A terrifying nightmare inspired the classic tale of Jekyll and Hyde in 1885
In short: Robert Louis Stevenson was so deeply unsettled by a dream in the autumn of 1885 that he scolded his wife for waking him. He believed he was witnessing a fine bogey tale, which he would soon transform into the iconic novella exploring the duality of human nature and hidden desires.
Published in 1886, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson remains a definitive exploration of the bifurcated self. The narrative follows Gabriel John Utterson, a lawyer investigating the connection between his client, the respected Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the loathsome Mr. Edward Hyde. The mystery deepens as Hyde is linked to violent acts, including the trampling of a young girl and the murder of a prominent gentleman. Utterson eventually discovers that Jekyll had concocted a potion intended to isolate the good and evil aspects of his own personality, allowing him to transform into Hyde at will.
The mechanism of the transformation eventually fails. Jekyll finds himself slipping into his evil counterpart spontaneously, and the supply of his potion runs out due to an unknown impurity in the original ingredients. The novella suggests that the capacity for good and evil within a person is not necessarily balanced; Hyde is described as smaller than Jekyll, potentially symbolizing that evil represents only a fraction of the total personality, albeit one capable of extreme violence. Jekyll ultimately consumes his final dose to pen a confession before becoming Hyde permanently.
This theme of the double was prevalent in 19th-century literature, appearing in works like Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Double (1846) and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Later, authors such as Oscar Wilde and H.G. Wells further explored these dualities. Stevenson’s work gained additional cultural weight in 1888, when the public linked the psychological concepts in the book to the real-world sexual savagery of the Jack the Ripper murders. Today, the names Jekyll and Hyde serve as shorthand for the contradictory behavior often observed between an individual's private and public selves, reflecting the Victorian struggle with outward gentility versus inward, unspoken desires.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Story Behind the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
- Also: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | Summary, Characters, & Facts | Britannica
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