The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Bean

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Excerpt from chapter 1:

I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt stupider to be sure, but more carefree for it, happier in body. Within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered nonsense running in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, a daft and uncomprehending freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be less competent, tenfold less competent; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations.

“Bean,” said I, and knew it to be my name in this new identity birthed by chemical alteration of the mind. ‘Bean!’ I said again, exalting, and forthwith I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house. Coming to my room, I found the mirror and saw for the first time the appearance of Mr. Bean.

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The moronic side of my nature, to which I had now transferred control of body and form, was less robust and less developed than the wise which I had just deposed. Even as intelligence shone upon the countenance of the one, abject idiocy was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. And yet as I looked upon that goofy dimwit in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. Delighting, I (Bean) produced an absurd little dance before the looking-glass, strutting and thrusting while making faces at myself.

Excerpt from chapter 8:

…But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of Mr. Bean.[image error]

I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in a fugue of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll but awakened as Mr. Brean. How was this to be explained? I asked myself; and then, with another bound of terror–how was it to be remedied?[image error]

I began to reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. This other part of had lately been much exercised and nourished and it had seemed to me as though the body of Mr. Bean had grown stronger, conscious of a more generous tide of blood. I began to sense a danger. If this were much prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Bean become irrevocably mine. All things seemed to point to this; that I was slowly losing hold of my original and smarter self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and stupider…