Book #43
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
By Robert Louis Stevenson
Last week I read Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was surprised by how relevant its themes are to our modern world.
This week, for Halloween, I picked up The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and it feels jarringly applicable as well.
Both works invite us to question the true nature of our identity, something that feels especially elusive today.
In the modern world, we live as multiple versions of ourselves- online and offline, personal and professional, curated and authentic- through different monikers, usernames, avatars, and handles. These versions may not even be cohesive. They can be fragmented- sometimes even contradictory.
This fragmentation gives dangerous freedom for the Hyde in each of us to roam unseen.
In this post, I will explore three ways our lesser natures can take shape.
The Hyde in Each of Us
Unleashed Curiosities:
Closing the Browser on a Sub-Personality
The internet has given us incredible freedom to express different sides of our personality- often with anonymity and without consequence. We can close the browser window and pretend we’ve left that version of ourselves behind.
But can we ever truly? Or does that sub-personality linger within us?
These different sub-personalities allow us to compartmentalize different parts of ourselves.
Edward Hyde was created for this very purpose: so that the respectable Dr. Jekyll could indulge his lesser impulses without tarnishing his “true” self.
For Dr. Jekyll, this divergence “relaxed the grasp of conscience”. I think the internet can have that same effect.
Paradoxical Personalities:
Extreme Kindness & Cruelty
Sometimes our inability to reconcile good and evil blinds us to the truth. I have watched this play out first hand.
There is a man that I’ve known since I was a child. He has had several run-ins with the law and is now surrounded by a decades-thick fog of accusations- including crimes against children- that follows him like a rain cloud.
I had no idea about any of this when I was young, but something felt off. He would visit my family home each year, and looking back with adult clarity, I realize how narrowly I escaped harm. I was never hurt by him. Was I uncomfortable? Sure. But I was very lucky to avoid that peril.
Recently, a family member suggested I look at him with kinder eyes- after all, they said, he was so nice to you as a child. He would buy me extravagant gifts- huge stuffed animals that I loved to play with. But I cringed.
Abusers are often very nice people. They provide gifts, attention, or emotional support to gain access to their victims- and to defend their character if they are ever accused later on.
This is an extreme, yet sadly all too common, example. But as a society, we are often uncomfortable looking at all sides of a person. It can be hard to reconcile the Jekyll with the Hyde, as one. We prefer to imagine people as entirely good or entirely bad, like Dr. Jekyll tried to do until he realized he could not escape Hyde.
The truth is most people are a mix of both good and bad, to varying degrees. In the above example, it is clear that his Hyde took over.
We don’t like to think that someone can both love and harm us, whether that love is genuine or manipulative. Or that they may have been kind to us but cruel to another, or vice versa. And we certainly hate to think that someone out there may be hurt because of some action that we took. Yet our refusal to acknowledge the contradiction is exactly how Hyde is allowed to roam free.
We compartmentalize, just like Dr. Henry Jekyll did, until he lost control of the shadow and it ended up destroying him.
Repressed Rage:
Anger as a Moral Teacher vs. a Destroyer
In our world- both online and in person- you can feel people’s anger roiling under the surface. Years of repressed emotions get released in a torrent, seemingly out of nowhere, often upon strangers.
For Dr. Jekyll one side was fully composed; the other, fully unrestrained. And our modern world allows us to do just that by splitting ourselves… for a while. But these different parts have a way of bleeding into one another.
However, I think a distinction needs to be made. That is: the difference between healthy anger and repressed rage.
Anger in itself, is a perfectly normal and healthy response to harm or injustice. But when left unacknowledged and unhealed, it can grow out of control, even becoming your dominant nature.
Instead of trying to lock these emotions away or ignore them, I have learned to ask what they are telling me. Often they are indicating something practical and reasonable- like I need to get out of a certain relationship, or I need to express my higher self freely, not my Hyde.
In this way, I move toward clarity, not destruction. And the power of Hyde lessens, and the essence of Dr. Jekyll regrows.
Reclaiming Our Best Nature
Dr. Jekyll believed he could contain his darkness by separating himself from it. But in doing so, he gave it freedom. And the more he indulged these feelings, the more they grew.
Perhaps our work is the opposite: to see darkness clearly- in others and ourselves- and bring it into the light. And to recognize it before it takes the wheel, so that we do not lose ourselves to Mr. Hyde. When we acknowledge the Hyde within, we give Dr. Jekyll a fighting chance to stay behind the wheel.
Messy Bun Book Lover
I read the Collins Classics Edition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but I also highly recommend this edition → https://amzn.to/4oSQjlK
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