I Just Saw A Post Saying That Stanford's "willingness To Let Stan Be Treated By Their Parents That Way"

I love how there were (and are -_- ) ppl who interpret(ed) Stanford’s eagerness to sacrifice himself as him just wanting to Play the Hero™ like lmfao of course, bc that’s what someone with a lot of pride who wants the glory of being a savoir would do, be ready to lay down their life for everyone around them (and I do mean everyone, even fucking total strangers) at any given moment. Where they wouldn’t be able to enjoy any of the glory. Bc they’d be fucking dead. Ok. He’s not death seeking or being reckless with his own wellbeing for any other reason whatsoever, I’m sure.

The cheval glass scene completes the mirror imagery in Jekyll and Hyde, with the third incident highlighting the cruel irony of Jekyll’s fate. The cheval glass, displaying the hellish glow of the fire while facing heavenward, mocks Jekyll’s statement that the potion is “neither diabolical nor divine.” The mirror appears both diabolical and divine in this moment; the potion, in being merely a chemical mixture and not a magical cure, is too exactly the opposite of the diabolic or divine—it has no power whatsoever over the self. Just as the mirror distorts the laboratory room, failing to accurately reflect Poole’s and Utterson’s images, so has the potion warped Jekyll’s reality, driving him to suicide. What Jekyll has mistaken to be a problem of industrial commodity standardization—an inconsistent batch of chemical salts—actually demonstrates, through his inability to divorce his addictive desires from his otherwise respectable identity, the self’s fundamentally unitary nature. Stevenson positions this basic human truth as the ironic tragedy of Jekyll and Hyde, using addiction to establish that despite discordant desires, on a fundamental level the self is inescapably unitary.

-Jessica Cook, The Unitary Self in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

This is something that only comes up briefly twice in the final statement, but it would be interesting to discuss what ideas everyone has about Jekyll's father and their relationship based on those lines.

The first mention of his father is when he has changed back into Jekyll after murdering Sir Danvers —

The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot. I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening.

The next reference is during his final days as Hyde engages in destructive behaviour, which Jekyll describes as if Hyde is a separate entity who hates and harms him —

His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin.

There's a lot of room for interpretation, as it's very little information to work off, but my personal reading is that Jekyll had a complicated relationship with his father where he loved and adored him as a child, but his father may also have played a role in his repression and perfectionism - the childhood moment is evoked both as a starting point of life in the context of the horrors and alongside memories of self-denial in adulthood - that led to his choosing to turn into Hyde and everything that followed; so when Hyde destroys the portrait, it's both Jekyll's unrestrained self lashing out at his dead father and a form of self-harm borne out of self-hatred perceived as Hyde hating Jekyll for resenting him.

(+ bonus fiddauthor & Fiddleford Is Canonically The 45th President In The GF Universe edition)

He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. 

This seems like so transparent a way for Jekyll to distance himself from his own crimes that it’s hardly worth remarking on… but it’s really interesting to note when he does it. Because it’s a cab ride. Not even the first cab ride as Hyde, when he reflects how lucky it was that Hyde’s death glare made the cabbie stop laughing because otherwise there might have been another murder done. Hell, even when he was describing the actual murder that was done! Hyde was still “I” for that!

No, the transition from first to third person comes when Hyde writes the letters, ordering Poole and begging Lanyon to get him the potion. That’s what Jekyll can’t help trying to distance himself from, flimsy and pitiful though the attempt is: not killing strangers, but what he did to Lanyon.

Seeing the tags "Ford Pines Is A Jerk" and "Bill Cipher Needs A Hug" in the same fic will never not be funny

The Death of Mr. Jekyll

Like a fine wine, I devour the poison, A lusty, sweet dance with the devil inside. No longer can I Hyde the voices within, They beckon like sirens to darkness, a beautiful song. Endless heartache leaves me nothing to gain, Until all that's left is blood on these sinner's hands. My death is imminent, I fear the beast within, I must shed this skin, this mask, like a diamond under pressure, To reveal my truest self, in all its glory. Goodbye, my former self, you will not be missed, Jekyll.

*Inspired by The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Copyright Notice: © 2024 Peyton Coonfield. All rights reserved. Creative Commons License Notice: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

***Vaguely Implied J&H spoilers***

->

Rather quaint

***Spoilers proper under cut***

I thought I'd made a post about this before but I can't find it on the old blog so maybe it never made it out of my brain?? Anyway Jekyll is so very normal about Utterson.

The repetition of "good" in the Ch 3 quote reads to me either as a genuine strong reaction to how loyal and willing Utterson's comment is about his certainty he can help. Akin to a "you're too good to me" type comment. But it also kind of comes off, as repetition often does, as the speaker convincing themselves of something or refusing to hear otherwise. That's not to say Jekyll doesn't believe Utterson is Good Tm; I think he probably does to an excessive degree, to the point of seeing him as a model of restraint, reliability, trustworthiness... A way of thinking that makes Utterson's dodgy, deceitful behaviour in Ch 2 all the more unsettling.

There's a sense of that fear of how people actually act behind your back, yet the weird desire to see it too, to be sure; Jekyll gets to see Utterson for the first time without Utterson knowing it's him, and Utterson stalks him and lies to his face. That wouldn't be dealt well with by anyone. It's especially wouldn't be dealt well with by a man who is notably just the worst at dealing with multiplicity. It's Utterson's deceit that is the final straw, because it's not only a personal betrayal but a threat to who Jekyll envsions Utterson to be, and thus what he represents.

In that state, the reminder of Utterson's Goodness, the attempt to continue upholding him as Oh So Good and slide anything counter to that off to the side - it's very comforting.

*in a confession booth* i enjoy making jekyll a pretty boy so i can watch him ruin his life and cry and scream and whither and be beautiful while doing it. i enjoy giving him features i find very attractive and distorting them whenever he transfers into hyde.

i enjoy his outer beauty meaning nothing in the face of the ugliness inside himself

I don't even hate Fiddlestan as a ship itself, but my opinion of it is definitely soured by the way fans of the ship treat Ford. Like, what the hell do you mean by "Stan would treat Fiddleford better," like no the fuck he would not??