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Context
Classes
Classes in the Nineteenth Century
➢ Classes: social groups of a whole society.
➢ Can be distinguished by inequalities, e.g. power, authority, wealth, working & living conditions, life-
styles, life-span, education, religion and culture
➢ The upper classes, consisting of those with success in industry and profession, had control over the
political system.
➢ Those in working and middle classes were shut out from the political process.
➢ The working class became increasingly hostile, even towards the middle class.
➢ The working class could be split between the skilled, industrial workers and the unskilled “under class”.
➢ Lower class people were seen as unreasonable, easily over-excited, criminals, inhabitants of unknown,
dark lands, irrational, having no religion, filthy, child-like, excessively sexual and abnormal.
Contemporary Anxieties
Evolution and Degeneration
➢ Hyde’s mere appearance provokes disgust; he is physically detestable, like a primitive caveman
➢ Jekyll is like an evolved being with good characteristics and personality
➢ 15 years before ‘Jekyll and Hyde’, Charles Darwin had published ‘The Descent of Man’ (1871), a book in
which he concluded that humankind had “descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped” which was itself
“probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal”.
➢ This created a lot of concern as it was contradictory to the belief in an omnipotent creator God.
➢ Going even further back, Darwin hypothesised that these stages of evolution had been preceded, in a
direct line, by “some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal”.
➢ Such nightmarish biological lineage that denied the specialness of humans, feeds into may late-Victorian
Gothic novels.
➢ Perhaps Hyde is only detestable because he subconsciously reminds others of their own distant
evolutionary inheritance.
Criminology
➢ The influential Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) had argued that the ‘born criminal’
could be recognised by certain physical characteristics. This included unusually sized ears or
asymmetrical features (particularly long arms or a sloping forehead.
➢ Hyde’s “troglodytic” appearance in ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ marks him out as a criminal and as someone who is
unacceptable in polite society.
➢ Stevenson accepts Lombroso’s theory by simultaneously making Jekyll highly respectable and at the same
time despicable in the form of Hyde. The implication is that the criminal could lurk behind an acceptable
public persona, and that appearance might provide no real indication of the personality within.
Addiction
➢ Throughout the industrial revolution, many became addicted to laudanum, which is derived from opium.
The first drafting of ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ was written during a six-day opium binge.
➢ People didn’t appreciate the horror associated with habitual use and withdrawal until the late 19th century.
➢ Stevenson explore the over-reliance on drugs through Jekyll’s increasing immunity to the strength of the
drugs that he mixes to transform. Stevenson associates addiction with degradation.
➢ The addict needs to take responsibility for the actions undertaken whilst under the influence of the drug.
