Context

There are several important areas of wider context surrounding the novel which could be useful for students to think about:

Appearance and Criminology At the time, there were strong beliefs that your appearance was connected to your behaviour, psychology, and role in society. Victorians made links between class, morality and appearance – with maintaining a smart appearance key to being an upstanding member of society. Victorians believed that if you looked good, you were good. At the time, pseudo-scientists believed your physical appearance made your more likely or not to commit a crime. Cesare Lombroso, an Italian Criminologist, believed that people were “born criminal” and their character could be determined by their physical characteristics, a study known as physiognomy (not backed up by any scientific evidence). The descriptions of Mr Hyde in the story of being “deformed”, “disgusting” and “something wrong” connect to society’s beliefs at the time. Charles Darwin Darwin’s theory of Evolution, published in 1859, started to explore the idea that mankind evolved from other animals, and was not created by God. This was a very challenging idea for the religious Victorian society to accept, and Stevenson explores this uncertainty about nature of humans in the novel.

Sigmund Freud Although Freud’s work on the id, ego and superego came after Jekyll and Hyde, there are lots of similar ideas in Stevenson’s novel and the developments in psychology at the time. Freud argued that the id was our basic instinct which lies in our subconscious and seeks purely pleasure, the ego was the part of our personality that was rooted in reality and mediated and managed the id’s desires, using reason and rational thought. The superego was the voice of society, using morals and values to govern the id’s impulses. So it can easily be seen that there are connections between Jekyll and Hyde and Freud’s idea that each human has multiple elements to their mind. Hyde is the id to Jekyll, and the Gentlemen, representing the society, are the superego. Developments in Science As already mentioned, developments in biology (Darwin) and psychology (Freud) were all happening in the Victorian period. In addition, there were developments in chemistry and pharmacy, with more awareness of how drugs could treat medical conditions, with Stevenson draws on with Jekyll’s obsession with chemistry and potion making (known as pharmacology – how drugs act on the body). There were also developments in more pseudo-scientific areas, such as physiognomy mentioned above, and also graphology – the study of handwriting, which Stevenson also refers to with Utterson consulting his colleague about the note from Mr Hyde.