With the way that the Jekyll and Hyde archetype has permeated our pop culture, it’s been so interesting to see how the original story differs from its cultural treatment and perception. From what I originally gathered, I thought that Jekyll and Hyde was an extremely dated, unfavourable depiction of DID, but it’s really not - Jekyll has full control over when he becomes Hyde, at least initially, and it’s not like he blacks out and comes back with no memory of being Hyde or what he’s done. He’s in full control, he just has no reason to act on his inhibitions. I think Oscar Wilde said it best when he wrote “Give a man a mask and he will reveal his true self.”

But there is one reading that’s played on my mind - the theory that Jekyll’s unspecified “vices” and “urges” related to him being homo- or bisexual at a time where that was abhorred and illegal - hell, it was literally criminalised the year before Jekyll and Hyde was published.

Now, I know it wasn’t the only thing made illegal in the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act - most of the other things included the suppression of brothels and other similar things. But now I can’t help but wonder if Stevenson wrote Jekyll and Hyde as something of a cautionary tale against a society that celebrates the complete suppression of primal urges (this was the same time that covered piano legs as well as womens’ legs). Going back to Oscar Wilde, it lines up well with The Picture of Dorian Gray, and how corruption comes from concealing and repressing one’s true self.

But onto my theory. While it’s never specified exactly what Mr Hyde got up to, I find more meaning in what Jekyll DOESN’T say - namely, that his nightly escapades were too shameful to mention even on his kind-of metaphorical deathbed. At this point, both the reader and the characters know he’s a murderer, so I don’t know what he has to hide that would make things any worse - but homosexuality might just fit that bill.

Moreover, I find it interesting that the original story never gives Jekyll a wife or female companion, even in passing - you’d think that a well-respected doctor in his fifties would have women falling over themselves for him, and that a man as concerned with his image as Dr Jekyll would settle down and marry if only for appearances’ sake - unless he could never bring himself to be with a woman. Hell, even in a lot of adaptations that do give him a love interest of sorts, a lot of the time it’s an arranged marriage, not one borne of attraction (though I could be remembering that wrong).

Also, I know that Utterson and Lanyon are never mentioned as having wives or girlfriends either, but maybe all three of them were in a gay polycule during their university days before criminal amendment act, who knows?

I know that Jekyll and Hyde has been adapted to death but I’d really love to see an adaptation that at least plays with this reading of the story - I think it could be great if it’s executed well, play it more like a tragedy that never really had to happen and probably wouldn’t have happened if Jekyll had been born 100 years later.