The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Was going to start reading a new book today when, out of curiosity, I cracked open the next Nabokov MFA book, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I assumed the book I had was entirely that story, as the cover makes no other indication, but found that the story itself was a mere 80 pages, so I figured it would be good to dispatch another Nabokov book in the space of a day.
The biggest problem in reading Jekyll and Hyde, of course, is that it is written largely as a mystery as to the identity of Hyde, which is no mystery at all to a modern reader. So, it sort of had the equivalent of seeing The Sixth Sense upon someone’s recommendation that you’d never know Bruce Willis was dead the entire time.
Of course, there was perhaps some usefulness in the fact that knowing in advance that Jekyll and Hyde are one person. It allowed me to more fully appreciate the narrative, the way the story is told, how the clues are layered in slowly. Basically, it was like jumping to watching The Sixth Sense for the second time right off the bat and getting to appreciate how everything was told to you all along.
One of the things that was most interesting about the book, which is lost in the broad cultural knowledge of the Jekyll/Hyde character, is that it is not a duality of good and evil. That is usually how it is presented, that he divides himself into both sides, good and evil. Only it isn’t true. When he is Dr. Jekyll, he has both his good side and his evil side within him, although because of the presence of his good side, his evil side has remained in check constantly. When he is Hyde, his evil side takes over, and is also represented by the physical change of him becoming shorter and uglier, thus everything about him reflects his evil nature. It is shorter because it wasn’t as developed throughout his life; in theory, the longer Hyde exists, the taller he will get, presumably, as he matures that previously dormant side of himself. But even then, he is not pure evil, because he need to drink the a potion to return to living as Dr. Jekyll. So, there is still a hint of Jekyll in Hyde. So, the duality isn’t as cut and dry as usually gets told.
That said, it was inventive, as far as involving hyde in a murder that makes him a wanted man in town, known by everyone and wanted dead. This prevents him from coming out of hiding, basically having to live as a fugitive within Jekyll and not come out, because as soon as he reveals himself again, he will be put to death. It becomes a question as to whether it is better to die in spirit (within Jekyll) or in reality (as the dormant Hyde).
The narrative has an interesting twist in that the story ends before what was actually the best part of the reading experience. The story is capped with two letters from two characters who are dead at the time of them being read, which put all the piece in place. I assumed this would be something Nabokov enjoyed, as he loves using alternate narrative devices as ways to tell the story, but he didn’t go into it, too much.
In fact, this was the essay of his with the least depth. He spent most of the time retelling the story with passages from the text, going into the alliteration, etc. He be certain, he did draw a map showing how Hyde’s entrance to the laboratory linked to Jekyll’s house, although it wasn’t too hard to visualize that at all, really. He also goes into the lineage and possible meanings of the names but the most obvious is, of course, not very hidden: Hyde/Hide.
From the get-go, Nabokov seems to warn readers from taking this story in like a mystery, which is a genre bereft of style, since Stevenson, although writing a template that is still used in modern mysteries, writes with an abundance of style.
He points out two flaws in the story, mainly due to the story being told by two matter-of-fact narrators, such as they do not, nor should, have the language to properly express their revulsion at seeing Hyde’s face or the capacity to describe it for the reader. Nabokov suggests a workaround whereby just seeing Hyde brings out an artistic sensibility in the men, which would at least serve as a workaround for giving them better license to tell the story. The other issue is that we have two upstanding London gentlemen, and the story of Hyde always hints at pleasures and vices underneath the surface in this society, which again, they are not aware of to any significant degree to talk about.
One interesting aside is when Nabokov explores the possible homosexual themes in the story, which never occured to me at all, such as the absence of women, and the ways in which Jekyll has to cover up for Hyde, calling him his "friend and benefactor" in his updated will (redrafted in case he becomes Hyde full-time), as well as the notion that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll for undisclosed reasons. Not much there, but good to note that Nabokov looks at these thigns from every angle.
Not as much from Vladimir on this, or me, but then again, compared to the mammoth Bleak House, this was still somewhat insightful for an 80-page novella.
Personally, I also kept thinking of Fight Club, since narrator/Tyler live in one body, although in Palahniuk’s book, the narrator has to remain unaware of that fact, because he is telling the story and the readers aren’t supposed to know that information. Here, Jekyll knows what is going on all along, but he isn’t telling the story, so you can get the same "twist" toward the end, because no deception is used. Both narrators find out the information at the appropriate time for the reader.
For my own book, there is a section where Jekyll sees himself as Hyde in the mirror that might be able to tart up one specific scene in my book. We’ll see.
Next up in the Nabokov MFA Program… Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way (book one of Remembrance of Things Past)
