The Fantasy in 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson

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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson, was an immediate success and had been revisited a number of times since its first publication in 1886. It can be considered as the Gothic tale par excellence. The Gothic genre started in the middle of the Eighteenth Century as a reaction against the Victorian society. Thus, I will attempt to show how Stevenson used the fantasy to criticize his society in this novella. To do so, the fantastic and gothic nature of the novella will first be stated, and then the fantastic theme of the duality of human nature will be studied. Finally, the criticism of Victorian society will be discussed. The fantasy genre appeared around the Middle Ages in Europe and in the Muslim world. Thanks to its popular characteristic, it found its way through the literature of all ages. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson, belongs to fantasy since it displays almost all of its main features. Indeed, the novella involves a "physician-wizard", Dr Jekyll, and a "criminal-beast-devil", Mr Hyde.

Extraits

[...] The book itself depicts the city as a real maze, which gets gloomy, mysterious and dangerous at night: figure [of Hyde] . haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly . through wider labyrinths of lamp-lighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming” (Stevenson 20). This is a typical painting of the urban gothic fiction which depicts new growing cities as dark and hazardous places. [...]

[...] In The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, fantasy, and here gothic literature, allowed Stevenson to lead readers to question the problems of their own society in a more or less hidden way, since he goes through a pleasant tale. He criticizes the prudery, hypocrisy, violence, and blind faith in science of the Victorian period. Gothic fiction has actually often been a tool to challenge the issues of the real world where terror is genuine and murders and misery happen. [...]

[...] The difference of good and evil is clearly made through the antagonistic characterizations of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and also thanks to the Victorian context. An evocation of another world can be seen in the fantasmagoric and labyrinthine depiction of the late Nineteenth Century London. And finally, the quest is clearly explicated in the book itself: each [the two natures of man], I told myself, could but be housed in separate entities” (Stevenson 114). Dr Jekyll wants to purify the human soul by dividing its two aspects in two different bodies, so that the first does not have to suffer from the actions of the other. [...]

[...] It can even be classified in the Urban Gothic sub-genre in which the city is uncanny and in which alienation of the urban subject, leading to paranoia, fragmentation and loss of identity, is another important theme” (Mulvey-Roberts 289). Indeed, in the novella, the maze of London seems to be the ideal setting for Hyde's horrible crimes. II. The duality of human nature The main fantasy feature in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the theme of the double. Indeed, several times in the novella, the characters themselves are confronted to this problem: is not truly one, but truly (Stevenson 113), learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of (113). [...]

[...] To do so, the fantastic and gothic nature of the novella will first be stated, and then the fantastic theme of the duality of human nature will be studied. Finally, the criticism of Victorian society will be discussed. I. The fantastic and gothic features The fantasy genre appears as soon as the Middle Ages in Europe and in the Muslim world. Thanks to its popular characteristic, it finds its way through the literature of all ages. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson, belongs to the fantasy since it displays almost all of its main features. [...]