Don't Bring This Monster Into Your Marriage
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A good horror story is fundamentally a morality play; the protagonist crosses some kind of moral boundary and suffers consequences for it.
Dress it up as you will, all good horror is a variation on ‘If you don’t do as you’re told, the Bogeyman will get you.’
Of course, as adults we are unlikely to be moved by threat of the Bogeyman (which is unfortunate, as he’s probably hiding under your bed right now), but the horror genre can nevertheless often make vivid the consequences of sin in a way few other art forms can.
Since it is Halloween, let’s delve into a little bit of wholesome (and timely) fear courtesy of one of the finest of all horror films: 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Fredric March as the titular pair (a performance that earned him a richly deserved Academy Award: the first and for a long time the only such given to an actor in a horror film).
You all know the basic outline of the story: the brilliant, good Dr. Jekyll uses a chemical potion to transform himself in the evil Mr. Hyde, the embodiment of all his worst instincts and desires unfettered by even the smallest shred of conscience. Jekyll uses Hyde because, in that form, he can indulge in the pleasures that “a gentleman like me daren’t take advantage of.”
G.K. Chesterton perceptively pointed out that Jekyll and Hyde is not a story about how one man can be two, but how he cannot.
The whole point of the story is that Jekyll’s double-life, his attempt to contain and keep his sins, was doomed from the start. Because what Jekyll refuses to acknowledge, until it is too late, is that he and Hyde are the same person; what one does affects the other.
The film version adds a few interesting touches to drive this point home. In the first place, this Jekyll is young man engaged to the love of his life and frustrated by the extremely long engagement her interfering father has insisted upon. His fiancée, comforting him on the length of the engagement, pointedly asks “Don’t you love me enough to wait for a little while?” and though Jekyll promises he will be faithful, he soon breaks his promise by unleashing Hyde.
Another interesting element is the way Jekyll is so confident that he can ‘turn off’ Hyde whenever he wants.
Once he has no more need of Hyde, he confidently declares he’s done with his evil half for good. Only, it’s not that simple: Hyde is now too much a part of him, and he begins to transform even without the potion. Yet even so he still insists that he will be able to control in the future, refusing to confront the fact that he is Hyde now.
I think you can see the relevance to us in the Catholic dating world. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a vivid, frightening depiction of the effects of sin, more specifically sexual sin. We today, of course, do not need a special potion; we can unleash our Hydes simply by turning our browser on ‘incognito mode.’ Whether it is pornography or casual sex or anything else, we continually imagine that we can contain our sins; that they don’t really change who we are. Anyway, we can stop it any time we want. Like Jekyll, we’re deluding ourselves.
In the first place, it is impossible to isolate one area of our behavior from the rest: to commit evil in one area of our lives affects how we behave in the rest of our life. To turn to Chesterton again, “no man has ever maintained a level of evil; that road goes down and down.”
I am not merely talking about how addicts seek greater indulgences and higher highs, though that is part of it. An honest man with secret sin quickly ceases to be honest. The frustrations of an addiction turn a kind man selfish and irritable. And in any case there is a coarsening effect, making one more selfish and insensitive to others.
Habits change you, for better or for worse.
An evil habit affects how you live. It is vital to understand that these habits of thought do not go away simply because you get married. You cannot simply drop evil habits when they are no longer needed, any more than Jekyll could simply stop being Hyde. It takes a long and painful effort to remove these things from your soul, if they can be removed at all.
What this amounts to is this; we are often told that unchastity is ‘harmless,’ whether it involves pornography or other people. Or even that it is actually healthy. This is a lie, and a deadly one at that. The habit of unchastity will cling to you even after marriage unless you recognize it and cut it out beforehand.
Jekyll is ultimately destroyed by Hyde because he thought he could contain and keep his sins. We should take a lesson from his fate, lest we find when we marry that we have brought a monster with us.
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