Jekyll and Hyde: Past, Present, and Future?

After being so profoundly made an example of for failing to include a discussion, nay a mention, of race, slavery, or, heaven forbid, Toni Morrison in my summary last week of Stephen Best’s article, “On Failing to Make the Past Present," I determined that my blog post would attempt (now allowing a more reasonable word count of more than 30 words) to remedy this error.

 I still maintain and argue that Best is most compelling when asking the questions that can apply to all fields of critical thought and literature—questions delving into what the nature of the ethical relationship between the past and the present should be. Yet, I again remind myself that Best’s essay is about more than just the relationship between the past and the present—it is also about slavery and race. Although my initial and still main intention and interest is to discuss how that “ethical relationship” manifests itself in my primary work, I would also like to briefly explore the possible presence or implications of race and/or slavery in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Jekyll and Hyde is a Victorian novella, written by a Scotsman, set in London, about upper class, wealthy, white, morally (f)rigid men. Though readings of psychoanalysis, sexuality, queerness, class, narrative theory, etc. abound around this text, how does the novella relate to a racialized slave past? I have found precious little scholarly work on race in Jekyll and Hyde and what I have found is usually centered about the adaptive history of the work, many noting that in subsequent adaptations, Hyde is sometimes given African-like features (See Frederic March’s transformation in the 1931 film). I wonder if this lack of critical attention stems from failure to rethink what “race” means and who or what it should apply to and in some sense define. Certainly, Best’s, Morrison’s and others use of the word seems to denote a “race” as a group of people marked by similar genotype, phenotype, culture, ethnic heritage etc. – in this case, a culture bound by a shared history of enslavement. Race, then, is a term that has internal and external, inclusionary and exclusionary implications—it is a mark of belonging and also of otherness.

Thinking of race as a “mark of otherness,” it is possible that a race need not be a group of people; a race can exist within and around a single entity. Thus, in Stevenson’s novella, I would argue that Hyde is his own, new race[1]—dangerous and gleeful. It is he who bears a mark of otherness, an “imprint of deformity and decay” and that brings a “visible misgiving of the flesh” to all who meet him; he, after all, “alone in the ranks of mankind [is] pure evil” (81). He is the “first creature of that sort that [the stars’] unsleeping vigilance ha[s] yet disclosed to them” (81).

Hyde can also be seen as a subject of slavery. He is a being of voice, will, and intent, who must subsume his freedom and individuality to the desire of a master and to the morality of a society that deems him inhuman, monstrous, and unworthy of life. Frightening and alarming to Jekyll, Hyde grows in strength throughout the narrative. Indeed, he notices that “in the beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had of late, gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side’ (85). Hyde becomes the new, free race attempting to break from his limiting past, Jekyll.

In order for Hyde to assume an unadulterated place in the world, the identity of Jekyll must be removed and forgotten. Hyde will have no difficulty in replacing “holding with letting go, clutching with disavowal” (456). Jekyll, a creature obsessed with Morrisonian “melancholic historicization,” (460) seeks in vain to restore a past sense of his (united) self; yet even he realizes the impossibility of such a quest and eventually he gives in to the fierce life force of Hyde. But he gives a parting gift of which we would be remiss to overlook, a last testament to the discussion about the relationship between times—the voice of the past speaking, not only to the present, but to the future as well. In tones of resignation and release, regarding Hyde, he states “God knows; I am careless; this is true hour of my death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself” (93).It is clear that Jekyll sees no hold, no connection between himself (the past) and the future of the race he engendered.

Best, Stephen. “On Failing to Make the Past Present.” MLQ 73.3 (2012): 453-74

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ed. Martin A. Danahay.    Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2005. Print.

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[1] Some here might argue that Hyde is not really human and therefore cannot be considered a new race within humanity. Jekyll himself even makes this argument, saying “That child of Hell had nothing human” (90). Jekyll thinks of Hyde, “for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic” (91). But if we can define a human as a creature that shows signs of interiority, self-awareness, and yes, duality (As Jekyll does state, “man is not truly one, but truly two” (78-79)), then I believe an argument can be made for the humanity of Hyde, indeed my blog post assumes such a humanity, although I have not the time or space to fully make such an argument here. Nor is my description of my thoughts on race, or species, fully developed or expounded upon.