How Robert Louis Stevenson Represent Evil in Jekyll and Hyde

How Robert Louis Stevenson Represent Evil in Jekyll and Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson intended this tale of The Strange case of Dr

Jekyll and Mr Hyde to be a penny numbers story, which gave us the

sense that this was a simple and cheap novel, yet, it is far more

sophisticated than its audience expected. Robert Louis Stevenson's

captive audience were the Victorians. They were zealots, repressed and

highly moral but were living through an age of change.

The book itself looks at religious, social and scientific issues,

which all tie in with the time it was written, to give us a much more

complex book than first thought. The book was written in the Victorian

era, when Jack the Ripper was at large, giving the readers something

terrifying to relate to. References to Darwin's theory of evolution

are apparent in the novel, Darwin himself was vilified by the

Victorians because his theory was in total contrast to their strong

belief in the Christian faith, which links to the religious theme that

is central to the books plot.

"I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must

be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity,

although I couldn't specify the point." - Enfield

What Enfield is saying is that Hyde's ugliness is not purely physical,

it is more metaphysical attached to his soul more than his body. An

example of his evilness is in the first chapter, where we see Hyde

walking straight in front of a little girl, but instead of walking

around her, he walks straight over her and tramples over her "calmly",

and leaves her "screaming". The reason why this so evil is because it

conjures up the idea of phy...

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...her we should be rational or ethical,

which is proved with Lanyon's sight of Jekyll's transformation.

Religiously, evil is represented in many forms, firstly in the subtle

form of Utterson's forename, which is Gabriel, which is linked the

angel Gabriel, therefore making us think that Utterson is the good

character and Hyde is the evil one. Secondly the comparison of dark

and light here, " The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts

into that deep well of building, tossed the light of the candle to and

fro...", shows us that light is good, as in heaven, and when the light

is blown out we see darkness, which is evil. Thirdly another subtle

point made is where Jekyll makes the potion to make himself Hyde,

which shows us a man tampering with the human form, the way God

intended us to be, which is evil and not right.