menuPaper: Two souls, competing in one breast
07 November, 2003
Ethical problems surrounding "the dark side of man"
in screen adaptions of Robert L. Stevenson’s
›The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde‹ (1886)*
England, 1887. A Sunday service to commemorate Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee. Suddenly the minister’s sermon is interrupted, first by giggles, then by talking and then by increasingly loud protests. The troublemaker works himself up into a rage, the congregation is horrified, the minister stops preaching. Several members of the congregation approach the troublemaker and force him outside. Dr. Jekyll, a physician sitting a few rows further forward, also leaves his seat and encounters the angry man in the church entrance. A policeman arrives to take the troublemaker away, believing him to be inebriated. Dr. Jekyll, however, asks for the man who has been behaving so strangely to be brought to the hospital where he works. The man has no explanation for his inappropriate behavior; his wife is completely horrified, never having seen her husband like that before. Dr. Jekyll is both irritated and fascinated: he has just witnessed how a previously unknown “dark” side can suddenly appear in and take over an unsuspecting citizen.
Dr. Jekyll observes the change in his patient. His theory is that every person has two sides to his nature and, according to the man’s wife, the dark, usually controlled side of this patient could have been ‘exposed’ as the result of a shock which the patient suffered during a hefty gas explosion. As a physician Jekyll wants to help the man, not least because he has long been working on a cure for this problem in his laboratory. After one visit to the patient, the Medical Director of the hospital rejects the proposal out of hand: “No, I cannot allow it, it’s a matter of ethics!” Apparently, so we must assume, Jekyll is planning an attempt to cure the man. He wants to test his drug and is indignant that he is not being given permission to do so. The other physicians are too cautious and hesitant for his taste. They should just let him try. “Don’t worry”, he said to his friend, the physician John, “the bull is leaving the China shop! (...) after all we Docs can’t experiment on human beings. Something might go wrong and then the humans will no longer believe in our medicine (...) and when I get the proof, ethics or no ethics...”Once he gets the proof, ethics won’t matter anymore. Once he is successful, nobody will care how he got there. Mrs. Higgings, the patient’s wife pleads with Jekyll to help her husband.
These are the opening scenes of Victor Fleming’s famous 1941 movie adaptation of ›Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde‹. We are all familiar with the story of the same name by Robert L. Stevenson who, as the author of ›Treasure Island‹, has often been wrongly classified as a writer of children’s books. After showing the first draft of his work to his wife, Stevenson burned the manuscript. He was then to take just three days to write the allegorical story which would become such a huge success. Even though few of them have read the actual story, many people are capable of summarizing it in three sentences like:
By taking a mysterious substance, physician Dr. Henry Jekyll is able to split his good side from his bad. As Mr. Edward Hyde he enjoys living out his bad side, increasingly surrendering himself to it. In the end it consumes him and he dies.
Stevenson managed to create a brilliant story addressing a core issue in Anglo-Saxon or even Western cultural history. There is no other explanation for the story’s renown or its having been filmed more than 80 times (King 1997). In 1941, the opening scenes described above were actually added by director Victor Fleming. The mentally ‘de-ranged’ troublemaker in the church service is not to be found in Stevenson’s original story from 1886, nor – as far as I am aware – in any of the later movie adaptations. And yet the dramaturgical aspect of this addition is familiar from earlier adaptations, addressing as it does the ethics and morality of scientists. Fleming wanted to present us a Dr. Jekyll full of humanity and moral integrity, driven by a need to help others in his development of an elixir which will split the soul. He does not do this for reasons of hubris, exaggerated self opinion or diabolical high spirits (let us remember: Jekyll was in church), but instead as a physician eager to help, with pure motives (at least at first). He wishes to reduce the suffering of his patient, and the ‘ethical doubters’ amongst his medical colleagues are presented as the real monsters, prolonging the suffering of the patient on the basis of their strict ethical codes.[1] They are also hindering progress in a matter which cannot be stopped anyway, so Dr. Jekyll believes. Jekyll is fiercely determined to ignore these moral obstacles for the good of his patient. In his laboratory he has already conducted experiments on small animals, with pioneering results.
From today’s point of view, Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory experiments on animals are definitely ethically suspect. Many of the animals die in the course of his research. And then success: he exposes the ‘dark’ side of a peaceful rabbit – the rabbit becomes aggressive and bites Jekyll’s hand (who rejoices at this painful sign of success). Next an evil, extremely aggressive rat becomes completely tame after taking the elixir. Now Jekyll tests the elixir on himself. The – ethically dubious – animal experiments and deaths gain dramaturgical import: they serve to show how Jekyll is putting himself in acute danger by experimenting on himself, at risk of dying like one of his animals. And yet he takes this risk out of concern for his patient, in order to test how dangerous and/or effective his drug is. Once again: hubris and exaggerated self opinion are not the primary motives here, but concern and responsibility. At this point it should be noted that ethically responsible actions and intended dramaturgical effect are frequently in conflict. Movies addressing (medical) ethical issues often sacrifice ethically appropriate measures for the sake of dramaturgy, as for example in scenes where patients are told they have cancer.[2]
The field of medicine is familiar with self-experimenting for research purposes. Émile Zola paid tribute to the procedure in ›Doctor Pascal‹ (1893), whilst one of the most famous examples from the real world remains the German surgeon Werner Forßmann, who introduced a cardiac catheter into his own body in 1931. The extent to which informed colleagues, superiors and the organisation (hospital) are responsible for preventing people from experimenting on themselves is still an ethical debate today.
Until the end of the 19th century, human experiments did not seem to pose any ethical problems in the medical field (Winau 1986, p. 102). And yet today, just a little over one hundred years later, it is far from sufficient for a physician to perform tests on himself to ascertain their outcome. Furthermore, not informing test persons about test procedures and the potential risks involved, and/or failing to gain their consent prior to tests amounts in many countries to a severe violation of legal and ethical principles.
And now Jekyll wants to help the patient with his elixir, hurries to the hospital, but is too late – encountering only his widow, who is partly relieved her husband has died since, as she tells Dr. Jekyll, “That wasn’t my Sam anymore!”. This abrupt ending enables the image of the good physician to remain preserved for now. We never find out whether Jekyll really would have tried out his experimental cure on the patient, whether basic ethical requirements would have been fulfilled (e.g. the issue of informed consent in a patient who might be unable to give his consent).
Ethical requirements for clinical trials (the testing of new therapies) were not first formulated in Germany as part of the Nuremberg Code in response to the horrific human experiments performed by Nazi physicians in the Third Reich, as is commonly thought, but before the National Socialists came to power in 1933, with astoundingly clear guidelines on human experiments being passed by the Imperial German Health Council as early as 1931 (!) (Reichsminister 1931; Koch 1993).
The representation of Dr. Jekyll as a philanthropist, sacrificing himself for the good of his patients, is also to be found in some earlier famous movie adaptations: In the American movie version from 1920, for example, Dr. Jekyll (Sheldon Lewis) is portrayed as a warm-hearted physician and a true angel to the poor and needy. The attention he pays them is always his uppermost priority, causing him to forget other appointments and appear at a social function two hours late, ‘as usual’. His patients’ needs are more important to him than his own private happiness: the Jekylls in the early movie adaptations are forever making their rich young ladyfriends/fiancées wait (for example because – in the 1931 movie – Dr. Jekyll (Frederic March) has to operate on a poor old woman first), are late for meals, prefer to spend time looking down a microscope than playing a promised game of golf with their fiancées. Science blurs their vision of love. Apologetically, Dr. Jekyll says to Berenice [1920]: "I am working on my theory that man has two natures – good and evil and that he can change not only his nature but his body as well". Berenice replies: "Henry, Henry, why do you distress yourself with such morbid thoughts – let God’s sunshine into your heart"
Whereas the reason for testing the elixir in the 1941 movie was the motive of medical help for psychiatric patients, in 1920 the erotic component of the story surfaced for the first time: two women, one pure and innocent like Dr. Jekyll, the other lascivious and cunning like Mr. Hyde. Many of the movies which followed retained this idea. Nearly all of the later movies address the male-female relationship.
At dinner [inserted captions]:"When the wine was in and the ladies were out" – the men waiting for Dr. Jekyll begin to talk freely. Dr. Jekyll is praised for his compassion and kindness and stunningly good looks. Berenice’s adoptive father looks almost wicked when he comments skeptically to those present: "No man could be as good as he looks". Jekyll appears and Carew, his fiancée Mili’s stepfather, practically seduces him with diabolical thoughts: "A man cannot destroy the savage in him by denying its impulses (...) With your youth, you should live – as I have lived. I have my memories. What will you have at my age?" Jekyll is entranced. He agrees to visit a seedy venue with the other men. When he sees a woman performing a totally wanton dance, Jekyll freezes. "For the first time in his life, Jekyll had wakenend to a sense of his baser nature". But he feels guilty. He tells the conservative physician Dr. Lanyon that he wants to separate the two souls into two bodies.
Lanyon: "But that’s sacrilege! Man would be both God and Devil."
Jekyll: "Think what it would mean! To yield to every evil impulse – yet leave the soul untouched!"
Fascinated by this idea and driven by science, he pursues the matter further.
The metamorphosis
What makes The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde so interesting as a movie adaptation for cinema has to be the metamorphosis. The first short silent movies focus on this process. It is exciting to follow the changes which occur in good-looking Dr. Jekyll when his evil, dark side is portrayed. In his story, Stevenson described Mr. Hyde’s physique as shorter in the body, with a curved spine, long fingers, hairy arms – in short, an ape-like creature (cf. Gerigk 1989). This says a lot about the separation of good and evil: “evil” is equivalent to our evolutionary roots in the animal kingdom. Darwin’s theory of evolution sent out massive shockwaves at the time, presented by Stevenson as a dark burden, here to stay: human beings and animals were not created as two separate entities; instead, human beings are capable of regressing to the animal level. A traumatic concept: however much civilisation and education may have concealed, underneath it all human beings remain malignant apes.
In the first 30 years, many movie adaptations adhered to this version of events:
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- 1912/3 (USA, Director: Lucius Henderson; Actor: James Cruze. Length: 10 minutes)
After taking the elixir, Dr. Jekyll can hardly breathe. He is thrown to the ground and undergoes a metamorphosis: long hair, long hands, bent-over gait. He then jumps around like an ape and grins diabolically.
- 1920 (USA, Director: J. Charles Hayden; Actor: Sheldon Lewis)
First the elixir seems to cause a bad headache. Then the metamorphosis begins to take effect: long hair, long hands, curved spine (loss of upright gait!), and once again: fiendish joy at this condition.
- 1920 (USA, Director: John S. Robertson; Actor: John Barrymoore)
During the metamorphosis Jekyll’s hair, hands and finger nails all grow. He walks like an ape and has an unshapely head.
- 1931/2 (Director: Rouben Mamoulian; Script: Samuel Hoffenstein and Percy Heath, Actors: Fredric March [Jekyll/Hyde], Miriam Hopkins [Ivy Pierson] )[3] This is one of the most famous movie adaptations of the book, partly because of the astonishing special effects used to portray the metamorphosis. The change is accompanied, for example, by a heartbeat which gets faster and faster until it becomes unbearable. Jekyll changes entirely into an ape (hairy face, wide nose, even fangs). Jekyll (Frederic March) disappears behind this mask and becomes totally unrecognisable. Jekyll has become something else. Hyde is as ugly as he is evil. After the metamorphosis he calls out: “FREE! Free at last!”. He steps outside. It is raining. Hyde takes off his hat and holds his face up to the rain like an ape in the rainforest (nature all around).
Others are later to describe Hyde thus: “He is a monster, a beast of a fellow”. From metamorphosis to metamorphosis this seems to become increasingly the case, and the ape-like attributes become more obvious. Hyde beats and even kills people with his (walking) stick (the stick being the first tool of the ape-men in evolutionary history).[4] After he has killed Ivy the prostitute he flees like an ape, swinging down the staircase and through the trees in the front garden. The change back again (before the eyes of Lanyon) is also accompanied by animal-like sounds.
To the same extent that Jekyll is prudish with his fiancée, Hyde is lustful with prostitutes. Only as Hyde can he act without scruples! Hyde is a sadist, “‘decadence’ in the flesh, harbinger of an imminent decline through anarchy” (Giesen 1983, p. 44). The religious dichotomy of good and evil has become the sociopolitical dichotomy of civilization and nature, of order and chaos! And so it is quite rightly a policeman (representing human law and order) who in 1931 shoots and kills Hyde. With death comes deliverance: Hyde’s ugly body changes back into Jekyll’s beautiful one.
- 1941 (Director: Victor Fleming; Screenplay: John Lee Mahin, Actors: Spencer Tracy [Jekyll/Hyde] Ingrid Bergman [Ivy, Jekyll’s mistress] Lana Turner [Bea Emery, Jekyll’s fiancée], Donald Crisp, Ian Hunter)
Fleming irritated his audience by breaking with the tradition of increasingly ape-like metamorphosis. Whereas in previous movie adaptations viewers were witness to an outward metamorphosis, which was to reach its peak as regards special effects in 1931, they now became party to an inward metamorphosis (also seen in the 1931 version, but now in the shape of an erotic fantasy and a psychedelic journey, a kind of Freudian LSD trip): Jekyll stands on his waggon, whips his two horses to make them go faster, and suddenly the white and black horses change into the two women between which he finds it impossible to choose: his chaste fiancée Bea and depraved, seductive Ivy. He whips the horses (women) wildly, and they speed along in a frenzy.
Very cleverly, Victor Fleming chose actresses to play the roles of the two women contrary to audience expectations: the chaste fiancée Bea Emery was played by 21-year old Lana Turner, wanton Ivy by 26-year old Ingrid Bergmann, who two years later was to achieve world fame in the movie Casablanca.
In the trailers for the movie at the time, no pictures depicting Spencer Tracy as Hyde were allowed. Even the posters only showed a dark shadow. Which made it all the more surprising that in this movie (compared with earlier adaptations) Hyde outwardly changes hardly at all. His face wears a constant expression of disinhibited sexuality and violence, and yet Dr. Jekyll (Spencer Tracy) can always be detected beneath it. He has not so much become an ape; the horror of his metamorphosis comes from within, from his gestures and habits. When he is changed, he is no longer conscious of evil (i.e. his conscience has disappeared).
Outlook: The new wild ones, goodbye to the apes
In the early 1970s, the interpretation of the ‘dark side’ of man as an ape-like existence gave way to a new idea: during Dr. Jekyll’s metamorphosis his hair and fingernails still grow, but this time he becomes – a woman. Charles King listed in his filmography the 1971 movie ›Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde‹ as the first of several films that would feature a male Jekyll changing into a female Hyde (UK 1971, Director: Roy Ward Baker; Actor: Ralph Bates (Jekyll), Martine Beswick (Hyde)).
In the 1995 movie ›Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde‹, Jekyll (Tim Daly) is totally without a conscience once he has changed sex and become Mrs. Hyde (Sean Young). His female persona is unscrupulously dedicated to professional success, prepared to use all her charms to get what she wants. She even tries to destroy Jekyll professionally, her very origins. Mrs. Hyde damages Jekyll wherever she can. Jekyll is a non-smoker, so Mrs. Hyde smokes. When Jekyll realises this he exclaims: “Dammit, she smokes, I can’t believe it, and she is using my lungs to do it!” (USA 1995, Director: David Price).
Now the female attributes of the man have become his ‘dark side’! That is what he is (or should be) afraid of nowadays.
Concluding comments and questions
- Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde deals with a fundamental issue underlying human existence: How are human emotion and will, instinctive drive and rational behavior to be evaluated? What role do environment, upbringing and culture play in reducing lustful and aggressive drives to a socially acceptable level?
- The movie adaptations over the past 90 years offer different explanations for the origins of Hyde’s behavior, each reflecting the moods prevalent at the time: social coercion, Puritanism, conventions, attitudes towards sexuality and violence. They also formulate theories needy of reflection about the causes of crime: e.g. suppressed physical urges lead to crime! (see 1931) The questions are: To what extent is Hyde mentally ill and (not) to be held responsible for his actions? How big is society’s share of the blame that Jekyll could or had to become Hyde?
- At the time the story was written, a parallel to reality was already being drawn: the anonymous serial killer Jack the Ripper also appeared to be one person with two faces (see Tropp 1990). By day an upstanding citizen, by night a sadistic murderer. On the one hand the physician Dr. Jekyll is a helper of mankind; on the other hand, as Mr. Hyde he is a terror for mankind. Especially the movie of 1941 raises a number of ethical questions: questions surrounding human experiments of Dr. Jekyll, experimental treatment of those unable to give their consent, the permissibility of animal experiments, of self experiments, of organizational ethics.
- The moral of these movies: at the end the scientist is always conscious of his violation. He begs for salvation but cannot attain it. Only death can bring deliverance. “Resocialization” is unthinkable with a violation of that nature, especially as the metamorphosis itself cannot be controlled and addictive behavior can be observed.
- The tragedy: In not one of the films – as far as I am aware - is the love of a woman strong enough to save scientist Dr. Jekyll! Albeit: Not one of these films portrays a healthy male-female relationship! They never meet on the same level, there is no real partnership. (This is also the case in the ultimate ›ape movie‹ King Kong.)
- All those who meet him are totally repulsed by Hyde. They describe him as a fiend, as not belonging to the human species: “He is a monster, a beast of a fellow!” (1931). Ivy: “He is not human, he is a beast!” (1941). And yet we are forced to acknowledge the truth that whatever Hyde might do, he is human.
Literature
Everson, William K. (1979) Klassiker des Horrorfilms. Edited by Joe Hembus. W. Goldmann, Munich.
Gerigk, Horst-Jürgen (1989) Der Mensch als Affe. In der deutschen, französischen, russischen, englischen und amerikanischen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Guido Pressler, Hürtgenwald.
Giesen, Rolf (1983) Der phantastische Film. Edition 8 1/2, Ebersberg.
King, Charles (1997) ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A Filmography’, in: Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. 25, pp. 9-20.
Koch, Hans-Georg (1993) ‚Rechtsfragen medizinischer Forschung am Menschen‘, in: Andrea Bubner (ed.), Die Grenzen der Medizin. Munich, pp. 224-242.
Reichsminister des Inneren (1931) ‚Richtlinien für neuartige Heilbehandlung und für die Vornahme wissenschaftlicher Versuche am Menschen‘, final Version of Feb. 28, 1931, in: Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke (eds.), Medizin ohne Menschlichkeit. Dokumente des Nürnberger Ärzteprozesses. (First published 1948), Frankfurt/M. 1978, pp. 270-272.
Schmidt, Kurt W. (2000) '"Herr Doktor, sagen Sie mir die Wahrheit..." - Zur Darstellung medizinethischer Konflikte im Film', in: Ethik in der Medizin, Vol. 12, pp. 139-153.
Schmidt, Kurt W. (1995) 'Systematische Übersicht zu den in der Debatte um den somatischen Gentransfer verwendeten Argumenten und Problemanzeigen.' in: Kurt Bayertz, Jörg Schmidtke and Hans-Ludwig Schreiber (eds.), Somatische Gentherapie. Medizinische, ethische und juristische Aspekte des Gentransfers in menschliche Körperzellen. Medizin-Ethik, Vol. 5, Gustav Fischer: Stuttgart/New York, pp. 169-231.
Stevenson, Robert L. [1886] ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, in: Jenni Calder (ed.), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and other stories. Penguin Books: London 1979, pp. 27-97.
Tropp, Martin (1990) Images of Fear. How Horror Stories Helped Shape Modern Culture (1818-1918). McFarland & Company: Jefferson, North Carolina.
Winau, Rolf (1986) ‚Vom kasuistischen Behandlungsversuch zum kontrollierten klinischen Versuch‘, in: Hanfried Helmchen and Rolf Winau (eds.), Versuche mit Menschen. Berlin/New York, pp. 83-107.
Zola, Émile, Doktor Pascal (first published: Paris 1893), Kindler, Munich 1977.
Dr. Kurt W. Schmidt
Center for Medical Ethics at the Markus-Hospital
Wilhelm-Epstein-Str. 2
D-60431 Frankfurt/M.
Germany
Phone: (+49) 69 - 9533 - 2555
Fax: (+49) 6171 – 91 24 23
E-mail: ZEMmarkus@aol.com
www.medizinethik-frankfurt.de
* Translated by Sarah L. Kirkby (B.A. Hons.)
[1] The accusation that ethics committees and ‘hardliners’ dangerously postpone potentially successful cures and are thus partly responsible for the suffering or even death of patients is one which has been voiced throughout medical history, the debate about the most responsible time to begin gene therapy experiments being just one of many good examples: “The only people in jeopardy were the cancer victims who died during the 2h of ongoing debate” (see Schmidt 1995, p. 195)
[2] In LOVE STORY the physician informs the husband without first gaining the consent of the afflicted patient herself, this being the only way to convey dramaturgically how lonely the husband feels in his suffering (cf. Schmidt 2000).
[3] Fredric March won the Academy Award for best actor, and for many this is the best film adaptation of all time. The film begins with subjective camerawork in the first person (the viewer himself (!) is Dr. Jekyll). It was film company Paramount’s answer to Universal Studios’ successful adaptation of ›Frankenstein‹ in 1931.
[4] At the beginning he does walk more like a person, though. Criticism was voiced for the fact that Hyde had been given mannerisms which cinema at the time favored for Afro-Americans and Orientals.
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