Comparing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mary Reilly, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mary Reilly, and Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson's short novel, The Strange Case of

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has spawned many retellings of Dr. Jekyll's

tale, as well as variations on the theme. The Jekyll and Hyde conceit

is one that lends itself to many different forms of literature, such

as motion pictures and sequential art. Sometimes liberties are taken

in reinterpretations of Mr. Hyde from the original text. This can be

distinguished in two recent works, The League of Extraordinary

Gentlemen, a comic book miniseries by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill,

and Mary Reilly, a film by Stephen Frears.

The appearance of Mr. Hyde has always tended towards the

stereotypical hairy man. In fact, the transformation of Jekyll into

Hyde in movies seem like werewolf transformations. This comes from

the frequent mention of Hyde's hands as being "of a dusky pallor and

thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair" (82). Although Hyde's

face is never described as hairy, it tends to be a logical

assumption that if the hands are hairy, then the face may be as

well. Jekyll's own appearance is described by his lawyer, Utterson,

as being a "smooth-faced man of fifty" (44) and Hyde, for all

intents and purposes, is the opposite of Jekyll. The hairiness of

Hyde is maintained in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Hyde is

drawn as a dark brown man with coarse hair all over his arms and

chest, whereas Jekyll is a sm...

... middle of paper ...

...er features are in common. Robert Louis Stevenson, in writing The

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde touched upon an universal

theme that many others would return to in the years after

Stevenson's novel was published.

Return to Writing Stuff

WORKS CITED

Mary Reilly. Dir. Stephen Frears. Perf. Julia Roberts and John Malkovich.

Columbia/TriStar, 1996.

Moore, Alan, and Kevin O'Neill. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,

Vol. One. [reprints 1-6 and Bumper Compendiums] 2nd Print. La

Jolla, California: America's Best Comics, 2000.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Ed. Martin A. Danahay. Orchard Park: Broadview Literary Texts, 2000.

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