The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
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.
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
[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.
