Introduction to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

            Robert Louis Stevenson, born in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland, was a sickly child. His father was a designer of lighthouses, and he wanted his only son to study engineering.  However, when Stevenson entered Edinburgh University, he chose to study literature.  After graduation Stevenson was forced to split his time between the French Riviera and southern England because the warmer climates helped his deteriorating health, now known to have been caused by tuberculosis. His travels in France led to his first book, An Inland Voyage (1878), the story of a canoe trip on the country’s many canals. While in France, he fell in love with Fanny Osbourne, a married American.

            In 1879, Stevenson undertook an extremely risky voyage to California, where Fanny was divorcing her husband. The dreadful transatlantic crossing to New York and the cross-country train trip to the West Coast nearly killed him. The strain was so hard on his health that when he reached California and finally married Fanny, he was barely able to stand. His doctor told Fanny that her new husband could live for only a few months.

            Fortunately, the doctor was wrong. The couple returned to Scotland. It was there that

Stevenson began to write his first great success, Treasure Island (1883), the thrilling story of a

swashbuckling pirate named Long John Silver.  The writer’s deteriorating health prompted the

couple to move to the south of France, where Stevenson completed A Child’s Garden of Verses

(1885). At his next home, in southern England, Stevenson wrote Kidnapped. Nonetheless, financial

worries were never far away. One night Stevenson had a nightmare so strange that he decided to use it as the basis for a novel. This novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), became one of Stevenson’s most popular creations and helped to ease his financial strain. 

            In 1888, an American publisher asked Stevenson to write a travel book about the South Pacific. The couple jumped at the chance to escape to the tropics. They chartered a yacht and sailed from San Francisco to the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, and Hawaii. The author’s health improved in the tropical sun, and in 1890 the Stevensons decided to settle in Samoa.

            On his estate in Samoa, Stevenson finished David Balfour (1893), a sequel to Kidnapped, as well as several books about nature and life in the South Seas. His descriptions of his exotic and romantic lifestyle captivated readers. During his years in Samoa, legends grew up about Stevenson that led to his reputation of being one of the most beloved storytellers of his time.  

            Stevenson died in Samoa on December 3, 1894, at the age of forty-four. At the time of his death, he was working with friends in Scotland to prepare an edition of his complete works.

Introduction to the Novel[2]

            Why has Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde touched so many readers so powerfully? One answer lies in

the spirit of the time in which it was written. At the end of the 1800s, Britain was experiencing a period of intense social, economic, and spiritual change, after many decades of confident growth and national self-fulfillment. Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde perfectly captured some readers’ fears that their carefully built society was hypocritical.

            Stevenson was aware of the new ideas about economics, science, and the workings of the mind.  To many readers, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was a symbolic representation of these threats to traditional British society. Political reforms had given many more men the right to vote, and the working classes were beginning to flex their political muscles. Karl Marx’s ideas about the struggle for power among the different social classes were becoming more influential. To some of Britain’s upper-class readers,  the character of Edward Hyde represented the increasing political power of the working class.

            Other readers saw in the novella echoes of Charles Darwin, who earlier in the century had challenged the long-held religious belief in God’s creation of the universe. Darwin had claimed that life-forms developed as a result of evolution, the extremely slow and gradual changes species underwent in response to their environments.  Gone was the certainty of the religious model of life. It was replaced by social Darwinism, a radical new conception of life as a struggle in which only the fittest survived. Some readers considered Hyde to be a model of the strong yet evil individual who would survive while Jekyll fell. Hyde was the natural man, free of the civilizing influences  of society and religion. Stevenson himself had received an extremely strict religious upbringing, which  emphasized sin and the punishments of hell. He seems to have reacted against this upbringing, and the conflict between religion and science probably interested him greatly.

            Still other readers found in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde a reflection of the new ideas about the workings of the human mind. A Viennese doctor named Sigmund Freud had begun the investigations

that would lead him to create psychoanalysis, a method of analyzing psychic phenomena and treating emotional disorders. Freud believed that human beings are powerfully influenced by impulses of which they are not aware and which are often expressed in dreams. To many readers, Hyde represented Dr. Jekyll’s subconscious desire to be freed from his society’s restrictions.

THE TIME AND PLACE

            The novella takes place in London in the 1880s. The settings include Jekyll’s fine home in a formerly grand neighborhood now in decay; Lanyon’s comfortable home in Cavendish Square, where

many distinguished doctors have their houses and offices; and Hyde’s house in Soho, a part of London known for its immigrant populations.

The Victorian Era

            Robert Louis Stevenson was born at the height of the Victorian Era, which stretched from the 1830s to the beginning of the 1900s. Britain’s Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 at the age of

eighteen and ruled until her death in 1901.  During her sixty-four-year reign, Great Britain was the world’s leading economic and military power and controlled a vast empire.

            Queen Victoria’s reign was a period of intense change in many arenas. Railroads and a postal system expanded to link almost every corner of the nation, making transportation and communication much faster. Medical and sanitary advances led to improvements in health. The government began to support schools financially. Political reforms allowed more people to participate in self-government. Industry grew rapidly, while agriculture became less important to the economy. Cities like London, Manchester, and Glasgow became densely populated as masses of people flocked to them in search of work.

            The prosperous decades between 1850 and 1870 were characterized by a general optimism and a sense of accomplishment. By the 1880s, however, pessimism and worry had begun to cloud the thoughts of many Victorians. With the increase in the urban population, poverty became a formidable problem.  The strength of Britain’s vast empire was challenged by difficult foreign wars. Workers  demanded more power, and women were entering the workforce in greater numbers. The changes in traditional society disturbed and frightened many Britons.

            It was at this historical juncture that Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. As you read, look for signs of a society undergoing major changes

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[1]  "Study Guide for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Glencoe Literature Library. McGraw Hill Education. Web. 1 Jan 2013. <http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/strangecase.html>.  p. 2.

[2] . "Study Guide for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Glencoe Literature Library. McGraw Hill Education. Web. 1 Jan 2013. <http://www.glencoe.com/sec/literature/litlibrary/strangecase.html>.  p. 3 – 4.