Context
Respectability and the Victorian gentleman
Victorian society had strict rules about how a should behave: sober, hard-working, religious and in control of his feelings. Reputation was everything, and a scandal could ruin a man.
But many respectable men had secret lives, visiting the poorer, rougher parts of London for drink, gambling and sex. This is what Jekyll's double life exposes.
Stevenson grew up in Edinburgh in a strict religious family. As a young man he spent time in the city's seedier areas, and he knew the story of Deacon Brodie, a respected Edinburgh craftsman who was a burglar by night.
Key terms
Darwin and fears of degeneration
In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, arguing that living things evolve over time. Later he suggested that humans and apes share an ancestor.
Many Victorians were disturbed. If humans had evolved from animals, could they slip back? This fear of shaped how people saw criminals: as primitive, less evolved humans.
Stevenson draws on this fear. Hyde is ‘troglodytic’ (Chapter 2), small and hairy, and acts ‘with ape-like fury’ (Chapter 4). He is the beast that might be hiding in any civilised man.
Key terms
Science and religion
Victorian science was advancing fast, and it seemed to challenge religious belief. Some people feared that scientists were going too far, trying to understand or control what only God should.
Lanyon represents careful, traditional science. Jekyll's work goes beyond it, into ‘the mystic and the transcendental’ (Chapter 10). Like Victor Frankenstein, he tries to remake human nature, and creates a monster he cannot control.
The novel can be read as a warning about science without morality.
The urban Gothic
stories, popular since the 1700s, feature mystery, terror, the supernatural and monstrous figures, usually in castles or remote places.
Stevenson moves the Gothic to the city. Victorian London was the richest city in the world, but also full of poverty, crime and dark, foggy streets. The terror is not in a distant castle but next door, behind a respectable front.
Jekyll and Hyde is also a story of the double, a Gothic idea: a person haunted by a darker version of themselves.
Remember
Use context to explain meaning: link Hyde to Victorian fears about degeneration, not just to Darwin's dates.