The Strange Case of the Double Woman: Rewriting the Victorian Classic
The Strange Case of the Double Woman: Rewriting the Victorian Classic

Summary/Abstract: Analysing Nabokov’s analysis of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Andrew Jefford acknowledges the difficulty confronting anyone wishing to represent the story in an innovative way: it has acquired the status of modern myth to the extent that “the original all-important suspense device has been, paradoxically, utterly annihilated by the very fact of the narrative’s own success” (1983:50). Beginning his series of lectures on the book, Nabokov urged his audience: “Please completely forget, disremember, obliterate, unlearn, consign to oblivion any notion you may have had that Jekyll and Hyde is some kind of mystery story, a detective story, or a movie” (Jefford, 1983:51). The two contemporary novels inspired by Stevenson’s book, Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly (1990) and Emma Tennant’s Two Women of London (1989), require the reader to do the exact opposite: bear the original in mind and relate the modern versions to it. Although they rewrite Stevenson’s novella quite differently, they both rely on the reader’s knowledge of the hypotext. Any rewritten canonical text demands double reading, which results, as Anne Humpherys says, “in the satisfactions of recognition and a sense of special, even privileged knowledge” (2002:445).[…]

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