\tLast week I wrote that even Dr. Lecter would find Mr. Hyde scary and since then I\u2019ve been mulling over why cannibalism never comes up in connection with Stevenson\u2019s masterpiece. Actually, we had a lively discussion in class about the worst crime we imagine Hyde committing, and because the contemporary readings of the text focus so much on (Victorian, repressed) sexuality, we just came up with child rape and murder. Someone mentioned the Amstetten monster, as you might expect, as our most potent recent Jekyll-related nightmare but not the ultimate taboo of eating people.<\/p>\n
\tCheck any database and you\u2019ll soon find that plenty has been written about Lecter as the 1990s quintessential Dr. Jekyll, with suggestions that he\u2019s both the good doctor and his evil self in one, sealing thus Stevenson\u2019s self-divide. Other candidates to the post of best fictional Dr. Jekyll of the last twenty years might be, of course, Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis\u2019 magnificently horrid American Psycho<\/em> (1991) and, yes, the split protagonist of Chuck Palahniuk\u2019s truly great Fight Club<\/em> (1996, film \u2013also great- by David Fincher 1999). Yet, I haven\u2019t been unable to trace an essay arguing that Hyde\u2019s favourite debauchery consists of eating people. Why not consider this? Ummm… yummy!<\/p>\n \tNow, seriously, most critics gloat over the hidden sexuality of Stevenson\u2019s text, fantasizing mainly that Hyde is either a sadistic, misogynistic heterosexual or a homosexual \u2013do they mean just plain or also sadistic? See for instance Elaine Showalter\u2019s confusing essay \u201cDr. Jekyll\u2019s closet\u201d in her book Sexual Anarchy<\/em> (1991 \u2013 my thanks to Josh Bazell for pointing it out to me). Showalter makes three claims: 1) Hyde\u2019s crimes are sexual, 2) late Victorian male readers leading a double life would have quickly guessed that Jekyll\u2019s dark pleasures are homosexual, 3) it\u2019s hard to imagine a version with a female protagonist. Well, yes, if you must focus on sex. <\/p>\n Showalter wonders, as I do, what a contemporary Ms. Edie Hyde might do secretly that is too shameful for Prof. Henrietta Jekyll, chair, I would add, in Gender Studies at any US or UK university. Have sado-masochistic (lesbian) sex with a student? Really evil… As for her twin claims that Stevenson may have, perhaps, possibly, perchance, who knows, come in and out of the closet which is why Jekyll and his cronies are clearly gay, I find it intolerant and homophobic. I know she intends to condemn the author\u2019s and the original readers\u2019 hypocrisy but believing that Jekyll needs Hyde because he is gay simply hurts my queer (=anti-homophobic) sensitivity. Last time I saw Lecter (in print) he had trapped Clarice Starling into an appalling HETEROSEXUAL affair…<\/p>\n \tThe problem with Hyde is that we don\u2019t seem to have much imagination when it comes to evil \u2013um, luckily? Thomas Harris opened up through his Dr. Lecter new possibilities regarding ultimate evil at a modest individual scale (Lecter is no Hitler, not even a Bush). And why not imagine that in her college office Prof. Henrietta Jekyll daydreams about having some students for dinner? Unless, of course, you think that ladies can never be that evil… or good cooks like Lecter. That would be sexist, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week I wrote that even Dr. Lecter would find Mr. Hyde scary and since then I\u2019ve been mulling over why cannibalism never comes up in connection with Stevenson\u2019s masterpiece. Actually, we had a lively discussion in class about the worst crime we imagine Hyde committing, and because the contemporary readings of the text focus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde","category-victorian-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}