'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson - Halloween Lecture
Added 2025-11-02 22:23:38 +0000 UTC'All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil. Man is not truly one, but truly two.'
Tonight we’re talking about late Victorian gothic literature, mad scientists, terror vs horror, the uncanny, nocturnal labyrinths, the unconscious, nineteenth century London, serial killer fear, sensational tabloids, the line seperating good and evil, and much more.
Make sure your lamp has sufficient oil to light the pages of your volume. And let’s try not to think about what could be lurking outside our door as we appreciate a great tale of terror together.
We’ll be leveraging Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) to penetrate to the darkest pits of the human condition.
Feel free to enjoy the discussion either before or after reading as best suits you. We do analyse and appreciate the main plot details, so you may wish to read the story first. Even if you haven’t read the tale, you may still enjoy our exploration of horror and the gothic tradition.
Video Timestamps:
0:00 how this dark tale came into the world
1:00 the real life inspiration for the story
2:00 the burning of the first manuscript
4:00 what makes a horror story scary?
6:00 Jack the Ripper in Victorian London
8:00 can we read like the first readers?
10:00 why should we reread this story?
11:00 turning to the beginning together
12:00 are we our brother’s keeper?
14:00 the horrific nighttime incident
16:00 scandal & gothic class anxiety
18:00 how revolution shaped the gothic
20:00 symbolism of signatures & doors
21:00 the uncanny in gothic literature
24:00 terror vs horror in the gothic
26:00 the strange will of Dr Jekyll
28:00 nocturnal labyrinth of lamps
30:00 London in Dickens vs Stevenson
32:00 navigating the unconscious mind
34:00 madness & scientific balderdash
36:00 dodgy doctors & mad scientists
39:00 the warning of man playing God
41:00 why was there fear of doctors?
43:00 drug abuse in the Victorian era
45:00 Darwin’s theory of evolution
47:00 the etymology of Hyde’s name
49:00 the meaning of Jekyll’s name
50:00 Utterson playing hide-and-seek
51:00 detectives & the mystery genre
53:00 horror as cautionary moral tales
54:00 gothic as corrupted quest romance
56:00 wrongs committed & those avoided
58:00 drug addiction & toxic relationships
1:00:00 the murder of Sir Danvers Carew
1:03:00 history of UK law enforcement
1:05:00 living double lives in the shadows
1:07:00 a vintage year for horror films
1:08:00 Jekyll’s laboratory/dissecting room
1:10:00 sensational tabloid entertainment
1:12:00 London as a diseased creature
1:13:00 analysing the signature of Satan
1:15:00 ironically bringing life out of death
1:17:00 hastening to Dr Jekyll’s abode
1:19:00 the beast crying out for medicine
1:21:00 discovering the body of Mr Hyde
1:22:00 looking at ourselves in the mirror
1:23:00 witnessing the dark transformation
1:26:00 Henry Jekyll’s full case statement
1:28:00 ‘man is not truly one, but truly two’
1:29:00 the Hammer Horror film adaptation
1:30:00 on the good-evil duality of man
1:31:00 when obsession becomes possession
1:32:00 aspiration & remorse vs base impulse
1:33:00 Jekyll & Hyde persona analysis
1:35:00 how evil lies dormant in all of us
1:37:00 chilling warning on drug addiction
1:39:00 pleasure as a trap leading to pain
1:41:00 Jekyll becomes trapped as Hyde
1:43:00 the ending of Stevenson’s story
1:44:00 takeaway from this terrifying tale
Resources:
Books & Readings: The edition I worked from for this discussion is the Penguin Classics paperback, but I also, as always, love the Everyman's Library editions when it comes to hardback. For audiobooks, Paapa Essiedu and Michael Kitchen have excellent narrations.
Radio Drama: Come the autumnal season, there are few things better than throwing on a spooky radio drama. And we're spoiled for choice when it comes to Jekyll and Hyde. I love this BBC adaptation from 2016 because the cast and production are absolutely superb. For a more classic production, there's this phenomenal CBS radio drama from the 1974 and there's also this production from 1954 starring Laurence Olivier.
Film Appreciation: Treat yourself to some terrifying film history from the vintage year of 1931 by watching Dr Jekyll. and Mr. Hyde directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring the award-winning Frederic March. If your thirst for classic horror cinema continues, throw on Frankenstein, directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, and Dracula, directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi, from the same year. For an excellent Hammer Horror adaptation that deserves a lot more love, The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960), directed by Terence Fisher, is an absolute delight. For more great Hammer Horror, check out The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), and The Mummy (1959) by the same director.
Music: Robert Louis Stevenson's iconic tale inspired not only a procession of film, television, and radio adaptations (and video games), but has also been brought to the stage in musical form too. You can watch a tremendous production of the musical version here and enjoy the soundtrack from the original Broadway cast recording here. I also love this production and how they show the transformation. And heavy metal fans might enjoy this song from Five Finger Death Punch.
Literature: Feeling insatiable for more gothic goodies from the nineteenth century? If you haven't already, you could read Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, or J. Meade Falkner's The Lost Stradivarius. Or treat yourself to a platter of short stories via Oxford World's Classics' Late Victorian Gothic Tales and Classic Horror Stories. If you want a great commentary and analysis on many works from the horror tradition, then Stephen King's Danse Macabre is marvellous. If you're in the mood for more Robert Louis Stevenson, the short story 'The Body Snatcher' and the children's works Treasure Island and Kidnapped are always great.
Our Next Great Read: This coming weekend we will be kicking off our discussion of Jane Austen's Emma with our introductory 'how to read' video.' We'll talk about our approach, the cultural and historical context, the themes of the novel, the life of the author, and how Austen revolutionised the novel form. You don't need to have read anything yet, but, if you're in the mood for some lightness and comedy after our gothic journey, do feel free to start working through the novel, meeting the characters, and appreciating the beginning of it. I'll be working from the Penguin Classics paperback edition. My lecture copy of this edition tragically fell into a river recently, which serves me right for trying to enjoy Austen outside in the autumn weather. For a hardback option, the Everyman's Library edition is superb.
Questions to ponder:
1) Do you ever feel split between Jekyll and Hyde? Do you believe everyone has a 'Hyde' figure lurking inside them?
2) Why has the mad scientist, or dodgy doctor, type captured our imaginations?
3) What is your greatest fear? And which works of horror speak most powerfully to it?
4) What did you make of the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?
Happy reading, everybody!
Comments
"The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn This has been my impression of this book since I first read Solzhenitsyn
Donald Knicely
2025-11-21 20:26:56 +0000 UTCI really enjoyed this quick read. I see it as a metaphor for drug addiction. I’m so glad that we have progressed in our thinking and treatment of addicts and alcoholics as not evil behavior, but most often a result of a traumatic childhood, including alcoholic parents, neglect, abuse of all kinds. The whole field of treatment of addiction has changed in the last twenty years with the acknowledgment of Complex PTSD or CPTSD, i.e. the chronic trauma of abuse and neglect over a child’s growing up. As a recovered alcoholic, I now understand why I did the things I did during my active drinking days and why I drank. Thank goodness the most progressive thinking (often not the way backwards fundamental religious thought is) is that I am not evil. I drank because it is a maladaptive coping mechanism to protect me from abusive parents and the trauma I experienced throughout my growing up years. Stevenson being in the throes of cocaine addiction explains a lot to me about this book.
Leigh Coop
2025-11-17 15:38:07 +0000 UTCI really enjoyed this read :) Stevenson is a favorite author-Treasure Island being my favorite novel when I was a child-and this has been my third reading of J&H. And it was wonderful again. Thanks for the great lecture as well. I continue to appreciate this novel more and more.
Josh LaMar, He-Him
2025-11-13 11:38:12 +0000 UTCThank you (once again) for adding several more layers of nuance to an already-engaging novel. Thinking about the good and evil within man made me think of Melville and Hawthorne and their explorations in Redburn and Scarlet Letter. Then I recalled Lord of the Flies. The more I return to the literary classics, the more I see connective threads—like a web really—and it is so rewarding for me. I’m thankful for Benjamin and this group of readers for providing a safe place to explore.
Teresa
2025-11-10 19:06:01 +0000 UTCI've found myself buying either “beautiful” volumes or “old” volumes of the books now that I have started with the club. This book I treated myself to a for this “beautiful” one really complemented the text as the illustrations were great. 1) I don't think many people have anything as odious as Hyde within them, but perhaps always a battle in the thing we are and the thing we might be when nobody is looking. I think of Hyde as a very extreme version of the drunk person that does or says something stupid. The drink doesn't make you magically do things, it simply disinhibits. 2) Science is something that, if recent years have taught us anything, not many people understand. Medicine might be magic. It's certainly alchemy. A doctor holds a lot of power in their hands, and a lot of knowledge in their mind. That power could be corrupting, and I think that's where the fascination comes from. 3) Being alone, I think. The best horror for me is that the real thing holding you back was your mind overall. Perhaps there was a safety being sought in that aloneness, because when you are alone nothing else can be a source of fear. Nothing can hurt but the memories of the things you ran from. 4) Despite knowing the story through popular culture, this was my first time actually reading it. I'm familiar with the streets that the story is set in, so it was very interesting to have such an immediate visual. I could put myself into Hyde's heavy steps through the West End and Soho. The area around St James Park at night is definitely somewhere you can imagine that change taking place as the buildings really haven't changed very much. It's an excellent morality story that even when we get what we think we want, be careful.
Dorothy Watson
2025-11-10 18:47:15 +0000 UTCCristabel is one of my very very favorites
Linda Falcone
2025-11-10 17:49:31 +0000 UTC1. I do think we all have animalistic impulses. And most of us don't let these impulses take over. And for most of us these impulses aren't that strong. It always surprises me that Hyde is violent, rather than promiscuous. While I'm reading it, I think Jekyll was seeking sexual freedom. I am not sure why and I do wonder what it says about me. In the end, we discover Hyde had violent impulses, the desire to harm others, kill them, not a desire for them. I had a difficult time making this fit with Jekyll's description that Hyde is life- loving. 2. I think there are three main human fears of civilized humans: fear of power ( vampires), fear of ignorance and mob mentality (zombies), and fear of the monster within us, our own wildness ( werewolves). Dodgy doctors and mad scientist are scary in the same way vampires are, in that it's a fear of power. Doctors and scientist know more than us. They have more access to knowledge, tools, medications. They have access to our bodies. So that's frightening. DJMH captured two of those fears, with the powerful doctor and the monster within. I think that's why the story is so frightening. 3. I'm afraid of Alzheimer's. I'm also terrified of the evil that lives inside us. I could never watch horror movies because I'm so horrified by the violence depicted, that someone has to imagine it, that the people who made the movie imagined it... And that means somehow that maybe I could imagine it, which means I could do horrible things too. And it's not farfetched when you think of all the real horror happening every day. Parents abusing their little children. Puppies and kittens... Prisoners of war. Torture. We don't have to go very deep to unearth our inner monster. It's right there on the surface. Even having written that will make me lose sleep tonight. 4. I like the story. The imagery of London really comes alive. The layers of stories within stories, the distance between us, the narrator, the characters and Jekyll, who we finally hear at the end, really reflects the theme of our own hidden layers. I thought it was clever. I kept trying to imagine what it must have been like to read the story without knowing it. I do so wish I could. It must have been such a reveal!
Serena J Cavanaugh
2025-11-10 04:57:12 +0000 UTCI like how you pointed out that Jekyll was no better than Hyde. Dr. Jekyll's pride in being able to control his passions and that he was "above" others in his ability to split his light/dark sides. Thank you for that observation, Maiu!
Paula Baker
2025-11-09 02:19:57 +0000 UTCOnce I learned about the addiction perspective of the book (I didn’t come to think about it before) - it completely changed the book for me and, sadly to say , somehow made it smaller - instead of global internal good and evil struggle it became all about addiction, and what drug brings out in you story… the craft is amazing though, London, streets, personalities - it is a masterpiece.
Svetlana Monroe
2025-11-08 17:33:27 +0000 UTCI enjoyed it more than I expected. I really really enjoyed it and I expected it to be story that might lose something for being too well known. It still managed to surprised me despite of knowing the end. It was so quick and effective in writing, it really hit a spot this dark and rainy autumn season. It has been a few days since I finished and my pleasure from reading it has not yet faded. It has made me wonder about the public and the private part of humans versus lighter and darker parts of people. I do wonder why it is so often depicted as evil side. My private part has more to do with being a sloth with a sweet tooth, which probably does make it hard to imagine others finding potential pleasure in violence (also, that would be just exhausting). Not that my version can not be bad, especially if there is more action and less ignoring needed in society. Still, Hyde feels extreme and yet human cruelty is nothing new , so also possible. I do think there is something incredible scary about known person, trusted person, publicly pleasant person turning around and being capable of murder. There is something really manipulative and terrifying in that, I think Stevenson played it out in the book really well. Now, do I believe Jekyll was any better than Hyde? I think he found himself to be above others in general in bravery to be Hyde, and in regret capable of deleting his sins with charity and good-doing and still feeling better than others around him. I also read the end as cowardly and more of an escape from judgement of any kind than anything else. Might see it differently some other time. Since I did not manage to get very far with Rebecca still (I do wonder what that says about me, that I just can not read that book xD) I am anxiously waiting to read Emma and hope it goes better with her.
Maiu
2025-11-08 09:07:04 +0000 UTCI believe we are all capable of all things both good and evil. It's not that we wouldn't do something it's just that we have been fortunate enough to not find ourselves in a position that requires it. I have been contemplating this read in terms of doing good or bad rather than being good or bad. I always wonder why I am drawn to doing more of the things that are bad (for me personally) than the good things. I think there needs to be a balance. I too feel that tension building when I have been working so hard on good habits and need to let off steam with a few bad habits. Very grateful my 'bad' habits involve some crisps and a bit of scrolling rather than murder!
NicoleA
2025-11-08 00:17:17 +0000 UTC
