Puritanical repression? Corrupting social images, as from television and movies?
5. What do you make of Hyde’s appearance? (He is small and subtly deformed.) Do you think he should have been depicted as tall and hypermuscular, or obese and debauched, or pale and cadaverous? Why? (Or why not?) Is there a specific meaning in, or reason for, Hyde’s appearance?
6. Should we blame Jekyll for Hyde’s behavior? What do you think of the fact that it becomes harder and harder to reverse the transformation—from Hyde back to Jekyll?
For Further Reading
BIOGRAPHIES AND LETTERS
Bell, Ian. Robert Louis Stevenson: Dreams of Exile. Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1992.
Calder, Jenni. RLS: A Life Study. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1980.
Callow, Philip. Louis: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001.
Dury, Richard, ed. The Robert Louis Stevenson Web Site. http://wwwesterni.unibg.it/siti_esterni/rls/rls.htm. A useful site devoted to the author’s life and works.
McLynn, Frank. Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography. London: Hutchinson, 1993.
Mehew, Ernest, ed. Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1997.
“Stevenson, Robert Louis.” Encyclopcedia Britannica. 2003. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/ article?eu = 71476.
CRITICAL STUDIES
Calder, Jenni, ed. Stevenson and Victorian Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981.
Chesterton, G. K. Robert Louis Stevenson. 1927. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1928.
Daiches, David. Robert Louis Stevenson and His World. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973.
Geduld, Harry M., ed. The Definitive Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Companion. New York: Garland, 1983.
Kiely, Robert. Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fiction of Adventure. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964.
Knight, Alanna, comp. The Robert Louis Stevenson Treasury. London : Shepheard-Walwyn, 1985.
Maixner, Paul, ed. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Critical Heritage. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.
Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Finde-siècle. London: Bloomsbury, 1991.
Terry, R. C. Robert Louis Stevenson: Interviews and Recollections. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996.
Veeder, William, and Gordon Hirsch, eds. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: After One Hundred Years. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
CULTURAL AND LITERARY CONTEXTS
Bell, Ian, ed. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Complete Short Stories. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Mainstream 1993 (Centenary edition); New York: Henry Holt, 1994.
Danahay, Martin, ed. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1999.
Marshall, Tim. Murdering to Dissect: Grave-Robbing, Frankenstein and the Anatomy Literature. Manchester, England, and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Richardson, Ruth. Death, Dissection, and the Destitute. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.
OTHER WORKS CITED IN THE INTRODUCTION
Cornwell, Patricia. Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2002.
Rumbelow, Donald. The Complete Jack the Ripper. London: W. H. Allen, 1975.
Wilstach, Paul. Richard Mansfield, the Man and the Actor. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908.
a Reference to the Bible, Genesis 4:9, and Cain’s famous question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (New King James Version; henceforth, NKJV) .
b An institution, practice, or notion to which persons blindly devote themselves, or are ruthlessly sacrificed (Oxford English Dictionary; henceforth, OED) .
c Slang for a surgeon or physician.
d A leading London bank, acting for many members of the British and foreign royalty and located in the Strand.
e Imaginary street where people in difficulties are supposed to reside (OED).
f Jekyll is a Doctor of Medicine, a Doctor of Civil Law, a Doctor of Laws, and a Fellow of the Royal Society; the list emphasizes the excellence of his credentials.
g Square in London’s West End and the heart of the doctors’ quarter.
h According to Greek legend, Damon and Pythias were close friends. Pythias, condemned to death by the tyrant Dionysius, obtains leave
to put his affairs in order on the condition that Damon be executed in his place should he not return. A delay ensues, resulting in Damon’s being led to execution, but Pythias arrives in time to save him. Impressed by the strength of their friendship, Dionysius spares them both.
i Act of drawing deeds, leases, or other writings for transferring the title to property.
j London’s shabby red-light district; also home to many immigrants.
k Reference to a verse attributed to seventeenth-century satirist Tom Brown: “I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,/The reason why I cannot tell;/But this I know, and know full well,/I do not like thee, Dr. Fell”; the verse is a parody of a well-known epigram by the Roman poet Martial (c. A.D. 40-104).
l Punishment comes limping—that is, slowly but surely; a quotation from Horace, Odes, book 3, ode 2.
m Headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in London, located in Stevenson’s day at No. 4. Whitehall, Westminster.
n Full-length mirror swung on a frame.
o Member of Parliament (House of Commons).
p Light, two-wheeled, covered one-horse carriage with the driver’s seat behind and above the passenger compartment, such as a cabriolet (hence the abbreviation “cab”).
q Lantern containing a hemispherical lens of glass that resembles a bull’s eye.
r Glass vessel marked with precise volume measurements.
s Reference to the Bible, Acts 16:26, when the apostle Paul prayed in prison at Philippi: “Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed” (NKJV).
t Reference to the ominous appearance at Belshazzar’s feast of the fingers of a human hand that “appeared and wrote opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace”; see the Bible, Daniel 5:5 (NKJV) . The image is also the subject of well-known paintings by Rembrandt (1635), John Martin (1820), and others.
u Reference to the Bible, 2 Kings 2:11, where Elias, or Elijah, was carried directly to heaven by “a chariot of fire” led by “horses of fire” (NKJV).
v Impossible for men (Latin).
w Consumptive; like Villon, Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from serious weakness of the lungs.
x To whom God gives woman (Latin).
y Name of the prince in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
z Seedy Soho eating establishment; in nineteenth-century London, oysters were a distinctly lower-class food.
aa Reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (act 3, scene 1) and Hamlet’s famous “To be, or not to be” speech, specifically the phrase “shuffled off this mortal coil” to describe death.
ab One of the great Victorian railway stations, built in 1863 and located near Trafalgar Square and the Strand.
ac Thrown out of his regiment for breaking the gentleman’s code of honor.
ad Baron Franz von der Trenck (1711-1747) committed suicide by taking poison while in prison.
ae Reference to Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871), which led to a spate of popular caricatures on man’s supposed descent from monkeys.
af Possible reference to Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), whose deeply pessimistic Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) argued that populations always expand faster than the food supplies necessary to support them.
ag This story was first published in The London Magazine in 1878 as part of a series called “Latter-Day Arabian Nights” and subsequently included in a book of collected works titled New Arabian Nights (London: Chatto and Win dus, 1882).
ah Explored with medical instruments, emphasizing the mechanical rather than spiritual properties of human beings.
ai Large trunk, often with a rounded top, used for travel.
aj In the second half of the nineteenth century, the British army fought many wars in India, both to suppress Indian revolts against British rule and to extend the British sphere of influence in central Asia.
ak Overcoat, topcoat, or cloak.
al Gaming-house.
am Reference to the Bible, Joshua 4:2: “Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from every tribe” (NKJV).
an Literally, a deer park; also, the mansion on the grounds of the palace at Versailles where King Louis XV seduced young women.
ao South of Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Scotland.
ap Perhaps a reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (act 3, scene 4)—specifically, Hamlet’s description of the elderly Polonius as “a foolish prating knave.”
aq Reference to the superstitious belief that a witch could not die by drowning.
ar Scottish folklore often depicts the devil as a “black man.”
as The speaker stresses that even the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778), known for his denunciations of organized religion, might have “recanted” his atheism in such circumstances.
at Burke was one of a pair of notorious Edinburgh murderers who killed their victims for profit and sold them to surgeon Robert Knox for dissection; see endnote 4.
au Sociable and cultivated person who enjoys food and drink.
av Narrow street or passage turning off from a main thoroughfare; a narrow cross-street, lane, or alley (OED).
aw Reference to a Latin phrase often found in epitaphs, Hodie mihi, cras tibi, which means “It is my turn today, yours tomorrow.”
ax Reference to the halter used to hang criminals sentenced to death.
ay Name for a type of grave robber who supplied surgeons with cadavers for dissection.
az References to notorious nineteenth-century murderers.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classi Page 29