Nineteenth-century novel, Year 10: respectability and fear in the 1880s, language, setting and symbols (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde option)

1886

HintIn the mid-1880s, during Queen Victoria's reign.

The whyIt was published in London and New York within days of each other in January 1886, and was an immediate success.

shilling shockers

HintA nickname made from the price and the effect.

The whyThe book was first sold in this form but became a best-seller, taken seriously by critics. The novella shows how a popular thriller can also ask serious questions.

That if people could evolve from apes, they could also slip back into something more ape-like and primitive

HintA fear of going backwards rather than forwards.

The whyThis fear was called devolution. Hyde is smaller, hairier and more bestial than Jekyll, and he acts with ape-like fury, so the book plays on this anxiety.

William (Deacon) Brodie

HintA cabinet-maker and council member.

The whyBrodie was a deacon by day and a thief by night. Stevenson had been interested in such double lives since his teens, long before he wrote the novella.

hypocrisy

HintTo pretend to be better than you are.

The whyThe book has been called a guide to the contrast between outward respectability and inward lust. Jekyll's need to look dignified is what drives him to create Hyde.

With a dream: he dreamt scenes of a voluntary change becoming involuntary

HintHe used a night-time vision.

The whyHe wrote it in days, and his wife thought it was an allegory. He burned his first draft and rewrote it in a different spirit.

It has neither bell nor knocker, and is blistered and stained

HintAn ordinary house needs something for visitors to use.

The whyThe door is described as sordid and neglected, with tramps and children using the steps. It sits in sharp contrast with the polished street around it.

It makes the bright, prosperous street stand out against its dingy neighbourhood, so the door seems more sinister

HintA single light surrounded by darkness.

The whyThe tidy shop fronts with shining brass contrast with the blistered door in the same street. Stevenson sets safe, orderly London against the hidden London of the door.

That Jekyll has a public, respectable face and a hidden, shameful one

HintThe same building shows two sides to the world.

The whyThe pattern of two faces is repeated in the story: the house, the man and the city. It is a symbol that the reader can use in an essay on duality.

Secrecy and confusion: the truth is hidden from view

HintThink about what it does to what you can see.

The whyThe fog covers the search for Hyde, which makes London seem like a place where anything can be hidden. The word pall also hints at death, since it can mean a cloth over a coffin.

That Hyde is like a cave-dweller: primitive, and less than a modern civilised man

HintA word for people who once lived in caves.

The whyIt is one of several words that connect Hyde with the animal and prehistoric. Utterson uses it half in jest, but it fits with the novel's fear of going backwards.