Paper 1: Jekyll and Hyde Context and Themes Flashcards
Context: Class
In the 1800s Britain was a place of great change creating a strong divide between the upper class and working class
Context: Medical discoveries
science and medicine were becoming increasingly advanced at the time creating concern among society which lead to a common fear in Victorian society that something shocking or monsterous would destroy them. Stevenson opposes this claiming the monster in not a creation but from within.
- John Hunter (first transplant surgery)
Context: The development of psychoanalysis
Stevenson was believed to be obsessed with the idea of dream analysis, their meanings and relations to our subconscious selves
Context: Duality of man
Stevenson became increasingly interested with the duality of man, fascinated with stories of respectable men turning into savage criminals
e.g Deacon Broadie
Context: Doubling
Jekyll’s transformation of Hyde is generated by a fear of regression. Likewise London is split into two (upper vs lower (crime prevalent)) and Jekyll’s house is split into two (home and labotry)
Context: Darwinism
Stevenson creates references to evolution and devolution throughout the text
e.g “Troglodyte”
“ape-like fury”
“moving like a monkey”
Context: Binary opposition and Sigmund Freud
the belief that we are able to understand one concept by having an experience of its opposite
e.g we understand how Hyde is through the contrasting goodness of Jekyll
However Freud further contrasts this linking to Stevenson’s idea of duality of man through his Freudian Psychodynamic Concept - the notion that humans were neither exclusively good or bad.
Context
Jekyll and Hyde then is a book of its time. It was a time when
medicine was about to unveil the inner mysteries of human anatomy,
when psychoanalysis was about to unveil the inner mysteries of the
human mind and human sexuality and also a time when class and
political tensions were threatening the established status quo, the cosy
consensus that had existed for the upper classes for decades. To say
that the Victorians were neither ready nor equipped for all these
changes is an understatement. In this context, Jekyll and Hyde emerges
to shock, fascinate and hold a mirror up to the people who were
reading it
Stevenson’s Influences for writing the novel
- Nature of Edinburgh
- Fascination with duality of man
- Charles darwin’s theory of evolution
- The onset Industrial Revolution
- A renewed belief in prehistoric people
Key Criticism and Theory
- Dualism
-Theory of Doppelganger - Binary Oppositions
- Freudian Psychodynamic concepts
- Darwinism
-Gothic Elements - Doubling
- Atavism
- Pathetic fallacy
- Imagery
Dr Jekyll
“he began to go wrong, wrong in the mind” (Lanyon)
“weeping like a women or a lost soul”
“he is not one but two”
“blood ran cold”
“the large handsome face of Dr Jekyll grew pale to the lips and there came a blackness about his eyes”
“like some disconsolate prisoner”
“pale and shaken and half fainting”
“like a man restored for death”
“i let him go to the devil on his own”
Mr Hyde
“black, sneering coolness like Satan”
“the other snarled in a savage laugh”
“stamping his foot broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to earth”
“ape-like fury”
“a murderers autograph”
“like some damned juggernaut”
“pale and dwarfish”
“haunting sense of deformity”
Mr Utterson
“if he be Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr seek”
“God forgive us! God forgive us!”
“he had an approved tolerance for others”
“Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold scanty & embarrassed”
“somehow lovable”
“backward in sentiment”
Dr Lanyon
“he had his death warrant written upon his face”
“Lanyon declared himself a doomed man”
“my soul sickened at it… I must die”
“‘O God I screamed and O God’ again and again”
Key themes
Good vs Evil/Duality
Repression
Friendship
Science and Nature
Appearances and Reputation
Curiosity
Lies and Deceit/ Secrecy and Mystery
Violence
Religion
Fear and Horror
