Embrace the Strange!

Or Go Weird or Go Home?

c. 1800s By Unknown author, published by the National Printing & Engraving Company, Chicago Modification

In fantastical tales, where normal expectations are upended, writers get a chance to offer strange and unsettling ideas and let the reader make their own interpretations. Sometimes it’s difficult to know who to have empathy for; the main protagonist, the titular character or someone else entirely?

One example of this is in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde the 1886 novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a story about an unpleasant looking, dangerous, and violent man called Mr Hyde, who is, unexpectedly, an associate of the respectable of Dr Jekyll, who in turn is a friend and client of the narrator, Mr Gabriel Utterson.

The story shows Utterson trying find out more about Mr Hyde and bring him to justice for his heinous crimes. But it soon becomes clear that Mr Hyde [spoiler alert if you haven’t read it!] is Dr Jekyll! The reader discovers that Jekyll has drunk a serum that allows him to be a completely different person from the one who has high moral public standards publicly. In this new version of himself as Mr Hyde, Jekyll can indulge in unstated vices (one can only assume violence and sex?) without fear of…