Why is Stevenson’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ still read today?

Jekyll and Hyde was a book I studied for my GCSE exams, and, at the time I wondered why the exam board chose a Victorian text about a man being able to transform into another man, as our text to study. Now, being older, I’m attempting to figure out why ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ is still being widely read today...

A typical Victorian literature trait particularly emphasized in the novel was religion vs science. Jekyll believes Lanyon’s science is held back by his religious beliefs. Jekyll then chooses science over religion, which would have been shocking for a Victorian audience, with religion still holding more power than science. This dilemma between religion and science is still present today, but unlike Victorian society, science seems to take priority over religion.

Perhaps one of the elements of Jekyll and Hyde that makes it ahead of its time is the possible reading of it to represent homosexuality. When Jekyll gets ill, his symptoms described are alike to syphilis, a disease at the time, common in gay men. There’s also a lack of female characters in the book, and none of the male characters has any major relationships with any female characters, possibly furthering the idea of the novel being about homosexuality. Perhaps the novel has homosexual undertones, defying Victorian society, that had that year passed a law in parliament banning homosexuality.

I now believe that Jekyll and Hyde is still studied because not only is it a widely famous novel, but it presents topics that are still controversial today, like religion vs science and homosexuality. Furthermore, it is still a horrifying concept of being so constrained by the world around, one willingly goes through great pain to find some kind of escape.