It uses the analogy of a cooked pancake with raspberries to represent a fully integrated human, where the “moral” and “immoral” parts are not artificially separated. The baking/cooking process can be seen as analogous to life experiences. Just as the cooking process chemically changes the food it has cooked and makes it a more unique and powerful substance, life can do the same thing to a human and parts of a human. As certain aspects of a human are more exposed to life, they grow more powerful and dominant in the individual.
Jekyll first seems to see himself more as a salad than a cooked pancake, meaning he sees himself as a collection of separate and distinct elements that can be picked apart. In the novella, this is seen as Jekyll discovers how to separate only one aspect of himself (the evil, immoral aspect). In reality, however, he is not picking apart elements of a salad but elements of a cooked pancake. He has learned how to pick apart a cooked raspberry from the pancake.
Jekyll seems to miss two things that have led him to think he was picking apart a salad instead of a raspberry pancake.
First, like the process of cooking, life transforms the ingredients that are exposed to life’s experiences. This exposure to life is what causes Hyde to grow in power and develop his own dominant personality. In my raspberry pancake, this would be analogous to separating the raspberry, possibly continuing to cook it, and then attempting to piece it back together. This piecing back together would not work as the raspberry has developed into something different that would take over the pancake. At a certain point, it will be impossible to put the two elements back together. This is what happens in the novella as Hyde eventually starts to take over completely as shown when Jekyll writes, “I was led to remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been to thr ow off the body of Jekyll, it had of late, gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side. All things therefore seemed to point to this: that I was slowly lo sing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse” (52-53).
Second, Jekyll, at first, does not seem to understand that there is beauty in the bad, the good, and all of the elements that make these two parts up existing and “baked” into one person as he is of the opinion that he would be better off and in less pain if these different elements were separated. Jekyll explains that he thought “it was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together—that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then, were they dissociated?” (47). As a result of this desire, Jekyll is able to successfully separate his “immoral” part at times (separating the raspberries). He also hypothesizes that “[o]thers will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard to guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens”(46), showing that he believes that eventually, others will figure out how to separate the rest of the parts (analogous to separating the cooked egg and cooked flour from the cooked pancake). In reality, and as Jekyll eventually seems to discover, humans are more like a cooked pancake where the ingredients are completely integrated to create a more complex, cohesive, and “better” whole—meaning that there is beauty in the integrated whole. This does not mean that it would not be possible to separate the different elements that make up an individual, but it does mean that you would be getting a completely different substance.
In the end, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde seems to suggest that the different parts of a human should be fully integrated and that the “bad” and “good” sides (along with all of the other potential denizens of a human) should be completely integrated. Jekyll writes that he “prefers the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping pulses and secret pleasures, that [Jekyll] had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde” (52), and so decides to suppress Hyde once and for all. This, the opposite of integrating Hyde into his persona, results in the ultimate death of Jekyll and Hyde. Like a raspberry pancake, humans seem to operate best when all parts are baked/cooked together instead of artificially separated. A human that is “baked” together by life experiences seems to make for the most complex version of a human. Jekyll’s desire to isolate the different parts within him can be seen as isolating the different ingredients when baking. What he importantly missed is that if one wants to be a whole integrated self, one needs to embrace and integrate the good along with what he perceives as the bad.
This creative project suggests that the fully integrated human, where all the individual parts are fully integrated, is a healthier, more fulfilling way to live one’s life.
I think this creative project has made the novella’s highlighting of the value and importance of not suppressing or attempting to isolate any one aspect of the self and the importance of self-integration to realize one’s true self clearer to me. It has also helped me think about some of the concepts in Jekyll and Hyde in terms of Jungian-type thinking. Jung would seem to agree with this “cooking analysis” in that Jekyll should not be trying to separate Hyde (possibly the Jungian Shadow) but should instead be trying to integrate him to create an individuated, more fulfilled, and whole individual (through the process of individuation).