No, Sir, That Thing In The Mask Was Never Dr. JekyllGod Knows What It Was, But It Was Never Dr. Jekyll.

“No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr. Jekyll—God knows what it was, but it was never Dr. Jekyll”.

This quote hit me like a ton of bricks on this read. The image of a masked “thing” moving about the room is chilling in itself, but also because. I mean. In a way it’s true. It was never Jekyll. “It”, what’s behind that door, was never the Henry Jekyll that Poole and Utterson knew because that person never existed, and it was never simply Edward Hyde either, it was literally a mask. A thing with a mask. Whether the mask was Jekyll or Hyde, it was a mask. The good doctor was a performance, and the eerie man from Soho was a physical alteration with a fake name… It was never Dr. Jekyll.

Honestly i don’t like it when people are like “oh Jekyll is the Good One” because the point is he IS. Complex. He struggles with his addiction with his anger and hatred and with so much shit. He represses stuff and he lies and he is so full of fear. He hurts himself in the most twisted ways he can think of. He believes he’s always being watched. He’s depressed and has an unspecified dissociative disorder that fucks over how he perceives his own humanity and the way he sees himself. He has good intentions, but misguided ones; and there’s arrogance at his core. He is mean, but he is nice, but he is cruel, but he is trying his best and LISTEN Jekyll has got so many layers and he admits that. He says that. So it also kills me when people are like “oh Jekyll is Evil” well. Yes but actually no but actually yes and you Know what? If you try to assign moral alignments to Strange Case characters then you didn’t read the book properly. You’ve missed the point. He deserves a slap in the face and a blanket. He has to get his shit together because if he doesn’t people die. Do you Understand.

For the original “doomed by the narrative’ couple because you can’t tell me they didn’t have something going on between them

Rouben Mamoulian: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

The feeling when you have just found out your theory of multiple personality is true, proven your scientific research by taking a drug that releases the evil side in yourself, felt great pride and joy in your work, laughed at your skeptics, and then your nosy servant interrupts and asks about strange noises.