Review: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Warning: this review contains spoilers. 

“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”

Title: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Year: 1886

Pages: 144

I had heard of the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I was convinced I knew the entire plot as I had seen part of the BCC mini-series Jekyll. I knew thus, that Dr Jekyll suffered from some sort of dissociative identity disorder. What I was expecting was a ground-breaking psychological novel.

Clearly, one should not base their knowledge of literature on adaptations, especially not on only partly watched ones. Here is the real story of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Through the eyes and ears of Dr Jekyll’s lawyer Mr Utterson, we learn about Mr Hyde, a man who abuses a young girl and pays off the girl’s parents. It is quickly found out that there is a link between Jekyll and Hyde, as the former has written a will which would leave all his possessions to the latter. Years pass and nothing happens, until Hyde strikes again and kills a man. Slowly but surely similarities between Hyde and Jekyll are uncovered, and eventually we learn that Jekyll had developed a potion to which he became addicted, which transformed him in character and physique, into Mr Hyde.

The novella fits very well into its time and plays with the tradition of this Victorian era. In the late 1800s, one “sought to fix and pin down events” (Middleton x), while this story challenges everything that is thought to be fact. Moreover, it is a prime example of Gothic fiction, which was the popular genre in this time. Gothic literature “throws into question the idea of a fixed, stable individual identity”(Middleton xii), of which Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is of course the epitome.

This idea of double identity really only surfaces at the end of the novel, after confessional letters explain everything. This is also the case with the theme of addiction, as well as with some motifs such as the contrast between Dr Jekyll’s house and his laboratory. Only when we know how the story is set up, we understand these layers. Therefore, to me the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of those which really only becomes interesting after having studied it for a while.

In his review of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emmet Early shows that Jekyll is described positively, but is granted much less description than Hyde, whose evil character is highlighted over and over again (32). He writes “Hyde is obviously a constellation of a variety of vices, the most prominent of which is violent anger”. While little can be argued against this, I do feel that this completely disregards the fact that Jekyll is the true instigator, as it is his addiction which allows Hyde to even exist. Somehow it feels as though Stevenson disregarded the protagonist’s misdoings and only criticises the consequences of addiction rather than the addict himself.

I am quite sure my apathy towards this novella is fed by my confusion regarding the plot. I was constantly annoyed by the fact that Hyde looked so much different from Jekyll, although I thought they were supposed to be the same in appearance. Moreover, I felt it took the characters too long to figure out what was really going on. Perhaps I should give the novel a reread, now with the correct expectations, and perhaps I will be able to appreciate it better, and give it a fairer judgement. 

Works Cited

Early, Emmet. “The Strange Case of Ego and Shadowman: A Review of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.” The San Fransisco Jung Institute Liberal Journal 4.3 (1983): 28-36. PDF.

Middleton, Tim. Introduction. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with The Merry Men & Other Stories. By R.L. Stevenson. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1999. vii-xvii. Print.

Tag Tuesday: Unpopular Opinions Tag

This tag was originally created by TheBookArcher

1.       A popular book or series that you didn’t like

I was awfully disappointed by If I Stay by Gayle Forman. When I heard a film was going to be made, and Chloe Moretz was to play the lead, I decided I wanted to read it. I’d heard so many positive thoughts I was convinced I’d love it. I didn’t at all. I didn’t like the writing style everybody was raving about, and the characters annoyed me. I did rate it two stars, just because the premise intrigued me.

2.       A popular book or series that everybody seems to hate but you love.

I couldn’t think of one at first, but scrolling through my goodreads, I found Seeing by José Saramago. This is the sequel to Blindness, which I haven’t read. Seeing was a required read at uni, and it was stylistically challenging and in terms of plot it was difficult in the way that it focussed on politics, which is not a particular interest of me. Although I ‘only’ rated it three stars, I remember everyone else in the course hated it and many people didn’t even finish it, while I was quite intrigued and interested in reading more of the author’s work.

3.       A love triangle where the main character ended up with the person you did NOT want them to end up with.

Luckily, I’m not reading too many books with love triangles, because they generally annoy me. The series that pops into my mind when thinking of them, is The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare. I still haven’t finished the series, and I’m really not in a hurry to do so. Anyway, I remember really wanting Clary and Simon to end up together in the first two books.

4.       A popular genre that you hardly reach for.

Paranormal.

5.       A popular or beloved character that you didn’t like

Frankenstein’s Monster. (Which does not mean I didn’t like the novel)

6.       A popular author that you can’t seem to get into.

Jane Austen. I’ve read Emma and Mansfield Park and tried to read Persuasion. I did not enjoy them at all. I do still want to give her one more chance by reading Pride and Prejudice. Some day.

7.       A popular book trope that you’re tired of seeing.

Instalove/Love triangles. Both insanely annoying and unrealistic.

8.       A Popular series that you have no interest in reading.

The Selection Trilogy.

9.       The saying goes ‘The book is always better than the movies’, but what movie or TV-show adaptation do you prefer more than the book?

Bridge to Terabithia. The movie touched me so much more, but I must admit I saw the movie first..

Review: Brave New World

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

Title: Brave New World

Author: Aldous Huxley

Year: 1932

Pages: 177

Mothers and fathers no longer exist. Children are mass-produced, and are conditioned to agree with the government from the moment they are born. They are divided into groups, some learn to hate nature and books, others are taught to be promiscuous. There are even children who are treated with medicine or are allowed less oxygen just so they can be the way the government wants them to be. People are not religious, rather, they worship Henry Ford, who introduced the assembly line. Though to the reader clearly a dystopian world, most characters seem to be happy – for them, the government have created a utopia. The protagonist, Bernard Marx, turns out to be less susceptible to the conditioning, and he questions the ways of the world. When he goes to a savage reservation and meets Linda and her son John he learns about the idea of free thinking. As he takes the two savages back into the city, the two worlds collide and the main question this novel poses becomes apparent: is it better to be happy and ignorant, or to be knowledgeable but unhappy?

The society in Brave New World may seem far-fetched, but in essence, the aspects that are so much different from the world as we know it, are extreme but logical consequences of the consumer society: everything is based on satisfying (materialistic) needs and having a prosperous economical system. Modern interpretations of the novel often look at the novel as a ‘wrong’ prediction, as does Mark Frankel in his essay in which he proposes a different version of the future of consumerism. He argues that the ‘real’ future will be based on the infinite number of choices people will have, rather than the limit of choices (32). While this is a well-argued essay, I believe Brave New World deserves to be looked at as literature and a critique rather than a scientific work. Moreover, the future Frankel describes is not at all so far removed from Huxley’s ideas: consumerism still feeds the world.

Not only is Brave New World great food for thought – in the end you almost believe that ignorance is bliss – it is also a brilliantly written novel both in structure and prose. We are introduced into the world through a tour in a factory, which allows us to understand how people are made and how they think. Because of this structural element the focus is only on understanding the world for a very short time and we can start forming our own opinions quite early on.

#Fridayreads

It's Friday, and that means it's time for a #Fridayreads! In this post, I'll share with you what I'll be reading over the weekend / next week.

The physical book I'm currently reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. It follows Jacob, an old man, recounting his days working for a circus. I'm really enjoying it, but I'm only about 70 pages in. I'm hoping to finish it before the end of the week, but I probably won't because I'm working Saturday and Sunday.

I'm listening to Yes Please by Amy Poehler as an audiobook. I was trying to find the perfect audiobook last Tuesday, and spent the entire day listening to snippets of books I really didn't enjoy. Finally I decided to try this memoir, even though I don't really know Amy Poehler, or like SNL. I'm enjoying it greatly. I'll probably finish this next week while cleaning and doing laundry.

Lastly, I'm reading Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh, which is a graphic novel. It's a wonderful but enormously sad love story, and I'm excited to finish it tonight.

These are the books I'm currently reading, and although I'm sure I won't finish them all by the end of the weekend, I think I will pick up another one, just because I read ebooks while in bed and the current ebook is Blue is the Warmest Color and I am finishing that today. So I've been browsing through Scribd to find the perfect e-book, and I think I'm going to be reading The Storied Life of A.J. Fickry by Gabrielle Zevin. All I know is that it's well-loved and about books. Sounds exciting!

What are you currently reading?

Review: Alice in Wonderland

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

Title: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Author: Lewis Carroll 

Year: 1965/1971

Publisher: Vintage

Pages: 327

7 year old Alice is sat under a tree in her garden and she’s bored. A white rabbit wearing a jacket and checking its pocket watch of course immediately grabs her attention and she follows it, even down into its rabbit hole. Curiously, upon entering the hole she starts falling, and keeps falling, and falling, and falling. So begin Alice’s adventures in wonderland.

 When it was first published in 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland mainly received bad reviews because it was seen as nonsense. By the time Through the Looking Glass was published in 1871, though, it had gained critical acclaim. Up to this day it’s one of the most widely known children’s stories. Often both of Alice’s adventures are bundled in one volume, as was mine. This review will thus be of both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

This novel works on so many levels, and all these layers are worth exploring and studying, making it a book that can be read over and over again. And you have to, if you really want to understand it. Linguistically, it is so interesting, it makes you think about language, it makes you consider every word you’re saying. However, sometimes the language is incredibly difficult to understand, it doesn’t always make sense. This is mostly so when reading the poems integrated in the story. They’re very hard to understand, but they do add to the story.

In terms of the main plot, a lot happens as well, and many things can be analysed in very different ways. I feel like Alice’s discomfort – never being quite the right size, is something that likely alludes to puberty, meaning the target audience is slightly older than children. But it also speaks to me as a young woman who’s just finishing up her master’s degree and has to venture into the real world, but doesn’t really know how to fit in. This ties in with Alice’s realisation that not all puzzles seem to have a solution – some things just don’t make sense, and you have to give in to that. This struggle is continued in Through the Looking Glass where Alice learns that she cannot control everything that happens to her, which is represented by the chess game. Hashtag relatable!

I myself had interpreted the mushroom as a kind of drugs – allowing all the weirdness. But I read somewhere that people see the caterpillar as a symbol for sexuality because of its phallic shape, and the mushrooms – given to her by this caterpillar – would help her gain control of puberty as it helps her change sizes. This all worries me slightly, as Alice is seven… but I am interested in hearing whether people agree and have evidence from the novel for this claim?

All in all, I really loved this novel. It intrigued me in terms of language, and I didn’t expect its themes to relate so much to my situation. I was a little annoyed by Alice in the first book, but in the second she was much less of a brat.  What did bother me greatly were the lousy endings to both novels. 

Review: Station Eleven

"The more you remember, the more you've lost"

Title: Station Eleven

Author: Emily St. John Mandel

Year: 2014

Publisher: Picador

Pages: 333

I recommend going into this novel without knowing what it is about, so I’m not going to give a summary. It’s even difficult to classify it as one particular genre, but to give you a general idea of what the novel is about, I’ll tell you this: There’s a pandemic which could have apocalyptic consequences. We learn about the world before the disease, during it, and many years after.

This is the only book I was able to get through in the month of June as it left me in a major slump. I don’t really know why, though. Writing this review now makes me realise I have forgotten quite a bit of the story, it hasn’t stuck with me as much as I thought it would. I have to admit the feelings it made me feel, the impressions it made on me, they did last. However, because the story didn’t, I can’t rate five stars, which is what I initially wanted to.

Still, four stars means it is a brilliant book nonetheless. Its structure is so clever and well thought out – we get to know our characters through many years and even though it jumps back and forth, it never becomes confusing. Moreover, it is very original in the way it handles the potential apocalypse. Generally, books surrounding an apocalypse focus on the actual downfall itself and direct survival, leaving to the reader’s imagination how the world will continue. Mandel offers much more insight, leaving out the tumultuous years right after the pandemic, skipping quite a few years. For this very reason, many people whose reviews I read, actually disliked the novel. I feel, though, that this is just the originality needed in such a popular genre. It’s even more original because it also focusses so much on how the characters lived and developed many years before the disease.

I would say the main themes of the novel are memory and nostalgia. The story is driven by nostalgia, because our main character collects things associated with the past and the story builds around this. We’re constantly reminded of the past, as are the characters in the future parts of the novel. Those who remember the past are nostalgic about it, yet focus on moving on. The past is not a taboo, but they’re also aware that they can’t go back. Because of this positive spirit of moving on, Station Eleven is not as bleak as other apocalyptic stories. I’m not saying it is a happy one, though, a lot happens in this book, and hardly anything will make you smile. 

Tag Tuesday: On My Shelf #1

As I'll never really do a bookshelf-tour kind of post, I thought another way of showing off what books I own is the On My Shelf tag, originally created by Iain Broome. The idea is simple: random numbers which form coordinates will determine what book on which shelf you’ll be talking about. So if the numbers are 3 and 5, you’ll talk about the fifth book on the third shelf. I used random.org to generate ten numbers, so I’ll be talking about 5 books.

18,3 – Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

I bought this after I’d read and loved Fangirl and read it immediately after I received it. I absolutely adored this book. I thought it was better than Fangirl, less cheesy, even though this one’s quite cheesy too. I rated it five stars, cause for a young adult love story, it’s perfect.

7,19 – Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

Almost two years ago, I saw an advertisement on a Dutch version of Craigslist for a huge box filled with old Wordsworth Classics for very cheap. So I got it and now I have over 50 books in this old series. This is one of them, I haven’t read it yet, and although I’m excited to get to it, I doubt it’ll be soon.

22,8 – Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

Another one that I got in that big box. I own many of Verne’s books, because as a kid I had this abridged version of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, which I loved. So as an adult, I decided to buy his books. Never got around to reading them though..

1,4 – Little Women & Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott

Yet another Wordsworth Classic, but not one that belongs to the older series. I bought this about a year ago, and have always been avoiding any kind of spoilers of Little Women. One day, a few weeks ago, my friend was talking to me about spoilers and how an episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. talks about spoilers and this book. In recounting the episode, my friend spoiled Little Women. I tried reading it about a week ago, and couldn’t get into it. Now I don’t know if it was because I was spoiled, though, because I wasn’t enjoying the writing either..

1,11 – The Complete Novels of Jane Austen

I’m not a Jane Austen Fan. But you may have noticed I do collect Wordsworth Classics (because they’re cheap, not because they’re pretty). I own all of The Complete Novels collections they have brought out so far, I think, and I haven’t read much from them. I prefer owning the separate books as well, because these huge books are difficult to read. 

That's all for today! Be sure to check back soon, because I have a ton of reviews to post!