Who am I? Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? - A review on "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

I read the introduction of the story before going to the summary. It said that the novel was about scientific experimentations that could go wrong. Somewhere in my mind "Frankenstein" clicked, and I immediately got interested.

            The story rolled and I discovered that Mr. Hyde was nobody else than Dr. Jekyll himself with one exception only - Hyde was the sinister side of Jekyll. Jekyll had found a way of seperating his sinister and his wise parts, but he could take the shape of only one of them at a time. He used his sinister identity of Hyde to enjoy the life of a free man with no limitations and no barriers.

However, things started to get out of control when Jekyll ran out of the chemical supplies that would allow him to shift back and forth to Hyde. Also it was becoming seemigly more difficult to change back to Jekyll from Hyde, and seemingly easier to shift from Jekyll to Hyde. One day, after a long week of disappearance of Jekyll, Hyde is found dead in Jekyll's lab, wearing the latter's clothes.

I took my time to read the summary, as well as go through the themes to better understand the story. I must say that I found very much resemblance of this story with that of Frankenstein, as they both talk about the darker sides of science and how scientific experimentation may result in something horrible

I tried to read the text "politically", and came up with a few things. First, Enfield, while talking about Hyde, described him as ugly and displeasing, one who made him uneasy just by a look. His speech was directly quoted in the summary, and I could not help but notice the degree of hatred in the tone. Although first impression matters to us, I believe that we can not judge a person or start hating a person just on the basis of his outer self.

Second, when Utterson met Hyde, he immediately started hating the latter for his attitude and looks. And in many parts I have found that Hyde is repeatedly described as a short man with ugly features, as if being short and having a bad appearance is the element that a monster or a criminal must have; this in turn forces the image on our minds that being short is not approved by the society. I found this very offending.

Possibly the displeasing features about Hyde's looks was an important element in the representation of his character - and I might be thinking so as I have also been trained to think so - but I believe that this should not be the key of describing a character.

However, I really liked reading the summary of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and enjoyed every bit of it, specially the suspense that was created as the story proceeded.