Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“…I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”

The legacy that Dr Jekyll and his alter ego, Mr Hyde, have left on the Western world is a strange one. Almost 140 years later, most people can still recognise these characters when they appear onscreen, perhaps even know of the original story they are from, and yet surprisingly few people can say that they’ve actually taken the time to read the novella. I’m here to tell you that it is absolutely worth your time to do so.

While The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde unfortunately hasn’t aged as well as some of its contemporaries, its historical value is nonetheless fascinating as it presents a unique and complex insight into the 19th century psyche. However, I did find without the historical context it’s incredibly easy to miss a lot of the story. The Penguin edition with notes by Robert Mighall phenomenally helps with this, and I couldn’t recommend this version more.

You can tell that Robert Louis Stevenson was an incredibly intelligent man, well-read on the current sciences of his time with equally impressive creativity to boot. I thoroughly enjoyed his writing style, I found it to be very vivid, moody, and even frightening at times. His use of suspense and terror as well is nothing short of remarkable, and I came to notice this more when reading the short stories I was previously unfamiliar with; The Body Snatcher and Olalla. They were great reads, I would say just as much as Jekyll and Hyde was.

Content Warnings

kaanda's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

It was a pretty fun short read that was much more reflective and thoughtful than I expected.

Content Warnings

riverofhorton's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional informative mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This was a very interesting and in places somewhat unexpected read. I knew the basic premise

that Jekyll and Hyde share the same body with Jekyll being the 'good' side and Hyde being the 'bad' side

, but I hadn't anticipated the subtext of repressed homosexuality contained within the Hyde character. I also hadn't expected one of the characters to be accepting of this,

but questioning of the perceived choice of partner

. I also went into this expecting some discussion of substance use based on other media, but I wasn't expecting

the suicide towards the end, I did find this to have been well done within the context of the story however.

Overall, I enjoyed this story and will likely re-read it in the future

Content Warnings