Dr Jekyll comes to the conclusion that “man is not truly one, but truly two” he tried to separate the personalities so “upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing good things in which he found his pleasure,” so his original intention was to get rid of evil from the world. The reason he did not destroy Hyde was because he felt so free “like a school boy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea.”
In Victorian Times London was a drab, dreary place, except for the richer areas of town. “The street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest.” London as does all towns, villages and cities has different personalities from the weekdays, which would be busy, and the weekends would be quieter, and during the day and the night. At night the smog descends down onto the town all gas lamp lit, which provided little light and in the poorer areas the lamps were never lit, or broken. “The lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow.” This means that if you committed a crime it would be very easy to disappear back into the shadows, of the night. In the novel Stevenson brings the inanimate object of London to life giving it human characteristics “with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen.” Stevenson links the setting of Victorian London to the characters. Edward Hyde lives in Soho, whereas Dr Jekyll lives near Oxford Street, Soho being full of brothels and taverns. Oxford Street is a respectable middle upper class society where no misdeeds happened.
The Victorian society was meant to be perfect, as a model nation, for the other countries in the British Empire. Throughout the book there are lots of displays of hypocrisy where gentlemen such as Mr Utterson and Mr Enfield have urges, which they suppress. Mr Enfield’s urges are more apparent as he satisfies them during the night “I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’ clock.” Mr Enfield is very vague about where he has come from so it is suspected that it was from a place not entirely respectable. “Though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for 20 years.” This is an example of the way the Victorian gentlemen suppressed the desires that were frowned upon in society.
The Darker side of London is swept under the carpet by the richer London, and ignored as Dr Jekyll tries to suppress Mr Hyde. Stevenson is an outsider so he has no desire to keep it all hidden, so he openly writes about the back alleys of London, which no rich insider of London would do at the time.
Darwin released his theory of evolution around the same time the book came out, and the Victorians were appalled about the idea that we evolved from animals as in those days breeding was everything. Mr Hyde gives off a “strong feeling of deformity although I can’t specify the point”
Dr Jekyll contains Mr. Hyde and in consequence, when he breaks free he is much worse and he has to go straight out and do something terrible like the murder of Sir Danvers Carew. As the richer side of London is trying to contain the poorer side when it breaks free it does something awful like the Whitechapel murders.