The biggest mystery
of Stevenson’s classic story is not the identity of the repulsive
little man known as Mister Hyde. Within a few years of publication
that identity became pellucidly clear even to people who never read
the story, thanks to stage and film adaptations. The mystery is, why
is Stevenson’s actual story not as popular as the adaptations?
After all, though DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN were often very freely
adapted, one still sees raconteurs occasionally going to the original
texts for inspiration. With JEKYLL AND HYDE, not so much.
Most versions do
capture, or try to capture, the sense of Hyde as a sort of Victorian
predecessor to Sigmund Freud’s theory of “the id,” the part of
the human psyche that simply “wants what it wants when it wants
it.” Later raconteurs usually don’t favor the idea that Hyde is
physically smaller than Jekyll. Sometimes this aspect is attributed
to Hyde’s incarnation of Jekyll’s younger self (said to have been
“wild” in college), sometimes to his being a sort of
“troglodytic” throwback. Obviously, in stage and screen, this
would have been impossible to convey without using two actors, thus
obviating the challenge of seeing a performer essay both the “good”
and “bad” sides of humankind. But in this case, size is not the
main problem with Stevenson’s text.
The fact that Hyde’s
identity is no longer mysterious has a deleterious effect on most
readings of the prose tale, but that too is not the greatest
difficulty. It’s closer to the truth to say that Stevenson, while
he calls Hyde “evil,” is deliberately obscure about what evil
acts the little fiend commits. Aside from losing his temper twice in
public—trampling a little girl and killing an old man—one never
sees what acts of reprehensible gratification Hyde carries out when
he usurps Jekyll’s body. It’s beyond doubt that this was a
conscious choice on Stevenson’s part, whether from fears of
censorship or simply from the desire to make his readers use their
imaginations.
But the story might
have flourished with all of these flaws, had it not been for the
biggest one: Hyde has no voice. Solid citizens like Lanyon report
some of the things he’s said, for Hyde is certainly capable of
ordinary human speech, and Jekyll’s notes attempt to convey his
alter ego’s perverse nature. But, once again drawing comparisons to
the creations of Stoker and Shelley, those two worthies give their
monsters character through their own speech. Proportionately
speaking, Dracula isn’t “on stage” much more than Hyde is, but
the king-vampire has just enough dialogue to make his character
indelible. And though the Frankenstein Monster’s adaptations don’t
often favor the grandiloquence of Shelley’s creation, even mute
versions of the Monster seem suffused with the simple sentiment, “Did
I beseech thee, O my maker, to create me?”
Adaptations of Hyde
not only have to enlarge upon his career of self-gratification, they
almost have to create Hyde’s presence out of whole cloth. Stevenson
only gives the reader the sense of Hyde’s abominable temper, his
spite toward the “ego” side of his nature, but Hyde does not come
alive as a character. Indeed, in Jekyll’s final confession, he
characterizes Hyde as if the latter were some “inorganic”
process. That notion works fine for the alien beings of Lovecraft’s
Cthulhu mythos. A reader who wants to “get to know his id,”
though, can only come away from Stevenson’s JEKYLL AND HYDE with a
sense of vague disappointment.
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