550
SUSAN SONTAG
ever so slightly in his, Jekyll's, favor-it is conceivable that Utterson's
head might crack open, all his ideas spill out, and then Jekyll and not
Utterson would possess the secrets of the harmonious development of
humankind. But Jekyll is not sure he wants the responsibility of
having all that wisdom in his keeping. Look at the repulsively con–
tradictory, heathen creature it's made out of Utterson: someone both
taciturn and voluble, mercenary and ascetic, glib and wise, plebian
and princely, obscene and pure, indolent and energetic, cunning and
naive, snobbish and democratic, unfeeling and compassionate, im–
practical and shrewd, irritable and patient, capricious and reliable,
sickly and sturdy, young and old, empty and full, heavy as cement and
light as helium.
Utterson once said, "I am a human being without quotation
marks." Jekyll holds no such exalted view of himself. It's enough that
Jekyll has pilfered his new idea about Hyde; and, in back of that, in
case the first idea fails, another idea. About Hyde.
Jekyll is visiting his sister, who works at Rockefeller University,
with his first idea. It's to ask if she and her colleagues can devote
some of their spare time to developing a formula (to be ingested in a
pill, capsule, injection, suppository, or syrup) that would sack the very
fortress of identity. What he has in mind is a formula that would
enable him occasionally to become his young friend Hyde. Become
Hyde physically, he means. For Jekyll is willing-from time to time,
when he thinks it might be useful or stimulating, or simply when he
senses that he's languishing in a rut-actually to inhabit Hyde's runty,
light body. The prize is the increment in energy: the different species
of energy from his own which Hyde possesses. And he is willing, in the
friendliest, most brotherly spirit imaginable, provided that the length
of the exchange be settled in advance, to let Hyde have a loan of his
own intelligent, solid body. Nothing less than a real exchange would
be fair, though Jekyll doesn't intend to let Hyde put his hairy hands,
with nicotine-stained fingers and nails chewed down to their moons,
upon his own beloved wife.
Understandably, it is the scoundrel of some years ago whom he
wishes to become, Hyde of the prodigious crimes, Hyde before he was
rehabilitated or lost his nerve, Hyde before he was tamed by Utterson,
