REVIEW: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

• Year first released:  1866
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780451523631
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Signet Classics 
• My rating (out of 5):  5

  

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sits in a rather unique – and deeply unfortunate – place amongst horror novels:

Everyone knows (or thinks they know) the story of Jekyll and Hyde. This may sound like a good thing for Stevenson, to be so well-known and to have created such a lasting, timeless book. But therein is precisely the problem. Everyone already knows the story – which means that most all the mystery is gone from the narrative. Case in point: what most people consider to be the heart of the story is actually left a complete mystery from the reader until over two-thirds of the way into the book. Nowadays, you go into the book knowing precisely what Dr. Jekyll is up to, when his actions are intended to be shrouded in a deep, eerie mystery - and, in fact, are meant to be the ultimate twist of the book.

Did you know, in fact, that Dr. Jekyll isn’t the main character of the book? – rather, it is a lawyer friend of Jekyll’s by the name of Utterson.

And we all know that Hyde is notorious for committing a wealth of crimes and evil deeds. And yet, in actual fact, he commits only one murder and a couple of assaults – and, contrary to nearly every contemporary portrayal, never engages the services of a prostitute. (Of course the murder and assaults are bad enough. I just mean to say that he’s not the depraved serial killer/lusty pervert that most modern renderings would have us believe.)

All of these things are altogether too bad, because the book is fascinating and much more intricately crafted than you could know without having actually read it for yourself. If you can set aside what you think you know of the story, the unraveling of the mystery is highly clever – moving around in time, bringing in various characters to impart their sides of the story, etc. Stevenson’s descriptions are perfectly spot-on. He does an excellent job of recreating London for us, as well as showing us both the physical and mental differences between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

It is very difficult to find a better pure horror novel than The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s not, per se, the scariest book out there, but there’s no reason it needs to be – its unsettling nature and philosophical implications put it in a class of its own, and its succinctness, powerful descriptions, and psychological exploration place it in the highest order of horror literature.