The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

 To be perfectly honest, I've never read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'm not sure if it just didn't interest me or if it just wasn't available to me but I decided the time was now because it fits in so well thematically with the other two classic gothic horror novels I've just reviewed. 
Stevenson was born in 1850 and published his well-known novella in 1886 at the age of 36. A good middle ground between Mary Shelley's age of 19 when she published Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's 50 when he published Dracula. 
Before Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson was known as a traveling writer and wrote short stories based off of his travels, those stories are included in this book as well so I'm toying around with the idea of reviewing them and giving them their own blog or saving it for a later date. Not entirely sure yet as I really wanted to get started on contrasting Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and the different writing styles of the Bronte sisters. 
You've probably heard of his other famous novel, Treasure Island, which will get its own feature sometime in 2021. 

We open the novella with a lawyer named Mr. Utterson and someone else who is described as a distant kinsman named Mr. Enfield. They're enjoying their weekly walk together when they come upon a house with no windows and only one door. 
The house has been badly neglected and children play on the steps and vagrants sleep in its crevices. No one comes in or out of the house and no one knows who it belongs to or what it's even for. 
This is when Mr. Enfield tells Mr. Utterson that he has a story about the old place and Mr. Utterson is intrigued. 
Mr. Enfield is walking along at 4am, having come from nowhere, as he says, and sees a young girl running as fast as she can towards a corner. Coming 'round the corner is a man who does not stop when the two collide and just tramples right over her. 
She screams in pain and draws people out of the surrounding houses. Mr. Enfeild collars the man who trampled her and brings him back to the scene. 
There's a mob growing against him as a doctor examines the young girl and announces that she's presently no worse for the wear, more scared than anything. But Mr. Enfield says that if the gentleman doesn't make things right, he'll make a spectacle out of him for trampling the girl in the first place. 
The man sneers and says he'll give the girl's family 100 pounds to let the matter go and promptly goes into the house in question and comes back out with a check. 
Thinking the check is a forgery, Mr. Enfield says as much and the man volunteers to stay with him till the banks open and they can cash the check, as the name on the check, which Mr. Enfield can not repeat, per their agreement, is a well-known name and well-received in polite society.
They wait until the bank opens and sure enough, the check cashes, and everything is fine. 
Mr. Utterson asks why Mr. Enfield didn't inquire about the house, which was not the address on the check and Mr. Enfield replies that it's questions like that that get people murdered. 
Mr. Utterson agrees and their walk continues. After a little while, Mr. Utterson asks the name of the man that trampled the child, not the name on the check. 
Mr. Enfield says he can't see any harm in repeating that and says his name was 'Hyde.'
Mr. Utterson then asks if Enfield is sure Hyde had a key to the building and Enfield says, yes indeed he does, Enfield had just seen Hyde use it last week. 
Utterson says it would be right to point out that since he did not ask the name of the other party, it is because he already knew it and Enfield is rather sullen that he told his story at all after that. 
They agree never to speak of it again.

Mr. Utterson goes home to dinner and instead of relaxing with "reading dry divinity" he goes into his study and pulls out the will of Dr. Jekyll. He begins to study the contents carefully. Utterson hates the will, mostly because it made absolutely no sense to him personally. It merely stated that if Jekyll were to die, all of his belongings were to be left to Hyde and if Jekyll were to somehow disappear off the face of the earth, Hyde was supposed to step into his shoes and fulfill his role immediately. 
Utterson hates it because he at first didn't know who this Hyde character was and now, it no longer being a subject of mystery to him but more of a disgrace. 
Upon this reflection, Utterson decides to visit his old friend, Dr. Lanyon, because if anyone is to know anything, it's going to be him.
It's revealed to the reader that Utterson and Lanyon are Dr. Jekyll's two oldest friends and have known him since boyhood. Utterson asks Lanyon if he's heard from Jekyll recently and Lanyon says he hasn't really spoken to Jekyll for near ten years because he seemed to be going insane and Lanyon didn't want anything to do with that "balderdash." 
This is where the conversation is left off and Utterson returns home to toss and turn in his bed all night. He has nightmares all night, one of his friends, Jekyll, sleeping in a well-furnished home and having a dark figure standing over him and the other of the same figure stomping around the streets and trampling over children at every street corner. 
He awakes with the singular that if he can just see the face of this Hyde character then he can put the mystery to rest and his mind can be at ease. 

Mr. Utterson begins stalking the house with the hope of seeing Hyde and sure enough, Hyde turns up. Utterson stops him before he can go into the house, they have a brief back and forth about mutual friends and Hyde wants to know how Utterson recognized him. Utterson says it was Jekyll that described him and Hyde cruelly laughs, saying he didn't think Utterson would lie. 
Utterson is like, "whoa, we don't need to throw that word around." and he asks to see Hyde's face. Hyde obliges and Utterson feels as though there's something entirely unhuman about him but can't put his finger on it. Here he uses the word 'troglodytic' but can't see anything specifically wrong with the face in question. Before anything more can be said between the two men, Hyde rushes inside. 

Naturally, Mr. Utterson decides to go to Dr. Jekyll's house to get things sorted out but alas, Jekyll isn't home. Utterson tells the butler that he saw Hyde earlier and the butler is like, "oh yeah, he's around sometimes but he never comes to this part of the house, he mainly enters and leaves through the laboratory."
Utterson is like, "hmmm." And feels the need to investigate further because he can't get the disdain he feels towards Hyde out of his head and he wants to put the matter to rest. He believes that Henry Jekyll has gotten himself into some trouble with Hyde and Utterson wants to save him from that trouble, lest Hyde discovers the will and know he's the sole benefactor of it and grow impatient with the wait to inherit. 

This is all started because of a story he was told about a child getting trampled but not really hurt. It was more the shock of his appearance that caused everyone to hate him so suddenly. It's hard for me to really feel Utterson's drive now to discover what's going on when he's had the will for a while, he hasn't spoken to Jekyll in ten years and up until a few nights ago, didn't really care that much. A murder or something a little more foul should have happened to spur this type of inquest, I would think. But it's not my character, so I'll let the story play out.

The story jumps ahead a month and wouldn't you know it, Jekyll throws a dinner party for six of his friends. Lanyon isn't in attendance and it's later divulged that Jekyll sees Layon as a disappointment. 
Utterson hangs back and asks Jekyll about the will and says he's heard something "abominable" about Hyde.
Jekyll's friendly nature turns cold and he tells Utterson to drop the topic of the will and do as he wishes. He assures Utterson that he can free himself of Hyde whenever he wishes but he has a great stake in the young man and wants the best for him. 
He apologizes for Hyde's rudeness and begs Utterson to let everything go because it needs to be so. They conclude their evening together but Utterson is like, "I'm definitely not letting this go."

We jump ahead again to "nearly a year later" where a maid is daydreaming by the window, thinking of all that is good in the world when she sees two men encounter each other on the street. 
One is older with beautiful white hair and the other, she recognizes as Mr. Hyde as he'd come to see her master sometime before. 
Hyde starts brandishing his cane about in a crazy manner and then promptly beats the older gentleman to death. At witnessing this horrific murder, the maid faints, when she comes to, the murderer is gone but she calls the police and they find on the body of the victim a note postmarked for Mr. Utterson. The murder was so vicious that it broke Hyde's cane in two and they found one piece in the gutter, the other piece, they assumed, the murderer still had on him. 
He's called in to identify the body, it's a person we haven't met yet and Mr. Utterson says he can take the police to Hyde's home. 

Upon arriving at Hyde's house, the woman who opens the door says he's not there but when she finds out that he's in trouble, she seems very happy about this prospect and allows them to inspect the whole of the property. 
Most of the rooms haven't been used and the housekeeper informs them that that morning was the first time he'd been there in two months. 
In the rooms that had been used, they find a large pile of ashes where Hyde had burned several papers and they also find the other half of the cane. 
The policeman says that they have him now and all they have to do is wait for him to turn up and they'll have him arrested. 
But this is difficult because he's made very few friends, those he's met don't let him and he has no family to be found. 

So naturally, Mr. Utterson goes to the house of Henry Jekyll again. 

Jekyll is beside himself with grief, he's pale and upset. Utterson asks Jekyll if he's hiding Hyde somewhere but Jekyll assures him that he's not and hands him a note from Hyde saying he's left and he won't be coming back. 
Utterson says that he thinks Hyde meant to kill Jekyll and Jekyll plainly agrees with him. Jekyll asks Utterson to take the note and put it in his safe with the will because he wants to avoid a scandal. 
Naturally, our good and curious lawyer goes to a clerk first. This clerk is well versed in handwriting analysis and soon determines that Jekyll's handwriting and Hyde's handwriting are about the same but from different angles. Both men agree that this is "quaint" but no one wants to say that Jekyll is forging letters for a murderer. 

After that, it seems as though Jekyll is a changed man. He's thrown off his cloak of reclusion as starts to have more dinner parties again. He even invites his old friend Lanyon over and Utterson is very pleased to see the three of them like it used to be when they were young, happy, and bright. 
This goes on for about two months when suddenly, after getting used to seeing Jekyll every day, Utterson is turned away at the door by his butler. 
He won't see anyone anymore. He can't. 
Utterson writes him a letter and receives a lengthy response explaining that Jekyll feels he is one of god's worst sinners and therefore must suffer the most. 
Utterson goes to Lanyon's to see what they can do for their old friend but Lanyon wants nothing to do with Jekyll, he says that man is dead to him and he won't speak of it anymore. It's done. 
Lanyon dies in his sleep soon after and leaves Utterson a letter that is not to be opened until Jekyll's death or disappearance. 
Utterson is like, "well he's sort of disappeared now..." but he doesn't open the letter and he waits for things to change. 
His walking with Enfield again when they see Jekyll sitting in a window in his laboratory. They call up to him and ask him to come down. He declines to says they can visit this way instead. 
The men agree to this but no sooner do they that Jekyll screws up his face in one of abject horror and pain and the window closes and he's gone again. 
Utterson is like, "this is dumb."
But before he can probe any further, Jekyll's butler comes to his house that night and tells Utterson that he's afraid. He'd been afraid for about a week. He begs Utterson to come back to Jekyll's house with him and Utterson feels he has no choice but to oblige. 

Back at Jekyll's house, all the servants are crowded in the drawing-room, afraid of the person in their master's laboratory. They swear it isn't Jekyll and they assume it's Hyde. 
Utterson and the butler go to the laboratory and break down the door. It takes a few blows to get the door open and when they do, they find Hyde, dead on the floor from poison. 

Utterson and company search the whole house for Jekyll, thinking that Hyde has killed him and stashed his body somewhere but it's nowhere to be found. They go back to the laboratory and Utterson finds an envelope with his name on it. In it is a new will where everything is left to him and then proceeds twenty pages of Jekyll's narrative. 
If it were that those twenty pages could save this book, I would have been very glad. But they could not. Jekyll goes into a long-winded diatribe of his upbringing and his constantly duplicitous nature. In youth, he'd hidden his sins and his crimes and as he grew older he readily worked against that second nature so that he could be good and true and honorable. 
As a scientist, he had the idea that the two natures could be split and one could go without having to deal with the other. 
What he really meant was- I want to be able to do bad things without feeling bad about them. 
Thus is born the character of Edward Hyde. 
Jekyll sees Hyde as pure evil, there is no good in him. But he relishes in the evil that he can do through Hyde. He's conscious of Hyde's actions and decisions, he remembers them in his form as Jekyll. 
The more he drinks a potion to turn into Hyde, the stronger Hyde becomes. Till finally, he is more like Hyde through and through and Jekyll is merely a refuge Hyde has to hide from the consequences of his actions. Hyde comes out when he falls asleep, he comes out when Jekyll is sitting on a park bench. Anytime he wishes, Hyde can once more be in control. 
In this, it is not only Hyde that feels no remorse for his actions, it also Jekyll. To the very last page, he only pities himself that he's run out of special salt so he can drink the concoction and turn back into Jekyll whenever Hyde is too much. I don't think he actually feels bad that he willing called forth his darker nature so that he could commit crime and murder without consequences. He's really just upset that he lost control of everything. 
Had he felt actual sorrow over the actions of Hyde and took responsibility for them, would Hyde have grown so strong and been able to overpower him? That's the real question.

The story ends without anything else from our dear Mr. Utterson, who isn't really a character. He exists because the plot demands he exists and he acts as the plot demands him to act. 
After inhaling Frankenstein and Dracula in the last week, I was looking forward to again relishing in good storytelling and dramatic writing but this was boring and dull. Fantastic ideas but hurried along and poorly executed. 
Had Stevenson taken his time and lengthened the novella to a novel's length, fleshed out the characters and given me something more to grip on to, I think I would have liked it very much, because those last twenty pages were indeed, the best the story had to offer. And if the rest of the story had been like the last twenty pages, I think I would have been writing a very different review, but no, here we are at the end and I'm disappointed. 
How has this story stood the test of time? If you read this book and liked it, tell me, what did you like about it? To me, it felt like the skeleton outline of something much more grand. Something wholly better. The last twenty pages were very thought-provoking and you could really see Stevenson's talent as a storyteller coming through, but the 64 pages preceding them really took most, if not all of the wind out of its sails. 

Two stars.