Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

When The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson was published in 1886, it quickly became a best seller in America and Great Britain and soon, its two main characters became part of the vocabulary of common speech. Whenever someone refers to a "Jekyll and Hyde personality," it is understood to mean someone with a combination of agreeable and disagreeable traits that appear in different situations. Since its initial publication, the work has appeared in several editions in print and has been adapted in various film, television, and audio versions. The novel has gained critical acclaim as well, especially for its narrative structure and its thematic significance.

James Ashcroft Noble, in his 1886 review of the book for The Academy, writes, "It is, indeed, many years since English fiction has been enriched by any work at once so weirdly imaginative in conception and so faultlessly ingenious in construction as this little tale." Celebrated novelist Henry James comments in his 1888 review for The Century that it has "the stamp of a really imaginative production." James praises Stevenson's artful construction of the "short, rapid, concentrated story, which is really a masterpiece of concision," and its consequential ability to sustain the reader's interest. Critic Leslie Stephen, in his 1902 assessment of the novel, finds it "able to revive the old thrill of delicious horror in one who does not care for psychical research; it has the same power of carrying one away by its imaginative intensity." In his piece on Stevenson for Dictionary of Literary Biography, Robert Kiely explains, "Readers of [Stevenson's] own time were exhilarated by the freshness, the unexpected directness in the midst of luscious paragraphs in which he had seemed only to be marking time. Part of the appeal of the tale is, as the title suggests, its strangeness. It has its own obses-sive logic and momentum that sweep the reader along." Stewart F. Sanderson in his overview of the novel argues, "The pace of the narration, the deft way in which details supporting both the action and its unravelling are interwoven throughout the narrative, and the economy with which the story's terrifying atmosphere is created, combine to form a work of extraordinary psychological depth and powerful impact." Stephen Gwynn, in his book on Stevenson, praises the novel's style, insisting that it is "a fable that lies nearer to poetry than to ordinary prose fiction." Vladimir Nabokov, in his lecture on the book, considers it "a phenomenon of style" with "its own special enchantment."

Several critics have also celebrated Stevenson's psychological portrait of the novel's central character and his struggles with "those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature." Commenting on one of the novel's themes, Sanderson writes,

the notion of evil and the frailty of conscience coincides here with Stevenson's imaginative treatment and literary craftsmanship to form a work of remarkable power; so much so, particularly as the pace quickens with Jekyll's desperate attempts to replace the failing supply of his drug, that the reader is swept forward without questioning the premises of the allegory or the credibility of this strange but realistic tale.

Noble echoes this assessment when he concludes that the novel has a "much larger and deeper interest than that belonging to a mere skilful narrative. It is a marvelous exploration into the recesses of human nature; and though it is more than possible that Mr. Stevenson wrote with no ethical intent, its impressiveness as a parable is equal to its fascination as a work of art." Kiely notes the allegorical nature of the story with its "warnings against intellectual pride, hypocrisy, and indifference to the power of the evil within," but claims that "the continuing attraction of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is of an adult's nightmare of disintegration."

James praises Stevenson's exploration of the duality that exists in human nature, commenting that "the subject is endlessly interesting, and rich in all sorts of provocation, and Mr. Stevenson is to be congratulated on having touched the core of it. There is a genuine feeling for the perpetual moral question, a fresh sense of the difficulty of being good and the brutishness of being bad."

Other critics have noted how successfully the novel illuminates Victorian sensibilities. Irving S. Saposnik, in his essay on the novel, applauds its "formal complexity and its moral depth" and its intricate portrait of Victorian mores: "With characteristic haste, it plunges immediately into the center of Victorian society to dredge up a creature ever present but submerged; not the evil opponent of a contentious good but the shadow self of a half man." Focusing on Stevenson's characterization of Henry Jekyll, Saposnik notes that he is "a complex example of his age of anxiety: woefully weighed down by self-deception, cruelly a slave to his own weakness, sadly a disciple of a severe discipline, his is a voice out of 'De Profundis,' a cry of Victorian man from the depths of his self-imposed underground." Saposnik concludes, "Victorian anxieties contributed greatly to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's success. The fictional paradox revealed the social paradox; Jekyll's dilemma spoke for more of his countrymen than many were willing to admit."

At the time of his death in 1894, Stevenson's literary reputation was firmly established. During the 1920s and 1930s, however, his works fell out of favor with scholars who considered them to be derivative and affected. Two decades later, critics and the public alike again praised his works. Today, the novel continues its popularity, even though Stevenson admitted that he thought it to be the worst piece he ever wrote.

Compare & Contrast

• 1886: Britain annexes upper Burma after the Anglo-Burmese war, but revolutionary forces will try to regain control for several years.
  Today: The British Empire exerts its influence over only a handful of colonies, protectorates, or trust territories.
• 1886:Das Kapital by Karl Marx is published in English.
  1887: "Bloody Sunday," a Socialist demonstration, erupts in Trafalgar Square.
  1926: Joseph Stalin becomes dictator of the Soviet Union. His reign of terror will last for twenty-seven years.
  1991: On December 17, president Mikhail Gorbachev orders the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and a new Commonwealth of Independent States is formed by the countries that formerly made up the USSR.
• 1882: The Married Woman's Property Act passes in England, granting women several important rights.
  Today: Women are guaranteed equal rights under the law.
• 1901: Queen Victoria dies and the Victorian Age ends. She is succeeded by Edward VII and the beginning of the Edwardian Age.
  Today: The British monarchy has been damaged by several scandals including the reported infidelities of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, their subsequent divorce, and her subsequent death.