“Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed me; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to double, and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in the light of that morning’s accident, I was led to remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side. All things therefore seemed to point to this; that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.”
Stevenson, loc. 913
Comments
In this passage, Jekyll relays the progression of his transformations. At first, it was a sort of dream or problem he wanted to solve with science. It was very difficult to figure out how to dissociate into Hyde, and he notes that he often doubled or even tripled his dosage to trigger the transformation. But as he has indulged the proclivities of Hyde more and more often, it becomes more difficult to change back to Jekyll. He wakes up as Hyde, then cannot remain Jekyll for more than an hour at best.
To me, this emphasizes the reality behind Jekyll and Hyde’s relationship. In almost all ways, they are the same person, just with different inhibitions. Hyde is the physical manifestation of Jekyll’s wickedness that he wanted to literally separate from the name Dr. Jekyll. Having a whole second identity of Mr. Hyde allowed him to satisfy his socially unacceptable/violent impulses without suffering the consequences as a respected member of the community. But it comes to be that the science behind Jekyll’s discovery is unstable and difficult to recreate, so he runs out of potion and isn’t able to stay in the body of Dr. Jekyll.
The irony of the case is that the experiment meant to save Dr. Jekyll’s reputation is what ultimately destroyed it and killed him.
Questions
What could Jekyll have done differently to change his outcome?
How different are Jekyll and Hyde in reality? Only in physicality?
How does the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde compare to the story of Frankenstein and his monster?
