Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Revisited

The publication of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in January of 1886 created a shock wave in the consciousness of its readers. It was an instant success in and beyond the literary world as people were confronted with the uneasy thought that evil originated within the individual and not from an external source like the Devil. This was nine years before Freud conducted his first psychoanalysis and decades before Jung introduced the concept of the Shadow. Stevenson was known as the author of Treasure Island and children’s poetry but had long been looking for a vehicle to write about the strange Other he had been aware of since his childhood nightmares. The inspiration for Jekyll and Hyde came directly from a dream and he attributed most of his literary success to help from the “Brownies,” the “little people” in his interior world and dreamland. The novel can be seen in relation to the love-hate relationship with his father upon whom he depended for financial support during his lifelong struggles with severe respiratory illness, developing an addiction to drugs in attempting to cope with the illness. The Other for Stevenson was primarily the dark side of the strict Calvinistic religion of his father and proper late 19th century Scottish culture, yet the concept is even more relevant today as we face the evils of terrorism, racism, white collar crime, and intolerable levels of polarization in modern societies.