One of the privileges of parenthood is filling in the gaps of your childhood with your own child's education. It has been especially fun to read alongside, and not all books are the current best sellers. There are still classics that I have never read that they are reading today.
The latest is Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's a novella, and finally the first of his books that I have finished. I have started Treasure Island too many times to count, and it was always amazing, but somehow I have still yet to finish it! I have often wondered which character was which, as Dr. Frankenstein sometimes became the monster in the retelling. But in this case, the good persona was the Doctor, truly an honorific, and the Mister was his evil one.
It is an interesting story, born of a nightmare, apparently. He wrote it in one go, and it may stem from his religious upbringing in a strict Calvinist home. It became iconic, and although I knew the duality of the story, I didn't understand the how of it until I read the story through.
The vocabulary was challenging. Did you know effulgence means radiant brightness or dazzling? Or that a denizen is just a fancy word for someone?
I also recognized two visual images from television or film reproductions that I hadn't previously associated with this story. First is the almost cartoon version of assault and violence of a London type scene, dressed in an overcoat much like Sherlock Holmes but stomping on something. It was a man, with the distressing description of his bones breaking, audible to an unfortunate woman who witnessed the murder. Second is the notion of a lab with bubbling potions, with Dr. Jekyll mixing a tonic that allows him to transform back and forth between the two parts of himself that he sees as separate, but owns up to the both of them. I don't know if this is the first writing of such a thing, but the image smacks of every Frankenstein remake or spoof of a mad scientist. Even Alice in wonderland transforms with potions, so maybe it isn't such an original idea, but as is with most genius groupings, it probably stemmed from the growing knowledge that was common for the time.
The story is mostly about conscience, and the duality of humankind. In his original transformations between his good and evil selves (is this the same as metamorphosis?), he imagines a schism between the two sides of himself without guilt, but as time goes on, there is more and more need for the conscious of Dr. Jekyll to keep Mr. Hyde in check.
There is another notable potentially original thought. He suggests that he imagines a person could split into more than just two personalities, which is interesting in that the evolution of psychiatric understanding of currently called "Dissociative Identity Disorder" has evolved in the last twenty years from the idea that multiple personalities had to be unaware of each other for the definition of Multiple Personality Disorder.
Some other stories referenced in wikipedia with version of DID are Psycho, Sybil, Fight Club, and Shutter Island. There is some evidence that psychiatrists could have actually "induced" multiple personalities in their search for them. I wonder, with the idea of its potential being conceived in this book of nightmares, if the psychiatrists would have imagined its potential from a storybook they read before they had ever seen it themselves?
This has all the marks of a truly great story. It has original ideas and characters. It tells a truth, even better if hyperbolized. It begs to be copied, and retold. This is such a story.
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