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A New Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Does Excellence require Extravagance?
When Robert Louis Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886, he was building on the revolutionary and fascinating ideas set forth in 1818 by Mary Shelley in her ground-breaking work Frankenstein. Where Shelley created a monster by stitching together random body parts, Stevenson took a different approach and decided to highlight the monster within. He helped popularize this concept of duality, especially as it related to the inner workings of a man or woman.
For those who don’t know the story or weren’t required to read it while in primary school, here is a short summary. Dr. Jekyll is for all intents and purposes a well-to-do middle-class citizen, admired and respected. One day, he is working on scientific experiments concerning personality, and he is affected. As a result, his inner “Mr. Hyde” is unleashed. While Dr. Jekyll is kind and gentle, Mr. Hyde is a murderer and a monster. Though the same man, these two personalities have stark contrasts in almost every way.
Since then, the phrase “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” has become synonymous not only with the story written by Stevenson but also for situations in which there is a sense of outward “good” and inward “turmoil” or vice versa.
