The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the
bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be
exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly
to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There
was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and,
from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter,
happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a
current of disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my
fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an
innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this
new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my
original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me
like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these
sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in
stature.
Classic fantasy tale, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886.
The plot should be familiar to everyone -- told mostly through the
memoirs of a lawyer named Utterson and Jekyll's own journal entries, it
focuses on Dr. Henry Jekyll, a morally upright, wealthy doctor and
chemist who discovers a potion that allows him to unleash the evil
side of his nature, which takes the name of Edward Hyde. While both
Jekyll and Hyde are quite happy with this arrangement for a time, giving
Jekyll a way to indulge his lusts for violence, forbidden pleasures, and just generally being a bastard,
Jekyll soon grows to fear Hyde's growing tendencies toward murderous
violence. And when Jekyll starts turning into Hyde even without the
potion, he grows more and more desperate for a cure. In time, Jekyll
realizes he will soon turn into Hyde permanently and writes out a diary
detailing his misfortune. In the end, Hyde himself commits suicide,
whether to escape the attentions of the police, in remorse for his
misdeeds, or in horror at the monster he has become.
Stevenson wrote the story in a white heat after literally
dreaming up parts of the tale, particularly the transformation scenes.
His stepson claimed he wrote the first draft in just three days. After a
critique from his wife where she pointed out that he had a fine
allegory that he was trying to shoehorn into a traditional story
structure, Stevenson supposedly burned his entire first draft and
started over from scratch. Even then, he rewrote the entire story in
less than a week, while bedridden with a hemorrhage.
Essentially, Stevenson's novella is a study on humankind's dual
nature. Everyone has both good and evil inside them, much like Henry
Jekyll has secret urges to indulge in sin. But when man lets his inner
shadow take over, as when Jekyll uses the potion to give the amoral
Hyde free reign, bad things happen, not only to friends, family, and
strangers, but to the evildoer himself. Despite not depicting anyone
with a traditional case of lycanthropy, it really is the perfect
werewolf story -- I'm not sure any author will ever be able to surpass
it.
The book was hugely successful when it was published, and it has
influenced everything from the study of psychology to fiction of all
stripes. It has been adapted hundreds of times for film, television,
radio, animated cartoons, comics, you name it. The role of Jekyll/Hyde
has been something actors have enjoyed sinking their teeth into for
decades -- getting to play both the hero and the scenery-chewing villain
is something few can pass up. Some of the best known performances have
included John Barrymore in a 1920 silent film, Fredric March in 1931 (whose ape-like makeup is probably some
of the best known makeup effects in film history), Spencer Tracy in
1941 (who went the opposite direction with very little makeup used to
distinguish the two sides of Jekyll's personlity), Christopher Lee in
1971's "I, Monster," Jerry Lewis (who played a comedic version of
Jekyll and Hyde in 1963's "The Nutty Professor"), Eddie Murphy (who
starred in the "Nutty Professor" remake in 1996), and James Nesbitt in
the 2006 BBC series "Jekyll."
There are a couple of items that most adaptations of Stevenson's
novella get wrong. In the book, Hyde was actually smaller and weaker
than Jekyll, as his evil had not been exercised as much as Jekyll's
virtue. Hyde was also not notably ugly, though he was considered somehow
repellent to everyone who met him.
In addition, the name "Jekyll" is normally pronounced, in Stevenson's
native Scotland, as "JEE-kul," not the "JECK-ul" most familiar to
filmgoers.
Created as part of THE DREAD CHAMBER nodeshell contest.