Stevensons Representation of Evil in Dr Jekyll and Mr...

Stevensons Representation of Evil in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a classic novel telling the story of the struggle between good and evil. The good being shown in the form of a well-respected Doctor Henry Jekyll and the evil being released from a lengthy repression in the form of Mr Edward Hyde. In my essay I will be concentrating on the influences of the Victorian age and how Stevenson involved aspects of his own life into the writing of the book. The 64 years from 1837 to 1901, which was the Victorian age, was a repressive society to live in. There were strict codes of morality, which meant that everyone had to look, sound and more importantly act in a certain way.†¦show more content†¦Nurse Cunningham talked a lot to Stevenson about her views on what Hell is like and how if you do one wrong thing in your life you will go there and suffers, she believed that there were only good people and bad people and no-one had both good and bad in them. Stevensons own lifestyle and the novel of Jekyll and Hyde seem to contradict Alison Cunninghams views and beliefs. Stevensons student life is thought to have influenced him in the writing of the novel, by day he was a well-educated student at Edinburgh University and by night he would visit the old town, go out drinking and have fun. From a young age Stevenson enjoyed reading and even when at University he would find time between studying and going out to enjoy a good novel. He was influenced by many writers such as William Hazlitt, Sir Thomas Browne, Charles Lamp, Michel de Montaigne and Daniel Defoe and is thought to have tried to mimic their ways of writing in his own novels. A superb role model was Daniel Defoe who is said, by some, to have been one of the initial founders of the English novel, as before his work most fiction was written in plays or poems. Stevenson brought about the notion of duality through the character of Dr Jekyll and his evil side, Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll was a middle classShow MoreRelated The Representation of Evil in Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde1490 Words   |  6 PagesThe Representation of Evil in Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde This essay will show how evil is represented in Robert Louis Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about evil and the duality of peoples personalities. To show this I will focus on Stevensons use of characterization, setting, historical, social and cultural context, settings, symbols and language. Robert Stevenson lived in the Victorian era, this was a very repressiveRead MoreStevensons Representation of Good and Evil in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde1522 Words   |  7 PagesStevensons Representation of Good and Evil in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde In this piece of coursework, I am asked to first of all, discuss how the novel is mainly concerned with the struggle between good and evil. 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