The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a new (or a short novel), first published in 1886 and written by the English author Robert Louis Stevenson.
First, we can say that the version of the 1886 work is a rewrite of a first manuscript. The first manuscript was destroyed by the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson because she considered it as “a crap notebook” (“a quire full of utter nonsense”, as noted by John Ezard in an article in the newspaper The Guardian, (25 October 2000) entitled “The Story of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and Fanny, the angry wife who burned the first draft”).
Written in the late nineteenth England, this work has caused many reactions and has been the subject of criticism throughout Europe. Thus, since its publication, the work was inspired many rewrites, many cinematographic adaptations etc...
At that time, the literary and artistic production is upset. Indeed, it was during this time that men are interested more and more in the interiority of human being, (it may be noted, for example, the emergence of psychoanalysis with the famous doctor Freud, which publishes his “Interpretation of dreams”, in 1899).
In the book of Stevenson, there is talk of a notary named Gabriel John Utterson. He is the main character of the work. The reader discovers the adventures of this notary, which investigates the mysterious and strange relationship between Edward Hyde and Dr. Henry Jekyll. By reading this short novel, the reader enters in a disturbing atmosphere of mystery, which causes him fear. In fact, Dr. Jekyll is a strange character who realizes in experiments to produce an elixir able to separate the good side of the bad side of human nature: for brief, separate Good from Evil. In this short novel, we learn that the bad side of Hyde takes more and more space in his life; we realize that his good side gradually disappears. Thus, he becomes gradually a criminal monster: Mister Hyde.
Also, the novel by Stevenson is in a particular period of British history. Indeed, the English society of the nineteenth faces profound changes: England is the first European nation to embark on the industrial revolution. The English company thus benefits from the booming economy of the country.
From 1937 and during 64 years (reign of Queen Victoria), England lived a golden age and prosperity. Further, the morals were severe and there was social tension.
It is obvious that all these changes have had a significant influence on the literary and artistic production of the time. The Victorian corresponds to a particular aesthetic in literature, which "breaks" with Romanticism. There are, however, in a way, continuity between romantic literature and Victorian literature. For example, the strange universe of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), or Robert Louis Stevenson must remember that of Edgar Allan Poe.
The obsession with the strange, terrifying or macabre Edgar Allan Poe undeniably think about the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Moreover, we can think of the writer Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849), genius of the fantastic writing, whose works are also characterized by the strange, macabre, etc.
The Victorian era is a proliferation of very large-fiction, where triumph the serial novel and the novel of manners. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is indeed a reflection on morality, on the part of the good and evil in Human. Stevenson's novel also reveals an anxiety that appears at the end of the Victorian era (the novel was published in 1886): some writers and intellectuals of the time think that science is dangerous and can create Evil in British society. In fact, Stevenson's novel is also a critique of positivism, philosophy that advocates the belief in science.