No wife's men

I have finally read Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde. I don't find the writing brilliant, as in the classics. In there, it seems like the sentences are unquestionable, formally neat and necessarily precious, the contents true and indisputable. On the contrary, the story by Stevenson is written in a form close to the writings of today's best-sellers: direct and catchy, like in a hurry, like any single sentence can be written in a thousand alternative ways.

Nevertheless, the tale is fascinating. If men are made of two natures, one good and another pure evil, it is a matter of time and probability that one of them will look at it and fell curious about it. And here Harry Jekill comes, with his purpose of separating one out of the other. I like the final detail when Jekill confess that it might not been the salt that operates the miracle, but certain impurity of it, not identified before, as Jekill did not acknowledge its importance initially. As his original supply of salt is running short, the doctor is in distress because he cannot find anymore that impurity and new cargoes of salt render no results. From this moment, the circumstance is unbearable and satanic, terrible and desperate: first, because of Edward Hyde's pushing and taking over, as Jekill nature is crumbling away; and, second, because he realizes that his incredible finding has been in fact fortuitous, over which he has no control whatsoever. He who wants to control Nature, finds himself outwitted by it, dismally lost.

I would last ten seconds after getting myself in this situation.

What fascinates me most, as I have already indicated some other time and partly the reason for this blog to exist, is the topic of duplicity in human nature ("the other side"). Stevenson addresses it just explicitly. Health and common individuals walk in life having both natures joined to each other, being education, social standards and such the main driving force to keep evil under control and caged. For men tend to evil, that's the point, is evidently corruptible. If you loose control, the indisputable entropy law of human nature says that you won't be better, but worse. On the other extreme, the man in madness shows a breach between both natures, which inexorable will grow larger and larger to the point of the vanishing of the good and the prevalence of evil.

The same topic of duplicity appears in The Picture of Dorian Grey.

The human tragedy of duplicity, played to the extreme, is resolved in both cases with the death of the doomed.

Even if we pay attention to details, context and interpretations, this topic of duplicity works for today! I can see many folks that follows the wrong way having one part fighting the other and falling apart, until nothing really matters and the kingdom of self-destruction is come.

I have been appealed by a common fact of the characters in this two nineteenth-century stories: the absence of the woman-wife figure. What sad people are they all, walking around life with their disputes about science, their social gatherings and their butlers in black and severe expressions! Satan is lurking amongst solitary, no wife's men.

Again, context and interpretations apart, the topic works for today, don't you think?

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