Hysterical reality: Weimar Germany and the Victorian Gothic in Mattotti and Kramsky’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

ABSTRACT

In creating their graphic novel adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr HydeDr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: A Graphic Novel, Italian comics creators Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky transposed the narrative from Victorian London to Weimar Germany. Mattotti has called the book ‘a voyage into Expressionist culture’, in which he drew on the work of Expressionist painters to create the highly varied visual style for the piece. Mattotti uses visual techniques from Expressionist art and film to create a grotesque vision of Hyde whose appearance is constantly in flux, reflecting Stevenson’s ambiguous descriptions of Hyde and making the character more frightening and unpredictable. The graphic novel incorporates the history and culture surrounding the Weimar Republic, particularly national and personal trauma in the wake of the First World War and anxieties regarding the rise of Nazism. By situating their adaptation of Stevenson’s novella in Weimar Germany, Mattotti and Kramsky blend key characteristics of the Gothic and Expressionism and take them to new extremes, both visually and narratively. This article examines Mattotti and Kramsky’s use of Stevenson’s novella as a lens through which to comment on Weimar Germany.

KEYWORDS:

• Victorian Gothic
• expressionism
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• Lorenzo Mattotti
• Jerry Kramsky

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Chris Murray (University of Dundee) and Dr Barbara Mennel (University of Florida) for their guidance on this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Madeline B. Gangnes

Madeline B. Gangnes is a PhD student in English at the University of Florida and a graduate of the University of Dundee’s Master of Letters in Comics Studies programme. Her research focuses on the relationship between image-text works and other media. She is particularly interested in adaptations of literature, especially nineteenth-century British science fiction, as well as the visual culture surrounding nineteenth-century Britain more generally. She has also presented and published on film adaptations of manga.