Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850.

Was a novelist , poet and travel writer and a

representative of neo- romanticism in English literature. He lived in the south of England, Germany, France and Italy.
All the time was in conflict with his social environment, the respectable Victorian world. He grew his hair long, his
manners were eccentric and he became one of the first examples of the bohemian in Britain. Stevenson became
popular as a novelist in the 1880s when he published the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, and
Treasured Island .
Mr. Enfield is walking through London late one night when he meets a man, Mr. Hyde who is trampling a girl. Mr.
Enfield and the girl’s family catch the man but don’t take him to the police, because the man suggests to give money
to the girl’s family.
 The mysterious man disappears into his house and returns with a check. It is by the respectable Dr. Jekyll, a
wealthy man.
 Richard Enfield tells the story to his cousin, Mr. Utterson, Dr. Jekyll’s lawyer. Mr Utterson examines Dr.
Jekyll’s will. The will says that if Jekyll disappears for more than three months, a mysterious Mr. Hyde will
assume his estate and if Dr. Jekyll dies, all his money will go to him.
 Mr. Enfield and Mr. Utterson go to Mr. Hyde’s house and they discover that the house is connected to Dr.
Jekyll’s house.
 After several months, Dr. Jekyll appears telling that Mr. Hyde was a friend of him who now has gone away.
But Dr. Jekyll behaves in a strange way: sometimes, when in public, his face gets contorted and he has to
hurry away.
 Meanwhile, a member of the Parliament, Sir Danvers Carew, is killed and a famous doctor, Dr. Layton, dies
mysteriously. Mr. Hyde is accused of the murder of Sir Carew.
 In a letter written by Dr. Layton and given to Mr. Utterson (Jekyll’s lawyer), the secret of the strange
relationship between Jekyll and Hyde is revealed: they are the same person!
 Dr. Jekyll invented a potion that transformed him into a violent man and a potion that transformed him back
into Jekyll. But after a while he noticed that he could transform into Mr. Hyde involuntarily, without his
control.
 The only way Jekyll had to stop Mr Hyde and his violence was to kill him. But when he killed Mr Hyde, he
killed himself.

Physical appearance:
1) Dr. Jekyll is handsome, with white,
well-shaped hands and a large,
harmonious body
2) Mr. Hyde is pale, dwarfish and his
hands are dark and hairy.
Furthermore:
The opposition between Dr. Jekyll – who
wants to be good and stop doing bad
things when he is Mr. Hyde – symbolically
represents the struggle between good and
evil, which is often inside any
man/woman.
2.This opposition also represents the
nature of Victorian society, full of
hypocrisy.
Frankenstein:
1) published in 1818. The story was written after a dream.
2) Frankenstein and the Monster are complementary because they both suffer a sense of alienation and
isolation; they both want to be good but they become obsessed with hate and revenge. = Double
3) The main colour of the setting is white: (the , , ice, snow)
4) The Monster is not accepted by society (but he could, as he is good at the at beginning of the story).

DR.JEKYLL AND MR.HYDE:

1) published in 1886. Again, the story was written after a dream.
2) The presence of two different aspects inside one man: respectability (a typical Victorian trait) and
wickedness, violence. = Double
3) The main colour of the setting is black: almost every action takes place at night.
4) Mr. Hyde cannot be accepted by society

THE NOVEL AND FREUD

 It pre-empted Freudian psychoanalysis (which really only began to be common currency on the publication
of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams in 1901) by twenty-five years, and yet is similar to some of its theories.
 Under the constraints of rigid Victorian society, the unprepossessing Jekyll learns to give into his inner
desires (the instinctive forces Freud termed the Id) when he is transformed into Hyde. The rational,
controlled, civilised part of Jekyll (Freud's super-ego) attempts to repress the Id, and make Hyde
controllable. However, as Freud pointed out in his studies of neurotic patients, such a repression of the
driving force of nature within us often leads to horrible, barbaric consequences.
 Hyde represents the ever-demanding destructive powers of the Id
 Jekyll represents the conscious ego, whose original tendency was by no means towards the vicious, but
rather towards the 'loose', a neutral desire for certain kinds of personal freedom
 Superego → the dictates of social conventions; the Victorian professionist.

Dr. Jekyll and his potions remind the reader of Dr. Frankenstein and his experiments. (The full title of Mary
Shelley’s novel is Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus).
Both Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll are “overreachers” (overreacher = who wants to go beyond human/Nature
limits).