Halloween Special: Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde

I've noticed a bit of a theme in these Halloween episodes. When I look at any of these cultural milestones in the context of the impact they've had on the horror genre, it always seems like the actual central story is almost completely unrecognizable compared to their impact on pop culture. Dracula is an ugly old man with a very unattractive case of vampirism. Van Helsing is a complete weirdo. Frankenstein's monster is an eloquent scientific genius. Lovecraft's iconic pantheon of brain-melting nightmarish gods is often secondary to his own racist neuroses. Victor Frankenstein isn't even a

doctor

! He is ridiculous.

Pop culture takes some names, some concepts, and some

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effects and leaves out everything that really makes the story what it is. And that's not always bad. But what about those horror icons? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Pop culture wouldn't lead us astray with something as simple as a split personality, would it? Well... uh... Let's start with a little context. Like many horror stories of this era, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde takes the audience through a slow build of increasingly mysterious and disturbing events until the big twist is finally suddenly revealed to the public. ending, explaining the true horror behind the mystery and tying the story together.

It's a shame, because thanks to pop culture osmosis, everyone knows about the big twist. Jekyll and Hyde is synonymous with split personalities these days, so any modern reader already knows what the revered Dr. Jekyll connects with the mysterious Mr. Hyde. But this foreknowledge is actually a bit misleading, and honestly, the real story is much more interesting than one might expect from its impact on pop culture. So let's see. Our focalizer is not the titular good

doctor

, but a guy named Gabriel John Utterson, whose main characteristic is that he is extremely boring. He likes to take weekly walks with his equally bored cousin, one Richard Enfield, and on one of those walks, Enfield breaks his comfortable miasma of boredom by telling an interesting anecdote that happened in a nearby house.

See, Enfield was walking home late one night when he saw two other pedestrians on a collision course: a girl running and a man walking. The girl collides with the man, who knocks her down and continues walking, causing a very respectable indignation in Enfield. Enfield stops the man from leaving the crime scene and the girl's family comes to check if she is okay, along with a local doctor. The girl is basically fine, just very shaken up, but the strange thing is that everyone in the scene reflexively hates the guy who pushed her. She's obviously a jerk for stepping on a girl, but they really hate him.

I think she just has that face. This charming gentleman is also Mr. Hyde, in case you haven't already guessed. So while the ladies of the family can barely resist beating him up, Enfield and the doctor gently suggest that Hyde can pay the family a tidy sum to forget this ever happened. He reluctantly agrees and hides in the house. Ten minutes later he returns with a check written and signed not by him, but by a highly respected member of the community. Enfield is surprised that the check is real and says that he is concerned that Mr. Hyde is blackmailing this prominent pillar of the community into paying to cover up his crimes.

Enfield also says that it's really strange because he could have sworn that Hyde had some kind of deformed appearance, like a deformity or something, but he can't find anything that's really wrong. He can't even remember what Hyde looks like. I think Hyde is a proud resident of the uncanny valley. Anyway, it turns out that Utterson already knows which pillar of the community Hyde might be blackmailing, because he is the lawyer responsible for Dr. Jekyll's finances and Dr. Jekyll recently freed Mr. made Hyde his sole beneficiary in his will. , specifying that since Dr. Jekyll would disappear under mysterious circumstances for more than three months, Mr.

Hyde stated he would get all of his things, no questions asked. Utterson naturally finds this extremely suspicious and fears that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll and planning to kill him for his money. So Utterson decides to investigate what is going on with Dr. Jekyll and starts with a mutual friend, Dr. Lanyon, a very handsome and jovial gentleman who sadly says that he has not been this close to Jekyll in almost 10 years, not since Jekyll started doing...dark science. So that's a dead end, and Utterson begins trying to get Mr. Hyde to examine him, with the strange feeling that if he could see his face, everything would become clear.

Utterson protects the house where Enfield saw Hyde and finally manages to capture him, but seeing his face doesn't help and he is only more confused. Cool. Utterson finally decides to just talk to Dr. Jekyll, but unfortunately he's not home, so he talks to his servants (Poole), who say that Jekyll gave them

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orders to do what Mr. Hyde says, and put him to work. charge when it appears. Utterson concludes that Mr. Hyde has a lot of dirt on Jekyll and is very worried about what that evil Mr. Hyde might do to him. But luckily Dr. Jekyll has a dinner two weeks later and we finally get to see our main character.

He is a nice older man in his 50s. Utterson stays after dinner to chat with him and expresses his concern about Mr. Hyde, but Jekyll feels very uncomfortable talking about him, and tells Utterson that Hyde is no problem and that he can get rid of him whenever he wants. . That's reassuring. The next thing that happens is a murder. An elderly saint (Danvers Carew) is walking late one night when he encounters Mr. Hyde, asks him for directions, and immediately dies. A maid witnesses the murder and calls the police, and upon investigation, Utterson realizes that the stick used to kill the old man belongs to Dr.

Jekyll. When they investigate Hyde's personal address, they find some servants, nice furniture, and the other half of the murder weapon. And when Utterson goes to see Jekyll, he finds the good doctor almost hysterical and saying that he is done with Hyde for good. He also gives Utterson a letter from Hyde to Jekyll, apologizing for all the trouble and assuring him that he has the perfect way to escape and that he will never bother him again. Utterson calms down and tells Jekyll that he really dodged a bullet because Hyde clearly intended to kill him. But that tranquility is broken a little when a servant (Poole again) tells him on his way out that no messenger passed by the house, so Hyde could not have delivered this letter.

Concerned, Utterson has his employee look at the letter and coincidentally, almost at the same time, he receives a letter from Jekyll inviting him to dinner. But the employee compares the letters and concludes that they were written by the same person. Utterson is very worried because now it seems that Dr. Jekyll Sr. protected Hyde, who is, you know, a murderer. But he keeps his worries to himself because, despite all the police searches, there is no sign of Mr. Hyde, as if he has simply disappeared into thin air. Coincidentally, it seems that with Dr. Jekyll he is much better until suddenly he is not, he confines himself to his house and refuses all visitors.

Very concerned, Utterson again tries to get Dr. to visit Lanyon, but discovers that Lanyon has also become very ill and probably only has a few weeks to live. Lanyon says that he has had a terrible shock and is sure that he will never recover, and when Utterson says that Jekyll is also sick, Lanyon goes crazy and tells him not to mention his name. Jekyll is officially dead to him for crimes against science. Then Utterson sends a letter to Jekyll asking him what happened and what is happening, and Jekyll tells him that he is sorry, that his friendship with Lanyon can never be restored, that he must isolate himself for the rest of his life, that it is his own fault and that everything sucks.

Lanyon dies shortly after, but leaves a sealed note for Utterson instructing him to open it only if Jekyll dies or disappears. Utterson continues to try to see Jekyll, and during one of his regular walks with Enfield they pass Jekyll's house and briefly talk to him through a window, until Jekyll stops mid-sentence and slams the window shut. Things become increasingly sinister and strange, and one day one of Jekyll's servants (Poole again) knocks on Utterson's door, terrified. He says they have been terrified for over a week and believe there may have been a crime. The servant takes Utterson to Jekyll's estate, where he sees all of Jekyll's servants huddled at the entrance, terrified.

The servant very quietly takes Utterson to Jekyll's laboratory, which is locked and barricaded from the inside, and when the servant shouts that Utterson is visiting there, the voice telling him to leave is not Jekyll, and has not been Jekyll since eight more days ago. The employee privately tells Utterson that whoever is in the lab, they have him running around town like crazy, looking for a very specific chemical salt that never seems to be the one he wants. They both agree that the voice in the laboratory sounded like Mr. Hyde's, and decide to break down the door.

When they kick in the door, Hyde begs for mercy and shoots himself just as they enter. They find him dressed as Jekyll, but there is no sign of Jekyll himself. How mysterious. And they also find a note from Jekyll, in which he tells Utterson that he has revised his will to leave everything to Utterson, and also that he must read Lanyon's note before Jekyll's, and that together they will They will explain everything. Lanyon's letter thus explains that he has received an urgent letter from Jekyll, in which he orders him to break into his laboratory with the help of his servants, take a very specific drawer and deliver it to a man who will deliver it to him at midnight. . pick up, that he now he can't explain why, but that it is vitally important that he does, and if he wants, Jekyll can explain everything later.

Lanyon is very suspicious, but agrees and examines the contents of the drawer after retrieving it. It's some chemical salts, a vial of liquid, and a notebook with a list of dates and the occasional note like "double" or "total failure." Lanyon concludes that one of Jekyll's crazy science projects must have gone wrong, but he doesn't understand why this would endanger Jekyll's life, so although he plays along, he remains very suspicious. At midnight, a creepy little guy you've never met comes to the drawer and mixes some things together, creating a color-changing mixture that looks and smells horrible. He then asks if Lanyon really wants to know what's going on and warns that once he finds out, he won't be able to unlearn it.

He is now too curious to say no, so the little guy drinks the chemical and, lo and behold, he is gruesomely transformed into none other than Dr. Jekyll. Lanyon is too busy describing how shocked and horrified he is to convey what exactly Jekyll is saying when he explains how the potion works, but he does notice that Jekyll tells him that his creepy little alter ego is, of course, Mr. Hyde. it was. Then Utterson turns to Jekyll's notes and we get a very interesting insight into the man behind the mad science. See, while pop culture loves the idea of ​​Mr.

Hyde as some kind of evil split personality with superpowers, like the Hulk but shorter, the truth is actually more disturbing. Dr. Jekyll is rich, intelligent, cultured, healthy and respected, but all his life he has struggled with vague and unspecified basic impulses. It's literally never described exactly what those impulses are, but given Victorian standards of decency, they could be anything from cannibalizing orphans to doing drag. Let's not get too speculative. The bottom line is that Jekyll has a part of himself that he feels deeply ashamed of, and when he does manage to do something with himself, he is accustomed to burying these eccentricities under a thick blanket of shame.

Victorians, right? Anyway, this causes Jekyll to begin dividing his perception of himself along strictly moral lines, seeing the good doctor and pillar of the community as his "good side" and all those unspecified base impulses as his "bad side", and so it begins. explore ways to make this dichotomy more literal. In the end, he comes up with a chemical mixture that can transform his body to reflect this other side of himself. It's really worth noting that Jekyll and Hyde are not two different people or personalities. Jekyll is the name he gives to the good and socially acceptable qualities of him, while Hyde is the name he gives to the bad and shameful qualities of him.

When he transforms his body, he does not change his mind, but rather abandons his inhibitions. Transformed into Mr. Hyde he feels younger, freer. He even theorizes that his evil body is physically younger because he spent so little time being evil compared to being good. So the good Dr. Jekyll is approaching 50 years old, but the bad Mr. Hyde may be in his 20s. Anyway, this is basically a magic potion, let's not get scientific. So now that he doesn't have to keep up appearances all the time, Jekyll, like Hyde, goes out and does what he wants, whatever that may be.

Essentially, he has given himself a secret chemical identity. It seems like a domino mask could have had the same effect, but I'm not the mad scientist here. OfAnyway, he sets up his secret identity, Hyde, with a fancy house and some servants, and changes his will to ensure he's in a good position even if something goes wrong. But something goes wrong: the more he indulges his unspecified basic desires, the more he desires them. His urges become increasingly bad and, although he is still having a good time, he becomes more and more risky as his activities increase. Like Hyde, he does whatever he wants with impunity, and like Jekyll he cleans up the mess and enjoys a cleansing dose of shame for his sins.

Victorians, man. But he starts to become careless and dangerous. By giving in to every desire, he begins to attract attention. He narrowly escapes consequences when he stomps on that kid and takes some precautions to prevent Jekyll's name from being linked to Hyde's finances. And then one day he goes to bed like Jekyll and wakes up like Hyde. He's pretty freaked out by this: if he starts changing without the chemical, does he get to the point where the chemical doesn't work anymore to change back? Jekyll plays a vital role as guarantor of his identity: if he loses it, he must suffer the consequences of Hyde's actions.

This is the wake-up call he needed and he decides that he must choose which of his identities he wants to keep: the despicable and friendless Hyde, or the respectable but downtrodden Jekyll. So he decides to stay as Jekyll and goes cold turkey for two months, but now that he has known the freedom of Hyde's anonymity, Jekyll can no longer stand his respectable restrictive lifestyle, so he briefly relents and immediately kills a old man. Oops. The problem is that killing this man has really serious consequences. Hyde is no longer a convenient anonymous mask for Jekyll, he is a wanted criminal.

Jekyll panics and tries to cover his tracks, but is actually relieved. Without Hyde as an option, it is psychologically easier for him to remain Jekyll. So he carries on with his life, occasionally satisfying an unspecified base urge, this time without chemical enhancements, just as any wealthy upper-class man indulges in his shameful secret pastimes. But unfortunately, even without using the chemical, this still fuels the bad side of him enough for the transformation to begin on its own. This leads to an incident in which he transforms outside the safety of his laboratory and must seek Lanyon's help to transform back.

But despite all the work they put in, Jekyll can't help but change. He hides in his laboratory to avoid telling his servants and, despite his best efforts, he wakes up like Hyde every time he goes to sleep. And then things get even worse when the chemical salt he needs for the potion runs out. He sends his servant to get some, but the new doses don't work. He suspects that there was an unknown impurity in the first dose and without it the drink produces no effect. Unable to change back, he barricades himself in the lab and retreats.

At this point he describes Jekyll and Hyde almost as two separate personalities, with Hyde desperate and furious, and Jekyll resigned to his fate. He ends the note by saying that the chemicals are gone and that the next time he transforms will be the last, which means he's basically already dead, so he might as well make it official. And the story ends on that happy note. If we can learn anything from this, it's that Dr. Jekyll is a much better mad scientist archetype than Victor Frankenstein. A real doctor who keeps meticulous records of his unethical experiments, takes responsibility for the consequences of his shady science, and uses himself as a test subject because he's not a coward?

Much better role model for mad science than a college dropout who rejected his first experiment because he had the wrong eye color.