Book Club: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Clare and Hannah take on Jekyll and Hyde in a battle of Victorian proportions. In other words, we slink furtively through darkened doorways, scandalize young housemaids sitting up past their bedtime, and write letters to our lawyers with the tantalizing instruction: "Do not open until I have died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances."  

Get your own copy of this Robert Louis Stevenson classic, here at Clare's Bookshop.org store! 

Or, since Jekyll & Hyde is in the public domain, you can read it online for FREE at Project Gutenberg. 

Transcript

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Into the details of the infamy at which I thus ConEd for even now I can scarce grant that I committed it. College. Am I right? College. Exactly. All right, shall we? Yes. Now that we've, um, um, doled about, we've doled about long enough, we have doled. And now let us something else that starts with a d. Um, we have doled. Let us, debate us. Darn. Well get, let us, darn well get to it. Hello everybody, and welcome to this next episode of Splank Nicks. I'm your host, Claire t Walker, and this is my daughter, Hannah Kubiak. Hello. Today we are talking about a story that a lot of people know. I wouldn't, in fact, I would venture to guess that most people know this story, but hardly anyone has ever actually read. I'm talking about Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson. Uh, or is it sometimes called, wait, is it not called The curious case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Oh. Oh, it's with no article. The originally published version was Strange Case. Strange Case. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Yeah. And people, I guess were weirded out by that because most people call it the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde if they call it anything at all, other than. Yeah. Jekyll and Hyde. Oh, the curious case was, was Benjamin Button. Right. A, another story about, weird transformations, but I digress. Okay, Hannah. So we're not even gonna bother with spoiler alerts for this because everybody knows the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Yep. Even though, like I said in the introduction, I bet nobody has ever read it. I had never read it before. Until we were getting ready to do this episode, really, because I thought this would be great to read it. Robert Lewis Stevenson is a great writer. I read this in high school. Did you read the actual version or did you read the um, no, I did not read this. I read the actual version of it. Okay.'cause we had this, the, the Great Illustrated classics version on our shelves since you guys were kids. Mm-hmm. I had never read it, but I read it in addition to the original one by Robert Lewis Stevenson. It's really good. It's a really good adaptation. Yeah. And it's not much shorter really, than the actual book. Robert Lewis Stevenson is a great writer and if you haven't read Treasure Island Kidnapped. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, uh, you know, everyone should as well as his poetry for Children's. It's, it's, it's excellent. since you just read it, like, literally this afternoon, what, I finished it 20 minutes ago. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what's it about? It's sort of set like a, like a detective mystery almost. There's this lawyer, Mr. Terson one of his clients, Dr. Jekyll has written a very strange will that stipulates that in the event of his death or disappearance. His friend, Mr. Edward Hyde is to take his place without delay and, um everything should be left to him. eventually, the inciting incident of this, Mr. Terson meets Mr. Hyde. And, um, is repulsed by him. he's a scrawny, young, wicked looking guy Has this sort of, a mixture of timidity and boldness about the way that he, deported himself. I'm sorry, my comported himself. The way he deported himself. Oh, he deported himself? Yep. Comported himself. Yes. Comported himself. so Terson meets this guy and he is appalled. He goes to talk to Jekyll about it because he'd also heard this story about how this Mr. Hyde basically ran over a kid and kept on going, and so he, she basically thinks, well, Dr. Jekyll, this guy must be blackmailing him or something. I should go and talk to him about it. So he goes to talk to Jekyll about it, and, um, Jekyll says, no, he's not blackmailing me. My will stands. But then Mr. Hyde commits a murder. And it's witnessed by people because Mr. Hyde is not subtle at all. He beats a man to death with Dr. Jekyll's walking stick in the middle of a street. although to be fair, it was at least in the middle of the night when there weren't a whole bunch of people around. And then Mr. Hyde seems to disappear and Jekyll becomes a recluse. Eventually Jekyll will not come out of his, his study has not been seen for ages. So Terson suspects foul play. He suspects in fact that Mr. Hyde has killed Dr. Jekyll and taken his place. They go to apprehend this, well definitely a murderer. They find it's mostly, the story is mostly communicated like through a series of letters, which have various things written on them. Like, do not open until I am dead and things like that. Yeah. I was looking at this and people, I was like, everyone has written a letter, sealed it, given it to Mr. Terson and said, do not open this until Dr. Jekyll is dead or gone missing. And like, you could have avoided a lot of this if you had just, you know, opened it and read it.'cause you're like, huh, that's weird. Like, how, like, why, why that? That specification. But of course he's a lawyer, so professionally he's just like, well this is, this is Ru mysterious, but I can't open it right now. I'm gonna put it in my safe. I'm surprised Anderson didn't die of curiosity. Yeah, I know. But yeah, as a lawyer, he's probably used to these sorts of, you know, secretive missives being given to him. Yeah. And they're probably often not really a big deal and stuff that maybe he doesn't even want to know. Yeah. A plausible deniability. So what, now what's interesting about this story is that what everybody thinks is going on mm-hmm. Is that, Henry Jekyll is being meed somehow by this person, Edward Hyde. And what they don't know, which is what everyone who knows about this story now knows, is that what's happening is. Dr. Jekyll has invented some sort of magical potion, not magical potion, a scientific chemical collection. It's a chemical. It's a chemical compound. It's a chemical compound, a potion that he takes. And what he does is he transforms himself into Edward Hyde. And Edward Hyde is basically a distillation of all of Henry Jekyll's, wicked, immoral, antisocial impulses personified. And so Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, and that's the big reveal at the end. They find Mr. Hyde. Dead on the floor, there's no sign of Jekyll at all. But they read this letter and they figure out everything that had happened. Yeah. They read the letter from, from Mr. Landon, the other college roommate, who's a factor in this. Mm-hmm. And he actually witnessed the transformation from Edward Hyde into Henry Jekyll. And it literally drove him crazy. Yep. And he just died of crazy. He, he, he died of, of nerves, I think. Yeah. Yeah, because he just, he just, it just rocked his world so much he couldn't handle it. So. And, um, and that's what's so interesting about this book is that everybody knows what the story is about. But it was really fun to actually read it. And, um, I, I really enjoyed it. It's very well written. It's very short. You can, as Hannah demonstrate, you can read it in an afternoon you talk about it rocked the world of the person who saw the transformation. People in, um, 1886 who read this story when it first came out. Went mad for it. It was so popular. It rocketed Louis Stevenson to bestseller Dom. It really was a career making book for him. And it has been famous ever since, and it's so famous that most people know about it and haven't even read it. Do you think that it had the same sort of appeal as the sixth sense? You know, where people are like, what? Oh my gosh. Like that was what was going on the whole time. I can't believe that. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder if people were as good about not spoiling it for other people as people were about the sixth, uh, cents. Mm-hmm.'cause people would say, have you seen the sixth sense yet? And if someone said no, then anyone would be like, okay, qu yeah. Don't talk about it until this person has gone to see it. We were talking about something else now. Yeah. And uh, people were super good about that. Um, uh, so. What, what are some of the themes that jumped out at, well, you, you started to talk about something that I thought was interesting where you were talking about how Jekyll is a man of tall stature. Mm-hmm. And good looking, well-formed person. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. You know, attractive 50 years of age, you know, just a respectable looking middle aged gentleman. But Hyde on the other hand, Hyde is. Well, we always sort of, when we read the book, when we, when we have seen adaptations of it, or, um, let me imagine this story. We imagine Hyde as being this like, bent, crooked, like old, ugly guy, right? But in the book, he is, he is described as being, short, small. When he transforms, and like he shrinks down and jekyll's clothes like hang off of him. You know what came into my head as you were saying that? Yeah. Like a young meth addict. Yeah. Like he looks unwell and really. Messed up. Like messed up. Yeah. And you never know what he's going to do. He's unpredictable. Yeah. And what's so interesting about this is that, um, this, and this is deliberate obviously by, by Robert Lewis Stevenson, Hyde's appearance reveals his inner corruption, like all written all over his face, is the thing that most people are able to kind of keep hidden. You know, our, our, our sort of baser instincts, our hatefulness, our violence, any sort of bitterness, you know, lust, cruelty that we might have sort of, you know, just stuff seething inside us that we, that we realize is unsavory. And we, and we keep a lid on it and we try to push it away. We're like, this is not suitable for, you know, public consumption. I'm gonna keep all this to myself. Except then the internet happened, and then all that stuff just came out. Hmm. But, and you know what, Hannah, what it reminded me of was kind, it kind of reminded me of the picture of Dorian Gray. Me too. Because yes, Dorian Gray was beautiful on the outside, but inside he was utterly evil and corrupt. And the thing that bore the marks of his evil and corruption was the portrait that he had hidden in his secret attic room. Yep. And so I thought, you know what? Edward Hyde is Henry Jekyll's hidden portrait. Mm-hmm. I thought that was so interesting. Um, because what, what Jekyll says at some point is that he wanted to just, um, let his evil self just kind of go and just do as it will and, and him himself, Jekyll not have to pay the consequences. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good, yeah, I was thinking about the picture of Dorie Gray as well. Like when you looked at Jekyll, you were like. You, you basically saw just this upstanding member of society, you know? Yes. But his roommates, his two college roommates who were characters in this book also Terson and Lanyon, the guy who read the letter and went insane. They knew what, what Chuck was like. He was a wild young man in their college days. Yep. Mm-hmm. Um, so I guess maybe it was sort of like a, like an opportunity to. Relive his youth without consequences a little bit. Yeah. And he literally said that he, um, how did he put this? He said that he, my chair is so squeaky. Hmm. Yeah. He said that he was a, a wild young man in his college days and. He longed to separate these two identities, what he called the, the evil self and the, and the good self. He said, when I tried day after day to do good and to relieve the suffering of my patience, I was myself. And when I let myself go and plunged into shameful activities, I was also myself. So, and he wanted to indulge. That, that evil twin, he said, he said, the latter. This evil twin could walk his downward path, free of his ideals, free of the ideals and regrets of his good self. The struggle within man could then cease. He would be free to be both selves, which was, really a wicked impulse actually on Jekyll's part. Yeah. I think that people sort of create this, uh, picture of like a of black and white, that they were divided into the good and the bad. But I don't think that's true. I think that Jekyll wasn't a, he wasn't a good person. He was good at seeming good. Yes. At appearing good. He wasn't a good person. He was a repressed person. That's one of the themes in this book is. Repression repression of help, help by being repressed. Yeah. Yeah. And, but the thing is he was, like you said, he was not a good person, but his sort of veneer of goodness was forced upon him from the outside and he succumbeded that. So he, it was a combination of repression of, from the, the morays of the Victorian society around him, and then his own ability to repress. Himself. And, and the thing is, I, I'm not exactly sure what Stevenson is trying to say, but Jekyll is trying to say that that's a bad thing. He wanted to be able to indulge his bad self. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And he wanted, and in fact he wanted it both ways. He said, he, he said this, he goes, as I, as I fell into a kind of slavery to Mr. Hyde, I loved it, he said. He loved it. He enjoyed being able to quote, act evilly without paying the consequences. Mm-hmm. So people, yeah, people have said, is Dr. Jekyll really a good person? No, he's He was not. No. I think he was a normal person. You think he was a normal person? You think most people would want to behave evilly and not have the consequences? Don't you ever imagine what your life would be like if you were a worse person than you are. Um, maybe it's just, maybe that's just another me colic thing. It might be that I, I imagine I'm like, so like if you did indulge every sort of evil impulse or, or, you know, unsavory. Yeah, yeah. Like my, my, my Myers-Briggs type is the INFP, and we're very good at this thing called mirroring emotions. Which basically means that we've studied the way that people behave and it's all in sort of like a Rolodex in our minds. And so we can imagine a lot of stuff that we've never actually experienced. That's why I Nfps can be actors, ah, rather, rather, well there's lots of INFPs who become actors because they don't have to have actually experienced something to, represent it. I can imagine wanting to be able to do heinous deeds and get away with it. Okay. Yeah. All right. That's cool. Yeah, that might, that's not a thing with me. Like when I, when I was writing my, my really bad guy characters, boy, I had to dig deep to come up with. With things for them to say and do. And it's hard. I mean, well, it's not to say that I don't have to dig deep, but I can imagine it. Hmm. I can do it. Yeah. And you, you said something interesting earlier. You're like, what, what if you, like, if you could split yourself into two, like Dr. Jekyll did. Yeah. And like, um, what did he say? The power, the part of me, which I had the power of projecting. Mm-hmm. If you could project your sort of worst impulses, like the things that you would love to do if you could get away with it. Mm-hmm. What would your little homonculus look like? My little homonculus. it would be a really, really tiny mean-spirited, petty, vindictive, uh, gossiping little goblin. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said that that would be an interesting thought experiment. And then I just left it at that.'cause I didn't wanna go there. You didn't wanna go that I went there immediately. Oh man. Like the, like this, when, when we were, we were talking about like, it's a, it's a projection of all the worst parts. And I'm like, what would the projection of all the worst parts of me look like? Ah, I got it immediately. I know exactly what that would be like. Wow. That is awesome. Uhhuh. It's no, I, it's a melancholic thing. You wouldn't understand, I guess. I guess. Yeah. Me sangu when me is like, no way. I, I don't wanna think about that. No clue. But now let me, let me, uh, let me segue into this a little bit. This is, this is interesting. I found this fascinating. So speaking of the, uh, part of me, which I had the power of projecting, uh, Jekyll says, so eventually you'll remember the transformation that at first he had to have that special potion. He had to take this potion to make it happen. Mm-hmm. That transformation began to happen spontaneously. Mm-hmm. Hyde was gaining strength and would soon take over. So what Jekyll said is that part of me, which I had the power of projecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished. And he was afraid that the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine. He was gonna stick that way. You know, you've ever heard that expression, don't keep making that face, or your face is gonna stick that way. What this face, don't keep making this transformation into your evil alter ego, or you're gonna, or ego, or you're gonna stick that way. Yep. And he did. Yep. He stuck that way and he died. And so what, what the, what the moral of the story that came to me was. Indulging your evil impulses will, will only strengthen them and make them become the dominant force in your life. And it yes, totally reminded me of this awesome, um, story from Sitting Bull so I'll go ahead and attribute the longer version of this to him. Sitting Bull was teaching his grandson about life. A fight is going on inside me. He said to the boy, it is a terrible fight. And it is between two wolves. One is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false, prides, superiority, and ego. He continued. The other wolf is good. He's joy. Peace, love, hope, serenity, humility. Kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. That same fight is going on inside you. He said to the boy and inside every other person too. The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, sitting bull, which wolf will win? Sitting Bull simply said, the one you feed. And that is Jekyll's problem. He's feeding the evil wolf. Mm-hmm. And is gaining strength. And pretty soon his quote unquote, good wolf, his good self, doesn't have the strength to fight back anymore, and in fact, doesn't even exist anymore. This is how you become a wicked person by indulging all of these things and refusing to do what Jekyll didn't wanna do anymore, and that is make the effort. Switching gears a little bit. Alright. Um, the concept of duality mm-hmm. Is something that comes up a lot when you, when you're talking about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Yeah. And naturally the episode from Star Trek, the enemy within comes up also. Yep. You know which episode I'm talking about, right? The one where a transporter malfunction splits Kirk into two distinct personalities. One is all the aggressive, impulsive, uh, aspects of him. And the other is all of the like, gentle and. Compassionate, aspects, and they kind of discover that both are necessary to make a whole a full person. I don't think that it was like a division between good and evil. It was more of a division between, aggressive and passive I think that might be. A little more subtle and perhaps more correct interpretation because what, what basically what people say are, is that what Matheson is positing is that the good side and the evil side of Kirk maintain an attention that's essential to his, uh, capacity and his effectiveness as a leader? the, the good. Side of him that we follow through the episode isn't able to make decisions quickly Under pressure. Yeah. Or at all. Or at all. Yeah. And the other, and the other one, the aggressive side, the quote unquote evil side is not able to, to stop doing anything to stop and consider anything. Yeah. Right, right. So I think, I think what you said, it's, it's not so much good and evil. That are being examined. In the case of Kirk here, it's, yeah, it's, it's passivity and aggression. Mm-hmm. Which, which is an interesting thing because, um, what I think, what I think that story is about is not so much, you know, that, that we're divided into a good self and an evil self, but that just about every character trait you can imagine has a good side and a bad side. There's, it's like two sides of the same coin. you, you can have, a certain amount of, I guess what you would call the trait that manifests itself, either as passivity or aggression. Mm-hmm. Would be something like assertiveness. Yeah. If you have too much assertiveness, you are an obnoxious, difficult person. Mm-hmm. If you don't have enough assertiveness, assertiveness, then you um, a doormat. You are a doormat. Yeah. Okay. This is reminding me. Of something from the Great Divorce by CS Lewis. Remember the story about ding, ding, ding ding, ding ding, dinging CSS Lewis. Woo woo. Do you remember, you remember the story about the man who had the red lizard on his shoulder? Yes. And the, the angel tells him, let me take the lizard from you. And he says, no, no, I like the lizard, you know? No, thank you. Um. But then finally when he lets the angel take the lizard from him, this lizard, that was obviously like causing him some spiritual distress, I think it was maybe supposed to represent like, like a lust. Lust it was supposed to represent. Yeah. Yeah. And when the angel takes the lizard away. He doesn't destroy it. He transforms it into this beautiful horse, and then the man gets on the horse and they, they, they gallop away. So, well, he does destroy the lizard. Oh, doesn't it be He does. Oh, he destroys the lizard. He squeezes it dead. Mm-hmm. Throws it on the floor. But then the lizard does transform, right. Because it's been the, the man has voluntarily submitted to its destruction and so, yeah, it transforms into that, that, that energy. And so fitting that it goes from, you know, a lust being this little creepy little lizard. Yeah. Into a stallion, which is like the, the a fullest more, more pure expression of the sexual energies, you know? Right. I'm not sure Jekyll was that subtle though, or, uh, Stevenson was being that subtle with Jekyll and Hyde. I think he was strictly speaking. He's talking about good and evil. Yep. Um, so I, so I think that Richard Matheson's treatment of the Jekyll and Hyde dichotomy was maybe a little little better, more believable. More believable as far as people being split into two distinct entities can be Right. Right, exactly. I mean, you know, the whole idea of, of duality is, is a, a bit of a problem because, you know, and, and science fiction loves duality, uhhuh, which is this idea that mind and matter, you know, the body and the mind are completely, you know, separate, you know, our mind is just like a, um, a ghost in the shell or, you know. Yeah. And you can just like, what is, so it's another one where, um, there's some alien creature that take control of, uh, spark's body, and he says, you live here in these. Prisons of flesh? Yeah. Like your soul is just trapped in this, in this. Shell. Yeah. Right. That's very much, that's duality. And that actually is from the, the Christian point of view, that is a heresy Mm. The, the human person is a unity of body and soul. But this sort of idea of, you know, the, the, the spirit or the mind is trapped in this shell of flesh that's, that's false. Hmm. And so, but, but it's so funny because there's some episodes where, you know, they lift out the, the mind of, of Kirk and they put it in this sphere. Remember that? Right. Then they take the mind that was in the sphere and put it into Kirk's body. That's the one I was talking about. Yeah. What's the name of that episode? Do you remember? I don't remember because we didn't watch it very many times.'cause it was weird. I like that one because it was like the a, the aliens who had lived in these spheres, they went into the people's bodies. The one who was in Kirk's body and the one that was in this random woman's body, they like had a love connection or something. Yeah. And they were like, finally we can touch each other. Yeah. And the guy who got, uh, transformed transferred into box body was like a real, he was evil. Yeah. And so it was fun to watch again, Leonard Nemo acting like this evil dude, you know? And, uh, anyway, how did we get on that? That was weird. Um, I guess duality, I guess. Yep. Um, so Mirror. Mirror is kind of like that too, where they go to another. Another dimension where everyone is evil. So once again, snicks has transformed effortlessly from the profound. To the banal. Yeah. And, uh, it's, yep, that's how we roll here. That's how we roll from the profound to the banal, the, the unofficial motto of niks. Yep. Uh, the other motto is, uh, ask me about the abolition of man, I guess. Mm-hmm. Or, uh, say something about CS Lewis. Yeah. Um, anyway. Yeah, that was good. Um. The, it's, uh, it has been zero days since our last CS Lewis related conversation. Yeah. What else? What else about, um, I, I mean, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it, it's, it's pretty basic. Yep. But it's, but it's really good if you've never read it, you know, read it. You just have, you just need an afternoon, you know, to, to read it. It's on the internet. You don't even have to buy the book. Stir yourself up some, uh some sort of lovely, uh, potion of your choice and sit down in a comfy armchair and enjoy Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You will be forever changed.