Every once in a while, a new video essay or summary or analysis or critique comes out about some piece of media that no one's read but everyone loves to talk about, and it becomes everybody's go to understanding and interpretation of the work forever. This is annoying even when the video is accurate, because now you're having conversations with people about a thing that they've never read so when you reference details that the summary, however good, inevitably glossed over, you're now speaking two different languages. It's *especially* annoying, though, when the video is wrong.
Just under seven years ago, one such video was a summary of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Overly Sarcastic Productions.
Now, no shade to OSP, I love the channel. I've definitely had misreads, misinterpretations, or flawed analyses of works that I've read in the past. To be completely honest, there's a world where you can make an argument that Red didn't even misunderstand one of the main points behind Jekyll and Hyde, so much as she just presented it really poorly. Though I admit, I think the more likely case here is that Red just misinterpreted part of the novella.
Ok, so what am I even talking about? I am referring to a particular interpretation of the novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson that I had almost never seen before OSP's video, and which I now see in almost every discussion of the story ever, which is that Jekyll and Hyde are actually just the exact same person, the exact same mind, and that "Hyde" is nothing more than a physical disguise. That a particularly convincing mask and makeup would have the same affect, that the potion doesn't actually affect Jekyll's mind at all, and that the story is actually a telling of an evil man who pretended to be good, but who reveals his true nature as soon as he thought he could escape social consequence.
Now, some of this is close to being accurate. It is true that Jekyll and Hyde share continuity of consciousness and memory. It is true that Hyde is in many ways Jekyll, or at least of Jekyll. He's not just some random alternate evil personality that the potion magicked from nothing to ruin the poor innocent Dr. Jekyll's life. It is true that Jekyll is, in a real way, a not very good person who was only being kept in check by the pressures of society and his fear of consequences.
But it is also true that the potion, and specifically Jekyll's transformations, do change his mind and psyche. Jekyll-as-Jekyll and Jekyll-as-Hyde are psychologically distinct. Hyde is not merely a disguise, and the potion does more than shift around Jekyll's features. This is particularly true by the end of the novella.
Hyde is Jekyll, but specifically an isolated part of his psyche - all his evil brought to the fore. Or perhaps, more accurately, a version of himself where his evil desires are the dominant force in his brain, rather than the rational, as it is in his natural form. He describes his first transformation as thus:
There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil...
And while Jekyll-as-Jekyll and Jekyll-as-Hyde start out quite closely aligned, with Hyde being unique mostly just in his recklessness and lack of care for societal pressure, this becomes less and and less true as time goes on. If at the end of the novel you could change Jekyll's transformations so that, instead of changing into a completely different physical appearance, only Hyde's eye color changed, or even if he looked exactly the same as Jekyll, Hyde would *still* act radically different than Jekyll does, because he's psychologically much different. He's all of Jekyll's worst impulses and desires given free reign, without restraint. Not "As Hyde, Jekyll chooses to act without restraint because he believes he will be free of consequence" but because as Hyde, Jekyll is in a fundamentally much different state of mind and personality that does not care about inhibiting his urges or being good.
Hyde and Jekyll also begin to perceive themselves as distinct people, or at the very least as distinct personalities. This is why we have scenes like Hyde maliciously destroying all of Jekyll's stuff out of resentment for Jekyll. Jekyll/Hyde were locked in their room at this point, so it's not like public perception affects how Jekyll acts now that he looks different. The different transformations act differently because they are psychologically distinct identities. Jekyll-as-Jekyll doesn't want to destroy all his stuff, he realizes this experiment has failed, wants to erase Hyde, and wants his old life back. Hyde, meanwhile, wants to continue existing, and is lashing out like a caged beast, afraid and furious at the idea of being restrained, or worse, erased.
Hyde is Jekyll's own repressed nature physically separated and given independent embodiment. In a real sense, Hyde is an aspect of Jekyll's personality amplified (basically everything Hyde does, some part of Jekyll wanted to do anyway), but it's not just Jekyll wearing a mask. While still an imperfect analogy, Hyde is more akin to Jekyll's id put in the driver's seat detached from his ego or superego, rather than merely Jekyll wearing a mask. It's something closer to a bravery potion, honestly. You know how sometimes you want to do something you know you shouldn't, so you just decide to do it quickly so you're like "oh well, nothing I can do now, I'll just sit here and feel really bad about it" even though you still chose to do it? The potion is kind of like that. Jekyll takes it, goes out feeling freer than normal, indulges in all his evils, and then afterwards as Jekyll gets to feel all bad about it, yet nonetheless satisfied for having done it.
Yes, Jekyll is still a bad person (if you always secretly had urges to do evil stuff but felt to stifled by society to engage in them, the correct response is to simply not act on those urges, rather than concoct an elaborate potion that would allow you to get over yourself and do them anyway). It's still his urges and desires in Hyde, and he is the architect that made this situation where he-as-Hyde could engage in them. But it is still nonetheless true that Hyde is not simply Jekyll in disguise, and that especially by the end of the novel, Jekyll and Hyde are closer to two distinct identities that see the other as someone else and as an enemy, rather than simply one dude in two different trench coats.