The Strange Case of Ms. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde: Two Women of London, A Rewriting

Aylin Atilla (Ege University, Izmir, Turkey)

Email: atillaaylin@yahoo.co.uk

 

ABSTRACT:

British writer Emma Tennant’s Two Women of London (1989) takes a well-known classical masterpiece; R.L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) as reference, and appropriates it to provide a critical revision. In her reworking, Tennant evaluates literary tradition both as source of inspiration and as a way to explore human nature with critical and revisionist eyes to acquire a voice of her own. In Tennant’s novel, Dr. Jekyll becomes the sophisticated Ms. Eliza Jekyll in a contemporary setting and time. Mrs. Hyde, on the other hand, is introduced as the discontented and degraded woman. Different from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s relation as the ego and the alter-ego in the original text, it is Mrs. Hyde in Two Women of London who finds that the combination of a tranquillizer can transform her into her idealized self-image: Ms. Jekyll. In her rewriting, Tennant intents to emphasize that Stevenson offers two versions of woman: the evil/the good or the degraded/the idealized. This paper aims to show that by feminizing Stevenson’s versions of female nature and personality, Tennant uncovers gendered prejudices and restrictions encoded within the original text, and provides an inclusive analysis of gaps between private and public personae of woman and of her inherent split self.