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A review by fionnualalirsdottir
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
I have a memory from childhood related to Robert Louis Stevenson.
I shared a bedroom with an older sister, and at night, after lights out, we’d ask each other questions about books and authors, easy questions such as 'Who wrote Black Beauty?' or ‘What famous children's book was written by Captain Marryat?' (We only had very old books in our house as we lived deep in the country far from any bookshops. Enid Blyton never even reached us).
But sometimes my sister would pull a more challenging title out of the back catalogue in her mind, for example, ‘Who wrote Sketches by Boz?'
She rarely caught me out though, because even if I hadn’t read all the books in the house, I’d studied the spines on the shelves pretty carefully, and I was always on the lookout for trick questions.
That’s why I remember so clearly the humiliation of stumbling on one of the easiest of questions: “Who wrote Treasure Island?”
As I had actually read that book, I answered immediately and triumphantly. But it was the wrong answer - in my mind I had metamorphosed R L Stevenson into his notorious character Captain Flint!
R L Stevenson took on a slightly negative aura in my mind as a result and I read nothing else by him. However, the other day I came across a character named Stevenson in Jeanette Winterson’s [b:Lighthousekeeping|15052|Lighthousekeeping|Jeanette Winterson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328875027s/15052.jpg|2531716]. The character was introduced in a scene where atavistic qualities were being discussed, how a man could harbour two men inside himself, one upright and loyal, the other, not much better than an ape. That episode comes right after an account of Charles Darwin’s visit to a newly excavated fossil site on the Scottish coast near a lighthouse built by the real Stevenson’s engineering family. Winterson seemed to be implying that Stevenson had been influenced by Darwin’s theories when he wrote his famous story about Dr Jekyll, a story I knew the gist of without having read it since Jekyll and Hyde have become part of the language of metaphor. So I felt the need to read [b:The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|51496|The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|Robert Louis Stevenson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1318116526s/51496.jpg|3164921] for myself, and discover the connection between Stevenson and Darwin.
I enjoyed Stevenson’s writing a lot, especially the many passages where he describes cosy interiors with venerable gentlemen sipping vintage wine beside glowing hearths:
He sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest upon the other, and midway between them, at a nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particularly old wine, that had long lain unsunned in the foundations of his house. In the bottle, the acids were long ago dissolved, the imperial dye had softened with time, as the color grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards was ready to be set free and disperse the fogs of London.
I also enjoyed the passages where Stephenson catches those London fogs and all but bottles them:
A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these assembled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there it would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling mists.
However, the main theme of the book was harder to swallow. It reminded me of ‘The Man who was Recklessly Curious’ from [b:Don Quixote|3836|Don Quixote|Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364958765s/3836.jpg|121842], which is not surprising since one of the themes in Winterson’s book also recalls that story. Doctor Jekyll is a little more recklessly curious than the men in Cervantes’ and Winterson’s stories however, and his reckless curiosity leads to him metamorphosing from his everyday self, one with the usual mixture of noble and less nobel qualities, into an animal-like being with only evil characteristics.
So Stevenson seems to be saying that the ‘evil’ side of our nature is the part we inherited from the apes. I found it hard to agree with that and I don’t think it was what Darwin implied in [b:The Origin of Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941]. Yes, I think our less noble characteristics are definitely survivalist ones, but the kind of pure evil with which Stevenson endows Mr Hyde is not found in the animal kingdom as far as I know. Animals kill to satisfy hunger, or to protect themselves, or to drive out rivals, but never simply for pleasure.
Others may disagree with me. I'd be interested to discuss this further, particularly with anyone who has read Stevenson's Gothic tale. It has left me puzzled.
I shared a bedroom with an older sister, and at night, after lights out, we’d ask each other questions about books and authors, easy questions such as 'Who wrote Black Beauty?' or ‘What famous children's book was written by Captain Marryat?' (We only had very old books in our house as we lived deep in the country far from any bookshops. Enid Blyton never even reached us).
But sometimes my sister would pull a more challenging title out of the back catalogue in her mind, for example, ‘Who wrote Sketches by Boz?'
She rarely caught me out though, because even if I hadn’t read all the books in the house, I’d studied the spines on the shelves pretty carefully, and I was always on the lookout for trick questions.
That’s why I remember so clearly the humiliation of stumbling on one of the easiest of questions: “Who wrote Treasure Island?”
As I had actually read that book, I answered immediately and triumphantly. But it was the wrong answer - in my mind I had metamorphosed R L Stevenson into his notorious character Captain Flint!
R L Stevenson took on a slightly negative aura in my mind as a result and I read nothing else by him. However, the other day I came across a character named Stevenson in Jeanette Winterson’s [b:Lighthousekeeping|15052|Lighthousekeeping|Jeanette Winterson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328875027s/15052.jpg|2531716]. The character was introduced in a scene where atavistic qualities were being discussed, how a man could harbour two men inside himself, one upright and loyal, the other, not much better than an ape. That episode comes right after an account of Charles Darwin’s visit to a newly excavated fossil site on the Scottish coast near a lighthouse built by the real Stevenson’s engineering family. Winterson seemed to be implying that Stevenson had been influenced by Darwin’s theories when he wrote his famous story about Dr Jekyll, a story I knew the gist of without having read it since Jekyll and Hyde have become part of the language of metaphor. So I felt the need to read [b:The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|51496|The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|Robert Louis Stevenson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1318116526s/51496.jpg|3164921] for myself, and discover the connection between Stevenson and Darwin.
I enjoyed Stevenson’s writing a lot, especially the many passages where he describes cosy interiors with venerable gentlemen sipping vintage wine beside glowing hearths:
He sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest upon the other, and midway between them, at a nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particularly old wine, that had long lain unsunned in the foundations of his house. In the bottle, the acids were long ago dissolved, the imperial dye had softened with time, as the color grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards was ready to be set free and disperse the fogs of London.
I also enjoyed the passages where Stephenson catches those London fogs and all but bottles them:
A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these assembled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there it would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling mists.
However, the main theme of the book was harder to swallow. It reminded me of ‘The Man who was Recklessly Curious’ from [b:Don Quixote|3836|Don Quixote|Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364958765s/3836.jpg|121842], which is not surprising since one of the themes in Winterson’s book also recalls that story. Doctor Jekyll is a little more recklessly curious than the men in Cervantes’ and Winterson’s stories however, and his reckless curiosity leads to him metamorphosing from his everyday self, one with the usual mixture of noble and less nobel qualities, into an animal-like being with only evil characteristics.
So Stevenson seems to be saying that the ‘evil’ side of our nature is the part we inherited from the apes. I found it hard to agree with that and I don’t think it was what Darwin implied in [b:The Origin of Species|22463|The Origin of Species|Charles Darwin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1298417570s/22463.jpg|481941]. Yes, I think our less noble characteristics are definitely survivalist ones, but the kind of pure evil with which Stevenson endows Mr Hyde is not found in the animal kingdom as far as I know. Animals kill to satisfy hunger, or to protect themselves, or to drive out rivals, but never simply for pleasure.
Others may disagree with me. I'd be interested to discuss this further, particularly with anyone who has read Stevenson's Gothic tale. It has left me puzzled.