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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Born 1850 in Edinburgh of Thomas Stevenson, an engineer who build many of our deep-sea lighthouses and Isabella Mary Balfour, whose family contained members of the legal profession and ministers of the Church.
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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde By Robert Louis Stevenson
Born 1850 in Edinburgh of Thomas Stevenson, an engineer who build many of our deep-sea lighthouses and Isabella Mary Balfour, whose family contained members of the legal profession and ministers of the Church. Brought up to conform to the strict Victorian Middle Class code of respectability Childhood illnesses meant most of his early years were spent in his bedroom at home where Nurse Cunningham (Cummy) laboured to teach him the difference between pursuing a life of good or evil by describing at great lengths the everlasting torments of hell resulting from selecting the evil choice – unsurprisingly Robert suffered terrible nightmares. Nurse Cunningham tried to convince him ‘there are but two camps in the world – one perfectly pious and respectable, one of the perfectly profane, mundane and vicious.’ – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde refutes this simplistic view and argues that there is light and dark in all of us – ‘man is not truly one but truly two’ (Jekyll) Robert Louis Stevenson‘All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.’
Stevenson grew up in Edinburgh, a city with two faces, and although Dr Jekyll appears to be set in London, there are many reasons Edinburgh could also be viewed as an appropriate setting. At seventeen, whilst studying Engineering at University, Robert would spend a great deal of time in Edinburgh’s notorious Old Town and it has been argued that he, like Jekyll, was leading a double life – respectable middle class student by day and debauchery by night. However, Stevenson witnessed enough middle class double standards that he was determined to avoid such hypocrisy and he reacted against the strict Scottish Presbyterian background of his upbringing. Life Imitates Art?
Other famous publications • ‘A Child’s Garden of Verse’ – dedicated to Nurse Cummy • ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ • ‘Kidnapped’ • ‘Treasure Island’ • ‘Catriona’ • ‘Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life’ - play
Old Town Dirty Disease ridden Overcrowded Full of Poverty New Town Prosperous Middle class Clean Ordered Victorian Edinburgh
A city with a past • William ‘Deacon’ Brodie – well respected craftsman by day, criminal by night – hanged in 1788. In his childhood bedroom, Robert Louis had a cabinet made by William Brodie • Burke and Hare, the ‘body snatchers’
Timeline of Significant Events • 18th century Age of Enlightenment – freedom, democracy and reason • 1818 Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ • 1824 James Hogg’s ‘Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ • 1850 RLS born in Edinburgh • 1859 Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ • 1872 RLS quarrels seriously with father over religion and morals • 1884 RLS publishes short story ‘The Body Snatcher’ • 1885 French neurologist gives public display of hypnotism • 1885 RLS writes ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ • 1886 Krafft-Ebing’s ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’, RLS publishes ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ • 1888 Jack the Ripper murders take place in the East End • 1891 Oscar Wilde’s ‘Dorian Gray’ • 1901 Freud’s ‘Interpretation of Dreams’
