Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: context

Question 1

What is Victorian Hypocrisy according to Walter Houghton ?

Answer 1

• social rules in Victorian era extremely strict
• many suppressed their true tastes and beliefs in favour of propriety
• pretended to be better than they were (more pious/moral etc. despite high usage rate of absinthe, opium and prostitution)
• shut eyes to ugliness/unpleasantness and pretended it didn’t exist

Question 2

Why was there so much panic about crime in the 1850s/60s ?

Answer 2

• an MP was robbed (many upper class people were the victims of robbery)
• violence and sexual violence sold more newspapers so crimes were sensationalised
• ripper murders in Whitechapel
• domestic violence massively underreported and taken lightly
• due to the perceived increase in crime, Parliament instituted more brutal laws (flogging, hanging etc.)

Question 3

What is Cesare Lombroso’s theory of L’uomo Delinquente ?

Answer 3

• studied skulls of criminals to try and find a biological root to crime
• observed that there were atavistic (primitive or ape-like) qualities to their skulls
• posited that criminals were biologically less evolved and so more likely to act on their instincts and primitive desires to commit crime

Question 4

What is absinthe ?

Answer 4

• extremely strong alcohol
• caused hallucinations
• ‘cocaine’ of the 19th century, nicknamed the green fairy

Question 5

What is opium ?

Answer 5

• highly addictive drug with high usage rates
• easily bought and went hand in hand with criminal activity
• could shorten life and reduce symptoms of malaria, syphilis, gout and headaches

Question 6

What is the argument of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes ?

Answer 6

humans are inherently predisposed to disorder and violence, society has repressed some of this and made humans good

Question 7

What are the features of gothic texts ?

Answer 7

• preoccupation with darkness vs light
• supernatural
• invoking fear/shock/horror/revulsion
• enjoying savagery/violence
• pathetic fallacy
• Byronic (a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection) heroes
• exaggerated emotions
• ordered world threatened/overturned
• the sublime
• old buildings as the site of human decay

Question 8

What are the characteristics of the urban gothic ?

Answer 8

using the city as the site of horror etc.

Question 9

What aspects of duality are explored during the text ?

Answer 9

• duality of humans (persona vs desires)
• duality of humans (good vs evil)
• duality of London (poor vs rich)
• duality of London (criminals vs Victorian hypocrites)

Question 10

What is the theory of the persona ?

Answer 10

• persona = pretence of personality conforming to societal standards to make people like you
• hidden/repressed desires beneath that
• if desires are repressed too long, they begin to control one

Question 11

What areas of context apply to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ?

Answer 11

• Victorian Hypocrisy
• duality of man
• duality of London
• Cesare Lombroso’s theory of L’uomo Delinquente
• Leviathan/Hobbes’ ideas about the true nature of humans
• Christianity
• gothic archetypes
• sensational crime
• persona
• psychoanalytic theory
• feminism
• marxism