{"id":75,"date":"2010-11-21T21:19:39","date_gmt":"2010-11-21T19:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=75"},"modified":"2010-11-21T21:19:39","modified_gmt":"2010-11-21T19:19:39","slug":"isnt-jekyll-not-hyde-the-scary-one-just-wondering-about-the-scots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2010\/11\/21\/isnt-jekyll-not-hyde-the-scary-one-just-wondering-about-the-scots\/","title":{"rendered":"ISN\u2019T JEKYLL, NOT HYDE, THE SCARY ONE? JUST WONDERING (ABOUT THE SCOTS)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\tI\u2019ve read once more <em>The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/em>, as I\u2019ll start teaching it again tomorrow \u2013actually, the second time this semester as my UOC students have already gone through it\u2013 and I marvel at how powerful Stevenson\u2019s writing is. I also puzzle about how to explain to the students that this is a deeply Scottish text in its depiction of evil. I do not mean villainy but, rather, the very tangible presence of something truly frightening, yet comprehensible, in the human mind. I find English fiction much tamer in this. Not even the Americans, for all their serial killers, can really compete with the Scots. I have the impression that Hyde would scare even Hannibal Lecter (or maybe eat him!). Perhaps only the Irish, with LeFanu\u2019s Carmilla and Stoker\u2019s Count Dracula, can truly match the Scots.<\/p>\n<p>\tAnyone interested in Scottish Literature knows that the figure of the double is quite strong in it, beginning with James Hogg\u2019s masterpiece <em>The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner<\/em> (1824), nearly 60 years older than Stevenson\u2019s dark tale. Other literatures have attractive Gothic tales built around that figure but there is something singular in the way the Scots deal with the doppelg\u00e4nger. Many critics have dealt with the issue, seeing in the nation\u2019s oppressive Calvinist background the main source for this basic acknowledgement that human beings are tainted and, thus, condemned to put up with their evil versions. It seems, somehow, hard for Scottish Literature to believe in unambiguous good though not so hard to believe in pure evil. Read Ian Rankin\u2019s splendid series of 17 novels on Detective Inspector John Rebus and you\u2019ll see how the hero falls gradually under the spell of his dark half, the self-assured, sardonic gangster Big Ger Cafferty. So will you.<\/p>\n<p>\tOn close consideration, what scares me in Stevenson\u2019s story is not really Hyde but Jekyll. His own account of the disastrous experiment that brings about his personality split and, eventually, his death is quite chilly, as Jekyll frankly acknowledges his addiction to Hyde\u2019s extreme freedom. Like many readers, I first approached the text thinking this was the story of a good man who wanted to help mankind get rid of its evil side, and, after all these years, I\u2019m still reeling from the shock of realising this is not true at all. Jekyll never thinks of good, only of how to free himself from all moral restraints to enjoy his darkest pleasures without the burden of a conscience (or the loss of his social position). Hyde is pure evil, but Jekyll is much worse as he makes the decision to release Hyde. Just think: although he is in Hyde\u2019s shape, it is actually Dr. Jekyll who kills poor Dr. Lanyon, formerly his best friend, by showing him how the appalling transformation works. It is important to see that Lanyon dies of the shock produced by seeing Jekyll emerge from Hyde\u2019s body \u2013not the other way round\u2013 as I very much suspect the \u2018good\u2019 doctor wanted all along.<\/p>\n<p>\tAs the story progresses, Jekyll loses control over Hyde because Hyde grows stronger \u2013not a word is said about how Jekyll\u2019s good side grows weaker. It\u2019s tempting to think of an alternative version in which Jekyll distils the essence of good mixed in his personality to become not an evil sinner but a holy saint. It sounds like the kind of fiction only American Christian fundamentalists or Opus Dei members might enjoy \u2013unless it was made as a comedy. It might be fun! The point is that none, as far as I know, has written this. All we have is the dark progeny of Stevenson\u2019s tale.<\/p>\n<p>I just wonder why Stevenson, a Scot, was the first to muster the courage necessary to say that evil is not the Other but us and why we still blindly insist in finding Hyde scarier than Jekyll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve read once more The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as I\u2019ll start teaching it again tomorrow \u2013actually, the second time this semester as my UOC students have already gone through it\u2013 and I marvel at how powerful Stevenson\u2019s writing is. I also puzzle about how to explain to the students that [&hellip;]<\/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-75","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\/75","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=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}