'The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' is a novel written by Robert Stevenson. Written in 1885 it was predicated on a dream of Stevenson about the hypocrisy of the Victorian culture he was part of. However the key enthusiasm of the publication was in simple fact the type of the Victorian society itself. Due to the intensive empire reined by Queen Victoria, the Victorians got a very wide-ranging culture. This combined with incredible electric power possessed by the Victorian people, offered them a sense of superiority over-all other types of individuals. Due to this the Victorian people believed in order to exhibit and maintain their power they need to respond, in the eyes of their modern culture, like exemplar men and women.
Therefore this resulted in people trying to provide themselves differently to their true aspect. They tried their best to portray this image of a modern culture with great righteousness and wellbeing, just so they could influence themselves they were doing right in the sight of God, living perfect lives. However beneath this cover resided a sinful underworld, this other side of Victorian society would have been seen as appalling to most. There have been children being cured like slaves while people begged and starved on the pavements, theft and murder happened frequently and prostitution was rife. Both these sides of Victorian culture were portrayed by Stevenson in the novel.
To do that he created the individuals Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll presents the well respectable area of Victorian life; genuine and hard working. While Mr Hyde presents the evil aspect of Victorian life, the side ridden with offense and corruption. And simply as the Victorians were ashamed of its bad area that proceeded to go against their morals, Dr Jekyll is humiliated of Mr Hyde, so he will try to conceal him. The Victorian people had to live very constrict lives pursuing strict moral guidelines. However over time their needs would build up, anticipated to them not being able to express and release their true character, forcing people to live dual lives. This is witnessed in the novel; Dr Jekyll creates an alter ego to provide him a program release a his internal needs and thoughts. This business lead to widespread hypocrisy; people trained others to live good lives and always follow the ways of the bible; yet they would go out and live a life of sin themselves nowadays, drinking, struggling and playing. Stevenson was shocked by this hypocrisy which he found stick out in his modern culture. It appeared to Stevenson that a lot of Victorian people almost live two lives, changing between the two. They would live a life based on morals and good will by day, then convert to be bad and sinister by evening influenced by greed and the real human desire for bad. Furthermore I believe on overview of the book that it was Stevenson's view that good and wicked are not separate, they are put together and therefore people should try to live balanced life excepting its unity rather than trying to divided the two. Balance is required to prevail in the struggle of good and evil, and without balance there will always be need to unleash the other side. In which the urge release a this side increase until it's so excruciating that most would switch corrupt. That is shown in the novel as Dr Jekyll creates Mr Hyde so he can discharge his bad desires.
A sense of evil is also created in different ways during the book. For example Stevenson uses the environment to achieve an evil feelings; this is combined with pathetic fallacy to provide the reader a feeling of unease. For example Stevenson writes, "A fog rolled over the town in the small hours, " this creates a sense of unknown and bad because the reader links back to you the fog and darkness never to having the ability to see what's coming. Additionally the word 'small hours' means night time, this is associated with wicked because most wicked people have a tendency to be portrayed as dark mystical people. Concluding this theme of weather, Stevenson also uses storms to provide evil, "It was a wild, chilly, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back again as if the wind had tilted her, " this again forms unease with the audience, enhancing the progressive wicked sense in the book, supplying it a program to build up on. It can this by creating an image in the readers mind; they can not picture nice happy things occurring in this violent place. This creates further unease from then on during the book, whenever the elements is bad.
Furthermore the buildings in the novel also helps the setting up create an wicked theme. "A certain sinister block of creating thrust forwards its gable on the street" this price gives the reader a sense of unease; it makes the building audio strange and unnatural. This creates unease because things strange and different are often considered suspicious. There are also individual words in the above quote that induce an evil sense, firstly the term 'sinister', This expression is nearly always associated with bad things. Nevertheless the sense of bad is not just created by single words in these price, Stevenson also uses alliteration. A couple of two samples in the above quote, for they both have similar sounding syllables. Firstly 'certain' and 'sinister', both words make an 'sss' sound. This sound creates an evil sinister feeling, this is because it is the audio a snake makes, snakes are considered evil because in the bible a snake symbolizes the devil. Furthermore the rest of the word repeats the 'b' sound, a audio often associated with explosions. Stevenson increases further the sensation of explosiveness the reader has with, "thrust frontward its gable on the street". That sentence alone provides reader a mixture of feeling to the building.
However the building is shown as both good and bad. That is very symbolic; the nice represents Dr Jekyll and the bad Mr Hyde as they both live there. When Dr Jekyll enters the building he always gets into via leading, exactly like this his figure this side of the building is identified to be very reputable. However Mr Hyde always gets into the building via the trunk door, even without a description the reader has a dubious feeling. This is because the term 'back again' gives the impression that the door is almost concealed, it's the part that's not presented to people wanting to enter the building, and for that reason it seems unwelcoming. The entranceway, in which causes Dr Jekyll lab, is a bizarre building that passersby feel is suspicious making it a distressing place. It really is described to be always a very dark windowless building, this contrast with the glowing lively street it is part of, "he eyed the dingy, windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed around with a distaste. " The appearance of the building creates unease with the reader, especially combined with incomprehensible aspects it portrays, the audience is lead to trust inside there is something bad and sinister.
Characters are also provided in ways to affect the feelings we've towards that figure. This enables the audience to foresee the wicked in certain characters. For example Mr Hyde is firstly described as, "a face of a man without bowels of mercy" this enables the audience to instantly recognise him in a negative way as an wicked persona, Stevenson portrays him as an image of pure bad. He does indeed this by effectively using emotive terms. The word, "without bowels of mercy" creates a graphic of an wicked looking person with a personality to complement. This feeling that the audience has about Hyde is strengthened by the next phrases, "Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under ft. . " Now the reader has evidence of the personas evilness, rather than only a judgement predicated on their appearance. However Hyde could be looked at as a gentleman, because of the way he presents and dresses himself, but really under his shell is a man who can only just be described as pure bad. This further shows the hypocrisy of Victorian world. When performing this horrific sinful function Hyde is described as being 'ape-like', this advises his behaviour was primitive. A couple days before this book was written Edward Darwin printed his theory of evolution. The idea said that humans experienced evolved from apes. This was considered a despicable claim at that time, this being it travelled from the teachings of the bible. The Victorians thought it was ridiculous and an insult that that they had evidently descended from apes. Therefore I believe Hyde behaviour being referred to as 'ape-like' is again displaying the Victorian hypocritical ways as their behavior was as primitive as other cultures at that time. Conclusively the Victorians were considered extremely advanced and civilised because of their time frame. However Stevenson feels that these were no much better than the others they searched down on, they just placed on a false public front.
In bottom line the book uses these various techniques to present evil, these various techniques leave the reader with a solid hatred for the type of Mr Hyde. The techniques used by Stevenson were all quite different, however I believe they combine to tell a message he was hoping to provide across. He was striving showing even though evil is seen as being unsightly and despicable, we have to not make an effort to conceal it and hide it away; instead we need to try to create unity between the two. When the Victorians had done this and accepted that not everyone can be perfect perhaps they would not have lived such corrupt dual lives, where in fact the side they attempted to hide from world were of any pure evil dynamics.
