down the laboratory stairs. That night she has
nightmares of her father beating her on a street corner.
Curious about the assistant, she sneaks down to the
lab while Jekyll is out and almost gets caught. Later,
sent with another message to the bordello, the madam
takes Mary up to Hyde’s room where she finds a pool of
blood and a dead rat. That night, during Mary’s
recurring nightmare of rats and beatings, Hyde invites
her to town with him. In her dream, she instead flees
to Jekyll’s lab hoping to find him but he’s not there.
Instead, she suddenly finds herself in bed with Hyde
who tries to rape her. She escorts Hyde to a
slaughterhouse where he proceeds to “operate”
doctor-style on hanging sides of bloody beef.
The next day, Mary sees the doctor and the madam
arguing, and then spies Hyde in the lab holding the
madam’s severed head. Later, Mary returns to the lab
only to be confronted by Hyde who smears her face
with his own blood. By now she has figured out that
Mr. Hyde is actually Dr. Jekyll, whom she loves — so
she is not afraid. Her lack of fear transforms Hyde into
a two-headed Jekyll and Hyde. The Hyde-head poisons
itself so that only Jekyll remains.Through its complicated symbolism, this film illustrates
how those parts of ourselves that lie trapped in our shadow bag
do not simply sit there. Over time they can regress toward very
undesirable feelings and possibly actions. If it takes us many
years to finally discover and open our shadow bags, we are
likely to find that the emotions we hid there have sadly become
quite hard to deal with. Sometimes, they will also be hostile to
being dragged out into the light. Every part of ourselves that
we do not love will become hostile to us.
Meanwhile, there is the danger that we may be projecting
these hidden emotions onto others. Borrowing another of Bly’s
metaphors, imagine that these rejected parts of ourselves have148 E-Motion Picture Magic