The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson

1886

I picked up a nice hardcover copy of this from a thrift shop. It was cheap and I appreciate the implications of owning an old classic, so I picked it up. It is a short story, just shy of 100 pages. I was vaguely aware of the premise of the story. Funnily, I think I was first introduced to the characters by an old Hannah Barbara Scooby Doo episode.

SPOILERS

The story follows Mr. Utterson, a lawyer in 19th century Victorian era England. Him and his cousin are walking down the street when they come across a run down, dingy house. His cousin tells him a story about how once he was walking down the street, when he saw a man run over a little girl as they crossed paths. This man turned out to be Mr. Hyde. The cousin grabbed this guy up and blackmailed him for $100 for the girl and her family, lest he ruin the guys reputation (it was Victorian England I guess). Hyde pays up with a check written by a Dr. Jekyll (this is strange).

Mr. Utterson, being a lawyer, has a copy of Dr. Jekyll's will, in which he states that if he dies, then everyone he owns goes to Hyde. More strange, however, is that he states that if he goes missing for a period of more than three months, that Mr. Hyde is to take his place in life.

Mr. Utterson finds this very strange, and confronts Dr. Jekyll about it, but is told that it is nothing to worry about.

Time goes on, and eventually Mr. Hyde gets in to an argument with a man on the street, and then beats the man to death. The police search for Mr. Hyde, but he is nowhere to be found. Mr. Utterson goes back to Jekyll to try to warn him against his associations with Mr. Hyde, and Jekyll assures him that he will no longer have anything to do with Mr. Hyde.

Life goes on normally for awhile, but then Dr. Jekyll stops going outside, and confines himself to an office in his lab. Eventually Dr. Jekyll's butler gets freaked out and goes and gets Mr. Utterson for help. The butler claims that he thinks that Mr. Hyde killed Dr. Jekyll and is hiding in his locked office. They go to break down the door to his office, and find that Mr. Hyde is laying on the floor dead, by his own hand.

In Dr. Jekyll's office, they find a letter from Dr. Jekyll outlining what had happened.

Essentially, Dr. Jekyll had formulated a drug that allowed him to turn in to an evil alter ego, Mr. Hyde. This Mr. Hyde was in no way bound to the morality of the straight laced man that was Dr. Jekyll, and this was freeing for him. Eventually, in his Mr. Hyde form, he had killed a man in the street in a fit of rage. Jekyll thought this to be a good excuse for him to forever rid himself of his Hyde persona, and for a time, he stopped using the drugs.

Unfortunately, he started turning in to Mr. Hyde without the drug, and found himself having to use the drug to instead become Dr. Jekyll. He started to run out of this substance, and couldn't get his hands on more, so he locked himself in his office to avoid being seen. After all, he was at this point a murderer. That leads to the current moment and the end of the story.

END SPOILERS

I thought the book was good, and respectful of my time. A little shallow, but I imagine in the less desensitized world of the 19th century that perhaps the story had some more weight to it. Either way, I enjoyed it. The book that I got also contains some of his other short stories, like The Body Snatchers, so I'm going to read through some of those tomorrow probably. The book is worth a read if you can get it cheaply.