Mary Reilly (2003) is a novel influenced by a novel, a classic – Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde, a novella written in 1888. Everyone knows the story of Dr Henry
Jekyll, a London scientist experimenting, in secret, in his home laboratory,
and his ‘split personality’ Mr Edward Hyde. The original story is told by
lawyer Gabriel Utterson. One night a servant girl witnesses Hyde beating a man
to death with a cane. That servant girl was never named in Stevenson’s book.
Martin
takes this classic and writes about the household of Dr Jekyll from the servant
girl’s point of view – whom she calls Mary Reilly.
Mary
works tirelessly for her Master, Dr Jekyll, becoming his quiet confidante – not
in all aspects of the scientist’s life, but as a cleaner and messenger. She
sees a gentle, kind man who is good to her.
Mary
is young, she can read and write, and she has a quiet intelligence. But she
never really knows what goes on in her Master’s laboratory – “when I looked up
at Master, I saw his thoughts was already somewhere else, for he was gazing at
the door of his laboratory with a look almost of worry …” Then the Master said
that an assistant, Edward Hyde, would be visiting the household. The first time
Mary sees Mr Hyde, she writes in her journal, "He had his back to me … He
is very small, no taller than I. I saw he was well dressed, though plainly, and
… has a deal of dark, unruly hair which is longer than the fashion.” She senses
the evil in the house, “Something is amiss, though I do not know what.”
The
day she sees the Master in distress, she says “It was Master, but how changed.
His shoulders was stooped … he seemed all over smaller, thinner … his face …
was gaunt, unshaven; his colour was not healthy but sallow …”
On
Hyde’s death and Jekyll’s disappearance, Mary comes to the conclusion that “All
the time the truth was right before my eyes and especially that last night when
… I saw the change come upon his face … How can one man be two – one kind,
gentle, generous, the other with no care but his own pleasure and no pleasure
but the suffering of his fellows … now everyone would know – my gentle Master
and Edward Hyde was one and the same.”
In
the Afterword, the discovery of Mary Reilly’s journal is detailed and the
servant girl is thought to be stretching the truth. “It is difficult to credit Mary’s
own conclusion, that her beloved Dr Jekyll and his murderous assistant Edward
Hyde were one and the same person” and that “Mary’s diaries is now and always
was intended to be nothing less serious than a work of fiction.”
Martin’s
portrayal of Mary is resourceful and honest, quietly spoken, and curious. Always
dutiful, and while not naïve, she never strives to be anything ‘above her
status.’ The servant girl is a character of substance. I like Mary Reilly. Martin
has done a good job taking a familiar story and giving the audience another
view, while being scrupulously faithful to the original.
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