Familiar tale exploring the underside or suppressed energies amidst upright Victorian London. The prose is sometimes dense and wordy (some passages need a reread), but the excitement and the ominous tone still get through. That atmosphere has plenty of Gothic stylings, with wild and dramatic language used to carry the story: “…there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity”, “.. the thin trees were lashing themselves along the railing.” That dramatic storytelling has a more striking effect than the core theme itself: the duality of mankind. It’s a clever conceit, but there’s not that much reflection on the part of the various narrators to make convincing the appeal of the “lower” pleasures that Hyde pursues. Surprisingly short. ( )

‘I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.’ (p.10)

Robert Mighall, editor of this edition of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, writes that the statement of Dr Jekyll (last chapter of the book) is the best known part of the story written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Mighall advises to read the book completely: “They would find there something different from what they imagined: a more complex, rewarding and disturbing story than the version that has been handed down in popular culture form.’ (p.ix)

As Mighall writes in the introduction, following the path of Gothic novelist Stevenson changes the set of his stories: abandoned ruined castles and woods, Stevenson set the horror in the mind of individuals. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe is the past, the good and the evil are inside the mind.

‘I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; … I had learned to dwell with pleasure, … on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each … could but be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the injust might go his way … and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path.’ (p.56)
This edition contains a brief dissertation of Robert Mighall: Diagnosing Jekyll: the Scientific Context to Dr Jekyll’s Experiment and Mr Hyde’s Embodiment; although very useful, I prefer a different point of view ‘diagnosing’ Stevenson and his book.
Cesare Lombroso’ s idea about the connection between head’s shape and criminality (drawn from physiognomy): ugly means crime, handsome means honest person; is only an easy and popular connection. In my opinion, on the other hand, Stevenson writes about the dichotomy between good and evil. Good or just has always tried to keep a distance from evil or unjust, but Stevenson wants to find another solution: both just and unjust living in the same person. But morality liked, from biblical times, dichotomy; so Stevenson doesn’t solve the problem with Dr Jekyll: his friend ‘can’t describe him’ (p.10)

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was first published in 1885; the next year, 1886, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche wrote Beyond Good and Evil (Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future). Nietzsche ‘screaming’ his ‘Affirmative Philosophy’ or ‘Philosophy of Yes’ preludes how to build a bridge towards / beyond just and unjust.
Stevenson and Nietzsche: same times, same ideas, different solutions.
/////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////

OLALLA

Olalla was first published in 1887 and is set in Spain during a war. The narrator is an English soldier recovering from his wounds in an hospital. After a while the soldier takes residence with a local family. The family consists of a mother, a son, Felipe, and a daughter, Olalla; they are an old Spanish family living in a residencia.

‘It was a rich house, on which Time had breathed his tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion.’ (p. 112)

The soldier cuts his wrist and asks Olalla’s mother for help. Seeing the blood the woman starts screaming and bites the soldier’s arm.

In Olalla Stevenson retrieves from the Gothic genre the themes of old and decayed families, vampires, buildings resembling castles, and, of course, the atmosphere of angst. Although the soldier’s infatuation with Olalla takes most of the story and Stevenson keeps the Gothic themes in the background, Olalla suggests an idea of passage between the Gothic genre tout court and its themes transferred inside the individuals (for instance Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).



( )

I finally read the other tales in here, including his chapter on dreams. Mighall's essay and introduction are both interesting. ( )

Well I'd read "Treasure Island" many times and loved Stevenson's essays about the Pleasures of travelling Slowly...and Travels with a Donkey. In fact, I was given an extract from travels with a Donkey in an English Exam and I was so impressed by the extract that I followed up, found and read the essay in entirety. Suffice to say, that I was already a fan of RLS but had never read the classic "Dr Jekell and Mr Hyde"....though as the Editor notes in his critical introduction ....the phrase "A Jekell and Hyde" has entered the language..though most people have never read the book. Certainly, I knew the outline of the story but one has to give great credit to RLS's pacing of the story and the suspense which is not released until the end of Dr Lanyon's narrative. RLS has a wonderful way with building characters and character descriptions and the same richness of description follows in the other stories in the book: "The body snatchers" and "Olalla"...and the same rising levels of suspense. There are similarities there with Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and the work of Henry James. I guess it was an era of "thrillers ....though, as pointed out in the introduction by Robert Mighall, the book was produced for the Christmas trade. Strange that at Christmas time people should be drawn to books on the supernatural and horror. But that seems to be the case.
It was a quick read. I easily finished the entire book in a day ...which is a welcome relief from some of the books I've been struggling through recently. Beautifully written and certainly "got me in". Happy to give it four stars. ( )

Digital audiobook performed by Scott Brick

Classic horror from a master of Victorian gothic fiction.

I appreciate the atmospheric nature of Stevenson’s writing. The reader can feel the dampness of a foggy London night, smell the freshly turned earth in the graveyard, hear the clip clop of a horse’s hooves on cobble-stoned streets, clearly see the horrific images of a mutilated body, and taste the bile that rises as a result of all the above.

The title story is an exploration of man’s baser instincts. Can a potion be created that will change a generous, kind, proper individual into a fiend? And once the gentleman has “tasted” the freedom from inhibition that results, can he go back? Will he want to? Of course, Dr Jekyll’s alter-ego changes physical appearance as well, further confounding those around him.

The other stories in the collection had similar psychological / ethical themes, though I didn’t like them all quite so much. The Bottle Imp explores greed and regret and selfless love. Stevenson shows that true events can be as frightening as fantasy in The Body Snatcher, which is based on the real practice of trafficking in bodies needed by medical students for dissection that happened in the 19th century. And the remote setting of The Merry Men make the ghost ships seem all the more real.

Scott Brick does a marvelous job of narrating the title story. But bear in mind that the audio version is limited to the Dr Jekyll short story. I had the text handy and read the remaining four short stories in that format. ( )