Jade Hannah
English lit.
“A Strange Case…” essay
Year 11/A7
‘Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’- Examine how Robert Louis Stevenson presents the theme of evil’
‘The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, written by Robert Louis Stevenson is a novel that explores the good and evil inside men. This is shown all the way through the book, Jekyll attempting to separate his evil side and unleash him to the world was the first act of evil. The struggle between good and evil is present in the novel, the good being shown in the form of well-respected Doctor Henry Jekyll and the evil being in the form of Edward Hyde. In this novel, Stevenson was trying to show that good and evil are not separate within us but are a combined part of us so instead of trying to split them we should except the unity and only then will we be able to make our good side prevail in the struggle of good and evil.
The historical context is very important in the novel. The whole ‘double existence’ was expected of men in Victorian England, though not quite in the literal sense. It was typical of middle class men in the 19th century to abandon there happy and more adventurous selves and put on a more sensible and repressed self. Jekyll had a desire to physically detach both parts; “man is not truly one, but truly two” this reference goes against what Victorians believed at the time of “a strange case…” publication. During this era the Victorians strongly believed that it was god who created the world and all things that come along with it, they were powerfully religious and were in opposition to anything that suggested otherwise. When Stevenson was nine years old Charles Darwin’ “origin of species” was published and there was a lot of conflict about what people really believed, people saw it as an attack on religion because the book made it impossible to consider that God created the world in seven days. His parents and his Nanny, both equally influential during his childhood, were strictly religious. They read the bible to him every night and encouraged him to lead a religious lifestyle. Throughout his life, Stevenson suffered from weak lungs. He was told that it was a punishment from God and that he had evil within him. People often avoided or judged him because of it. Many believed that science had become dangerous and was interrupting people from accepting that this was God’ doing. This is what Jekyll does in the novel.
