Victorian Society and Gentlemen

VICTORIAN SOCIETY

The Victorian era, named for Queen Victoria, who ruled England for most of the nineteenth century, was a time of huge technological progress. By the end of the century, however, many people were beginning to call into question the value placed on progress and civilization that had been so important in the era.

The class system was still very much in place and this influenced behaviour at this time. Men and women were expected to act within strict boundaries and were looked down upon if then did not conform. See ‘Victorian Gentleman’ for a development of this idea.

Jekyll and Hyde also links to the Victorian fascination with the less developed savage cultures that they saw around the world. They saw these as completely alien to their own society and therefore they were terrified but also intrigued by them. Hyde represents this terrifying ‘other’.

 

THE VICTORIAN GENTLEMAN

The idea of the Victorian Gentleman was not one that was just about social class. There was also a moral aspect that a person had to have to be considered a gentleman. These ideas were based upon the chivalry that knights had to show to others many years previously.

Reputation played a large role in this. You had to behave in a certain way to be seen as a gentleman and the rules that society had were non-negotiable. If you broke the rules then you were exiled from society. Jekyll felt so repressed by this idea in society that he had to become Hyde in order to feel like he could escape them.

Colons and semi-colons

A QUICK GUIDE TO USING THE COLON

A colon is made up of two dots, one placed above the other.

One common use of the colon is to introduce a list of items. For example:

To make the perfect jam sandwich you need three things: some bread, butter, and strawberry jam.

Three items are listed in the sentence above. The first part of the sentence informs the reader that there will be three things; then the colon tells the reader “here are the three items”.

A colon can also be used to introduce a definition, statement or explanation of something. For example:

I know how I’m going to handle this: I’m going to hide!

Penguin (noun): an aquatic, flightless bird found almost exclusively in the Antarctic.

 

A QUICK GUIDE TO USING THE SEMICOLON

A semicolon is made up of a comma with a dot above it.

The most common use of the semicolon is to join together two clauses that could each be separate sentences — creating a longer sentence. For example:

John calls it football; Sam calls it soccer.

This could be written as two sentences without the semicolon; however, the relationship between the two clauses is made more clear through the use of a semicolon. The semicolon is often used to make the reader think about the relationship between the two clauses.

The semicolon is also commonly used to join two clauses, changing the sentence in combination with words like ‘therefore’, ‘however’ or ‘on the other hand’. The examples below illustrate this approach:

Sian is Welsh; however, she lives in Canada.

He likes to play video games; in addition, he likes to read classical literature.

You should stop drinking too much alcohol; otherwise, you’re going to get into trouble.

Hundreds of people came to the party; therefore, it was not possible to say hello to everyone individually.

 

 

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – time line for Edward Hyde

TIME LINE FOR MR HYDE

• This is based on Dr. Jekyll’s final account.
• At some unknown point in time, Mr. Hyde comes to life when Dr. Jekyll drinks a special potion.
• For a time, Mr. Hyde comes to life whenever Dr. Jekyll doesn’t feel like being respectable.
• Mr. Hyde participates in “undignified” pleasures that soon turned to the “monstrous.”
• Then he tramples a child, witnessed by Mr. Enfield.
• He writes a cheque in Dr. Jekyll’s name, then opens a bank account for himself—the signature is merely Dr. Jekyll’s handwriting, sloped backwards.
• Two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, Dr. Jekyll goes to bed and then awakes as Mr. Hyde.
• Dr. Jekyll notes that Mr. Hyde’s body has been growing larger, as if from “a more generous tide of blood.” He is also more strong-willed.
• For two months, Dr. Jekyll refrains from drinking the potion, and Mr. Hyde remains hidden.
• In a moment of “moral weakness,” Dr. Jekyll drinks the potion and Mr. Hyde emerges stronger than ever. The beast is out of the cage.
• When a passerby stops him, Mr. Hyde beats the man to death.
• Dr. Jekyll resolves to lay Mr. Hyde to rest forever, but commits some sin that “tips the balance of his soul” toward evil.
• Mr. Hyde takes control of Dr. Jekyll’s body in Regent’s Park one day.
• Away from his potions and a wanted man for murder, Mr. Hyde runs into a hotel and stays there after penning messages to Dr. Jekyll’s friend (Dr. Lanyon) and Dr. Jekyll’s butler, delivering a complex series of instructions.
• Mr. Hyde goes to Dr. Lanyon’s house to get the potion.
• Warning Dr. Lanyon that he is about to see something extraordinary, Mr. Hyde drinks the potion and transforms into Dr. Jekyll.
• The next morning, Dr. Jekyll is relieved and walking in his courtyard, on his way to the laboratory, when he again transforms into Mr. Hyde.
• It takes a double dose to recall Dr. Jekyll.
• Six hours later, Mr. Hyde again takes over.
• From that point on, Mr. Hyde is the dominant personality, and Dr. Jekyll struggles helplessly to assert himself.
• At this point Dr. Jekyll realizes that Mr. Hyde is afraid of death and that only fear of the gallows allows Dr. Jekyll to resume his identity.
• However, because Dr. Jekyll really dislikes Mr. Hyde at this point, Mr. Hyde begins to really hate Dr. Jekyll.
• Mr. Hyde plays lots of tricks on Dr. Jekyll, like defacing his favourite books and burning his letters.
• But since Mr. Hyde is afraid to die, he fears that Dr. Jekyll will simply commit suicide. Because of this, Dr. Jekyll pities Mr. Hyde.
• Because Dr. Jekyll runs out of potion, Mr. Hyde is given full rein.
• Mr. Hyde eventually kills himself, and is found (dead) by Mr. Utterson and Poole.

 

 

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – character of Edward Hyde

Stevenson portrays Edward Hyde as an inhuman creature with mere instincts and no human emotions or similarities. ‘Mr Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation’, is the description of Mr Hyde from Mr Utterson. He says that Mr Hyde looks deformed which implies that he is not very healthy or normal. He was also described as ‘pale’ which also suggests him being ill or unfit.

‘Not all these together could explain the hither to unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr Utterson regarded him ‘, and, ‘If I ever read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend’, are both Mr Utterson’s impressions of Mr Hyde. He does not even know him and he is already repulsed by him by his mere appearance and manner although he cannot find an actual feature which causes this hate.

In the opening chapter, Mr Utterson’s distant relative, Mr Enfield tells him about a recent event with Mr Hyde, where he ‘trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground’. The paradox ‘trampled calmly’ stands out to the reader as trampling usually includes wild and aggressive manner, however Mr Hyde tramples calmly which suggests that he is not particularly caring or emotional. When Mr Hyde is then captured and brought back to the scene of the little girl and a crowd of people, Mr Enfield describes him as being ‘frightened too, I could see that-but carrying it off sir, really like Satan’.

Using intelligent and tactical word choices Stevenson is able to give Hyde an unnameable edge of dislike making him a key character in the novel. Stevenson never gives a clear physical description of what Hyde looks like but the reader still knows he is detestable and displeasing making the character very significant.

Hyde is described as having something ‘wrong with his appearance’. By using the adjective ‘wrong’ it makes the reader question how can somebody look wrong? This traps the reader in a difficult situation of trying to deduce what a ‘wrong’ person could look like making them us their imagination. This is significant because Hyde has not been given an exact physical appearance but the reader already views him as unlikeable.

Stevenson later portrays Hyde as an ‘extraordinary-looking man’. This intrigues the reader because they have already established Hyde with negative associations but by using the adjective ‘extraordinary’ Stevenson confuses the reader slightly because usually this word means new and amazing things. By using this adjective to describe a disliked character it emphasises how ‘extraordinarily’ disgusting he is.

The way in which Hyde acts also gives some insight of his personality, Stevenson writes Hyde ‘snarled aloud into a savage laugh’. The verb ‘snarled’ implies animal like behaviour and the adjective ‘savage’ gives the effect of an uneducated caveman-like person making Hyde appear like a unlikeable person who does not fit into society. The way in which Hyde acts is the complete opposite of what was expected, so making his character stand out.

Hyde is also portrayed by Stevenson as ‘pale and dwarfish’ this links into the idea of the proper Victorian society because people who were different in any form were often disregarded and viewed as less worthy which Hyde often is.

Mr. Hyde is Dr. Jekyll’s evil alter ego who indulges in various undisclosed vices. He’s smaller, younger, more energetic, and just basically a malevolent, villainous guy. He’s frequently compared to a monkey or an ape, suggesting a certain inhumanity or bestiality. And although no one can really pinpoint a particular deformity, they all agree that he has one—one that makes him a twisted, dark man who manages to inspire fear, disgust, and loathing even from afar. He is also described repeatedly as “timid yet bold.”

He indulges in many undisclosed pleasures, but the main characteristic we see is that of violence. Based on the crimes we see, his predilection for violence isn’t like a gang member’s because he doesn’t hold any affiliations or have any conception of honour and respect. Nor is he really like a schoolyard bully because he’s not particularly bigger or stronger than the people he beats up—not to mention that he doesn’t do it in front of crowds or to make himself look good. No, he simply likes beating people up. He feels pleasure when he engages in violence.

“He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that 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 foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted. “

Mr. Hyde’s name is also significant, as he is both a persona that Dr. Jekyll hides behind and a hidden man:

“Mr. Hyde had numbered few familiars—even the master of the servant maid had only seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders.”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Mr. Hyde to discuss is his death. We aren’t really sure at the end how Mr. Hyde died. Well, suicide, you say—but who committed the suicide? We know that Hyde is afraid of death (and probably the Hell that, according to Victorian England, awaits him) and that the threat of suicide is Jekyll’s only weapon against him. So one would think Jekyll somehow killed himself and Hyde right after writing his confession. That’s the easy explanation.

Jekyll did say that Hyde was taking over and growing stronger. If the last thing Jekyll was able to pull off was writing his last “document,” then it sounds like Hyde took over before the death occurred. So did Hyde kill himself? And does that mean he killed Jekyll? You could say that Jekyll was already dead by that time, and that Hyde had taken over completely. After all, it is Hyde’s dead body that we see, not Jekyll’s.

However you could also argue that it’s irrelevant to ask who killed himself, or who killed whom, because at the end of the day, Hyde and Jekyll aren’t separate entities. They share the same body and the same memory. You could even go so far as to say that Jekyll’s attempted division failed; man can’t be separated into two tidy halves, representing what humans are actually like not what they want to look like.

 

 

Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Chapter 2 summary

Quick Summary

That evening Utterson examines Dr Jekyll’s will, which stipulates that in the case of Henry Jekyll’s death or disappearance, all of his possessions should be given to Edward Hyde. Utterson goes to see Dr Lanyon, another close friend of Dr Jekyll’s. He finds that Lanyon has not spoken to Jekyll for a long period of time due to a serious disagreement over ‘unscientific’ activities. Utterson also learns that Lanyon has never heard of Hyde. Utterson begins to search for Mr Hyde, finally meets him, sees his face, and Hyde gives him his address.

More detailed summary

Utterson, prompted by his conversation with Enfield, goes home to study a will that he drew up for his close friend Dr. Jekyll. It states that in the event of the death or disappearance of Jekyll, all of his property should be given over immediately to a Mr. Edward Hyde. This strange will had long troubled Utterson, but now that he has heard something of Hyde’s behaviour, he becomes more upset and feels convinced that Hyde has some peculiar power

over Jekyll. Seeking to unravel the mystery, he pays a visit to Dr. Lanyon, a friend of Jekyll’s. But Lanyon has never heard of Hyde and has fallen out of communication with Jekyll as a result of a professional dispute. Lanyon refers to Jekyll’s most recent line of research as “unscientific balderdash.”

Later that night, Utterson is haunted by nightmares in which a faceless man runs down a small child and in which the same terrifying, faceless figure stands beside Jekyll’s bed and commands him to rise. Soon, Utterson begins to spend time around the run-down building where Enfield saw Hyde enter, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Hyde. Hyde, a small young man, finally appears, and Utterson approaches him. Utterson introduces himself as a

friend of Henry Jekyll. Hyde, keeping his head down, returns his greetings. He asks Hyde to show him his face, so that he will know him if he sees him again; Hyde complies, and, like Enfield before him, Utterson feels appalled and horrified yet cannot pinpoint exactly what makes Hyde so ugly. Hyde then offers Utterson his address, which the lawyer interprets as a sign that Hyde eagerly anticipates the death of Jekyll and the execution of his will.

After this encounter, Utterson pays a visit to Jekyll. At this point, we learn what Utterson himself has known all along: namely, that the run-down building that Hyde frequents is actually a laboratory attached to Jekyll’s well-kept townhouse, which faces outward on a parallel street. Utterson is admitted into Jekyll’s home by Jekyll’s butler, Mr. Poole, but Jekyll is not at home. Poole tells Utterson that Hyde has a key to the laboratory and that all the servants have orders to obey Hyde. The lawyer heads home, worrying about his friend. He assumes Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll, perhaps for some wrongdoings that Jekyll committed in his youth.

Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde – chapter 1 summary

Quick Summary

We are introduced to the good-natured Mr Utterson, a lawyer. He points out to a friend a strange door and the friend, Enfield, has a story to tell about it. Enfield had witnessed the cruelty of a man to a passing child, and had obliged the man to pay compensation to the family. The cruel man was named Hyde, but the cheque he used came from a friend of Utterson’s, the very respectable Doctor Jekyll. Utterson supposed the evil man was blackmailing Jekyll.

More detailed summary

“Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance . . . the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men.”

Mr. Utterson is a wealthy, well-respected London lawyer, a reserved and perhaps even boring man who nevertheless inspires a strange fondness in those who know him. Despite his eminent respectability, he never abandons a friend whose reputation has been sullied or ruined.

Utterson nurtures a close friendship with Mr. Enfield, his distant relative and likewise a respectable London gentleman. The two seem to have little in common, and when they take their weekly walk together they often go for quite a distance without saying anything to one another; nevertheless, they look forward to these strolls as one of the high points of the week.

As the story begins, Utterson and Enfield are taking their regular Sunday stroll and walking down a particularly prosperous-looking street. They come upon a neglected building, which seems out of place in the neighbourhood, and Enfield relates a story in connection with it.

Enfield was walking in the same neighbourhood late one night, when he witnessed a shrunken, misshapen man crash into and trample a young girl. He collared the man before he could get away, and then brought him back to the girl, around whom an angry crowd had gathered. The captured man appeared so overwhelmingly ugly that the crowd immediately despised him. United, the crowd threatened to ruin the ugly man’s good name unless he did something to make amends; the man, seeing himself trapped, bought them off with one hundred pounds, which he obtained upon entering the neglected building through its only door. Strangely enough, the cheque bore the name of a very reputable man; furthermore, and in spite of Enfield’s suspicions, it proved to be legitimate and not a forgery. Enfield hypothesises that the ugly culprit had somehow blackmailed the man whose name appeared on the cheque. Spurning gossip, however, Enfield refuses to reveal that name.

Utterson then asks several pointed questions confirming the details of the incident. Enfield tries to describe the nature of the mysterious man’s ugliness but cannot express it, stating,”I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why.” He divulges that the culprit’s name was Hyde, and, at this point, Utterson declares that he knows the man, and notes that he can now guess the name on the cheque. But, as the men have just been discussing the virtue of minding one’s own business, they promptly agree never to discuss the matter again.

“He is not easy to describe. . . . And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.”

The Ear and Sound

An image of the ear with labels:

 

Some Key Vocabulary

Sound: disturbance (or vibration) that travels through a medium as a longitudinal wave. The speed of sound depends on the elasticity, density, and temperature of the medium the sound travels through.

Elasticity: the ability of a material to bounce back after being disturbed.

Reflection: process by which sound waves bounce off a surface.

Diffraction: change in direction of sound waves as they pass through an opening or around a barrier in their path.

Interference: when two or more waves arrive at the same time and interact with each other

• Constructive: when two waves combine and the resulting wave has an amplitude that is bigger than the amplitude of either of the original waves
• Deconstructive: when two waves interact at opposite times and the resulting wave has an amplitude that is smaller than the amplitude of either of the original waves

Density: the amount of matter or mass in a given volume.

Loudness: a person’s perception of a sound. Loudness depends on the amount of energy it takes to make the sound and the distance from the source of the sound.

Pitch: how high or low the sound is perceived to be; the pitch of a sound wave depends on the frequency of the sound wave.

Intensity: amount of energy a sound wave carries per second through a unit area.

Doppler Effect: the apparent change in frequency of a wave due to the motion of the source. Ex: changing pitch of a police car siren as it moves by you. When a sound source moves, the frequency of the waves changes because the motion of the source adds to the motion of the waves.

Music: set of notes that combine in patterns that are pleasing.

Acoustics: study of how sounds interact with each other and the environment.

Reverberation: echoes of a sound that are heard after the sound source stops producing sound waves.

Resonance: when the frequency of a sound matches the natural frequency of an object.

Outer ear: acts as a funnel to gather sound energy

• Pinna: external part of the ear, gathers sound waves and directs them into the ear canal
• Ear canal: hollow tube that carries sound waves from outside of the human ear to the eardrum
• Eardrum: small, tightly stretched, drum-like membrane that vibrates and amplifies the sound

Middle ear: composed of the hammer, anvil, and stirrup; amplifies and transmits sounds into the inner ear

• Eustachian tube: tube that connects the middle ear to the back of the nose; equalizes the pressure between the middle ear and the air outside

Inner ear: converts sound waves into signals that travel to the brain

• Cochlea: snail-shaped tube/ fluid-filled cavity that is lined with receptors (tiny hairs) that respond to sound by moving when vibrated and creating a nerve pulse
• Auditory nerve: carries nerve impulses to the brain

Infrasound: sound waves with frequencies below the human range of hearing (20 Hz)

Ultrasound: sound waves with frequencies above the human range of hearing (20,000 Hz)

Echo: a reflected sound wave

Sonar (sound navigation and ranging): system that uses reflected sound waves to detect and locate objects underwater

Echolocation: the use of reflected sound waves to determine distances or to locate objects.

Sonogram: device that uses reflected ultrasound waves to create a picture

Sound is a mechanical wave that results from the back and forth vibration of the particles of the medium through which the sound wave is moving. If a sound wave is moving from left to right through air, then particles of air will be displaced both rightward and leftward as the energy of the sound wave passes through it. The motion of the particles is parallel (and anti-parallel) to the direction of the energy transport. This is what characterizes sound waves in air as longitudinal waves.

Compressions and Rarefactions

A vibrating tuning fork is capable of creating such a longitudinal wave. As the tines of the fork vibrate back and forth, they push on neighbouring air particles. The forward motion of a tine pushes air molecules horizontally to the right and the backward retraction of the tine creates a low-pressure area allowing the air particles to move back to the left.

Because of the longitudinal motion of the air particles, there are regions in the air where the air particles are compressed together and other regions where the air particles are spread apart. These regions are known as compressionsand rarefactions respectively. The compressions are regions of high air pressure while the rarefactions are regions of low air pressure. The diagram below depicts a sound wave created by a tuning fork and propagated through the air in an open tube. The compressions and rarefactions are labeled.

The wavelength of a wave is merely the distance that a disturbance travels along the medium in one complete wave cycle. Since a wave repeats its pattern once every wave cycle, the wavelength is sometimes referred to as the length of the repeating patterns – the length of one complete wave. For a transverse wave, this length is commonly measured from one wave crest to the next adjacent wave crest or from one wave trough to the next adjacent wave trough. Since a longitudinal wave does not contain crests and troughs, its wavelength must be measured differently. A longitudinal wave consists of a repeating pattern of compressions and rarefactions. Thus, the wavelength is commonly measured as the distance from one compression to the next adjacent compression or the distance from one rarefaction to the next adjacent rarefaction.

 

 

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – background and context

Background and Context

Robert Louis Stevenson, one of the masters of the Victorian adventure story, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850. He was a sickly child, and respiratory troubles plagued him throughout his life. As a young man, he traveled through Europe, leading a bohemian lifestyle and penning his first two books, both travel narratives. In 1876, he met a married woman, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, and fell in love with her. Mrs. Osbourne eventually divorced her husband, and she and Stevenson were married.

Stevenson returned to London with his bride and wrote prolifically over the next decade, in spite of his terrible health. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which Stevenson described as a “fine bogey tale,” also came out in 1886. It met with tremendous success, selling 40,000 copies in six months and ensuring Stevenson’s fame as a writer.

In its narrative of a respectable doctor who transforms himself into a savage murderer, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tapped directly into the anxieties of Stevenson’s age. The Victorian era, named for Queen Victoria, who ruled England for most of the nineteenth century, was a time of unprecedented technological progress and an age in which European nations carved up the world with their empires. By the end of the century, however, many people were beginning to call into question the ideals of progress and civilization that had defined the era, and a growing sense of pessimism and decline pervaded artistic circles. Many felt that the end of the century was also witnessing a twilight of Western culture.

With the notion of a single body containing both the erudite Dr. Jekyll and the depraved Mr. Hyde, Stevenson’s novel imagines an inextricable link between civilization and savagery, good and evil. Jekyll’s attraction to the freedom from restraint that Hyde enjoys mirrors Victorian England’s secret attraction to allegedly savage non- Western cultures, even as Europe claimed superiority over them. This attraction also informs such books as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. For, as the Western world came in contact with other peoples and ways of life, it found aspects of these cultures within itself, and both desired and feared to indulge them. These aspects included open sensuality, physicality, and other so-called irrational tendencies. Even as Victorian England sought to assert its civilization over and against these instinctual sides of life, it found them secretly fascinating. Indeed, society’s repression of its darker side only increased the fascination. As a product of this society, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde manifests this fascination; yet, as a work of art, it also questions this interest.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – introduction to the story

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of Stevenson’s most celebrated stories. He wrote it at Bournemouth in 1885 while he recovering from an illness. The idea for the story came to him in a nightmare, from which he was awoken by his wife Fanny. He was angry with his wife for breaking off such a wonderful tale of terror and developed the idea into a full-length narrative. Originally, the tale was a straightforward horror story without the allegorical element. It was his wife who, after he read it to her, suggested that it would be better if it was written as an allegory. Stevenson then re-wrote the story from scratch and burnt his original one. It is said that he was so obsessed with his tale that the re-writing of it only took him three days!

It was published in 1886 and was immediately recognised as an unusual but great work. Both his viewers and his readers responded to his story with enthusiasm. Nothing he had previously written, including Treasure Island, had prepared his readers for such a dark and powerful work with such serious intent. In previous horror tales such as Thrawn Janet and The Body-Snatcher, he had built himself a reputation creating horror and suspense, but in Dr Jekyll he created a full-length work, which was not only exciting and well-composed, but also a powerful parable.

Today many thousands of people are familiar with the basic plot of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde even though they have never read the book. This is because the story is so popular that numerous film versions have made this story one of the most well-known. The story became famous in Stevenson’s own time and its fame has lasted. The phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” has become part of English folklore and the story itself is often grouped with lurid tales such as Dracula or The Phantom of the Opera.

We as critical readers must be careful not to see it as merely a horror story. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is in a different category – it has great literary and imaginative power, is rich in symbolism, and is still relevant today.

 

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson biography

Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was an only child. Throughout his childhood, he suffered from health problems that confined him to bed. His nurse, Allison Cunningham, often read to him and inspired his passion for literature. In 1867, he entered Edinburgh University as a science student, where his father expected him to study civil engineering as he himself had done. Robert, however, was much more creative and romantic at heart and while working on his science degree, spent much of his time studying French literature, Scottish history, and poetry. When he told his father that he did not want to become an engineer and instead wished to pursue a career in writing, his father was naturally upset. They settled on a compromise: Robert would study law so that if he should fail as a writer, he would have a respectable profession to fall back on.

In order to understand the world in which Stevenson was raised, it is necessary to understand that there were two Edinburghs, both of which played a part in shaping his personality and ideas. On the one hand, there was New Town, respectable, conventional, deeply religious, and polite. On the other, there was the much more bohemian Edinburgh, symbolised by brothels and shadiness. The juxtaposition of the two contrasting aspects made a deep impression on Stevenson and strengthened his fascination with the duality of human nature. This fascination was to provide him with the theme for The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Slowly but surely, he earned a name for himself in journalism and his pieces began appearing in distinguished journals. He then met an American married woman, Fanny Vandergrift Osbourne, 10 years his senior, who was in Europe after separating from her husband. Stevenson continued his relationship with her for three years and eventually followed her to San Francisco, where she divorced her husband and married him in May 1880.

During this time, he published his first book, An Inland Voyage. In August 1880, the Stevensons returned to England. The critical issue in Stevenson’s life from this point on was to find a warm climate where he could live because of his failing health. He and his wife thus spent winters in the south of France and the summers in England from 1880-1887. This time was marked by an active period of literary achievement. His first novel, Treasure Island, was published in 1883, followed by The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Kidnapped (1886). Stevenson had become a popular author.

Upon the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson decided to leave England for America, where he stayed for a year. In May 1888, together with his wife, his stepson, and his mother, he went to the South Seas. He became so enchanted with the life of the South Seas that in December 1889 he bought an estate in Apia, Samoa, convinced that he could no longer withstand the harsh winters of his native Scotland or England. Apia was a perfect location because the climate was tropical but not wild, the people were friendly and hardworking, and it possessed a good postal service. He lived on his 300-acre estate, Vailima, in the hills of Apia until his death five years later.

The list of his writings between 1890 and 1894 reveals an impressive range of activities. During this time, he completed two of his finest novellas, The Beach of Falesa and The Ebb Tide, two novels, The Wrecker and Catriona, the short stories The Bottle Imp, The Isle of Voices and The Waif Woman, and several short pieces collected under the title of Fables. He also began a number of novels that he did not live to complete, including St. Ives, The Young Chevalier and Heathercat. He was working on Weir of Hermiston until the day he died on December 3, 1894. His death was sudden and unexpected. He had finished dictating another instalment of the novel, and was talking to his wife in the evening when he felt a violent pain in his head and almost immediately lost consciousness. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage a few hours later at the age of forty-four.