preview

Why did R. L. Stevenson write Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Jekyll and Hyde

Decent Essays

Why did R. L. Stevenson write Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Jekyll and Hyde is a strange but interesting story relating.

Why did R. L. Stevenson write Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

Jekyll and Hyde is a strange but interesting story relating to the study of the human mind, good verses evil and Victorian moral pressure. Robert Louis Stevenson was a large believer in religion; he also studied science, as his Father believed he would have something to fall back upon if his writing career failed. Therefore he saw things from a religious point of view and a scientific point of view. This echoed his belief that there was a good and bad side to every person, which in the story he experiments to separate the two.

In Robert Stevenson’s era, …show more content…

Hyde is described as an aggressive, ill-mannered, dull-looking man, where as Jekyll is described as some sort of a well dressed, respectable person, with an image like this in ones head it shows a side of good verses evil, and it makes it seem almost hypocritical.
This story is also a way for Stevenson to have a go at hypocroisy and those people are two faced.

There is a case of the human mind, “But it is more then ten years since Henry Jekyll became to fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in the mind; and though, of course, I continue to take an interest in him for old sake as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man.”

The word “devilish” also makes you think about good verses evil. There is also when Mr Utterson quotes “They have only differed on some point of science.”

Stevenson uses this as he understands the science in this nature and now it can reveal to tie in with the study of the human mind.

When Hyde and Jekyll realise they have to choose who out of the two shall remain a permanent person, this shows choosing between good and evil, and right and wrong. This shown by “All things therefore seem to point to this: that i was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.”

Jekyll began to enjoy the pleasures and adventures of Hyde, but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll. There was a difference seen between the two, “Jekyll had

Get Access