Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Context Analysis

The development of psychoanalysis
1. Stevenson's wife said that he read many report mostly from France about the analysis of dreams and the subconscious self and what it meant to us. His wife also went as far to say that the reports was the seed fror the his dream and his story for Jeykll and Hyde
  1. Stevenson said that he had read a article of a young french man who developed a case of having a severe personality change when in shock which gives us the idea that he has read this before the publication of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
2. Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst who is seen as the father and the creator of psychoanalysis has many of the same ideas that Stevenson had. It might have been very likely that Stevenson has been reading many of his articles which is why he might have been exposed to the same ideas
  1. Freud's theories cover the ideas if the subconscious self and how the conscious self is covering up many of the desieres of the subconscois until we grow older we completely forget the subconscous self
  2. Research to access the subconscious self through speech and in many cases able to identify and locate the cause of some illness of the patients self in his/her childhood like Stevenosn
3. Another book was published at the time which was equally or even more disturbing and shocking to its reader. It was called Psychopathia Sexualis which was written due to a study in sexual behaviours in people and case studies and interviews. In the Victorian society, it was forbidden to talk about sexuality. Writers had to change there way of writting and change past novels just lke DR Jekyll and Mr Hyde. There is still a vauge mark of this within the text showing Hyde as a sex-craving monster. It was subtle enough for the reader to paint an understanding of this novel which came to the formation of different therios
Many stories and novels from this time fall into the category of “shilling shockers”. Stories that were written about these other people in order to shock, appall and entertain the upper classes. The lower classes about whom they were written were largely illiterate so they were not the intended audience.
1. Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, however, was written and aimed at the upper-class people who would read these “shilling shockers” and, as such, caused quite a stir and ominous atmosphere between them, classes. It was seen as typical of the lower classes to engage in this sort of behaviour (it was thought, for example, that there were thousands of prostitutes in the East End of London at the time the novel was published) but for a well-respected gentleman to have such a dark side of him was frightening.
One of the most challenging parts in living in the 1800's is that there was an influx of lower and middle-class people who swarmed through London
1. The lower and middle class that was coming at a fast rate for work and housing made the upper-class nervous because of different crimes that they can commit and the unnatural and unprofessional look of the lower class. This caused the upper class to move out of the area to a more safe area with a lot of upper class and low to no lower class
  1. This division of the cities into “no-go areas” was interesting because it created an “other” in London specifically. Rich people tended to live in the west and stories of the debauchery and the goings on in places like the East End and Soho were both shocking and fascinating to them.
The 1800s in Britain was a time of great change.
Science and medicine were also changing quickly at this time in history. As we have seen in earlier chapters, famous surgeons were experimenting and dissecting bodies to learn all they could about human anatomy. The first transplants were carried out around this time too by men such as John Hunter.
1. Hunter conducted disturbing experiments like imlanting a human tooth on a chickens head to see if it would grow. This notion of a "Mad Scientist" shocked the public especially the upper-class on this type of actions because of people where against science because of the theories they think it will create which Stevenson created a novel about
2. These themes are also carried through to Jekyll and Hyde where we see Dr Jekyll in his London home with his labs and powders locked away with his research. He begins to experiment on himself (which John Hunter is also reputed to have done) and soon, he gets into a situation he can’t handle.
3. Stevenson is only adressing this story at this perfect time becasue htere was a huge beleif in the dual nature of a man but stevenson only creates the story to show the possibility that it could casue and how it already exists within and it only takes a person who endouvers science and "Powders" to unleash this monster like Hyde from within us
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was in a time of medicene, Human anotomy, Psycoanalysis about he inner mystries of our minds and about human sexuallity and also a time when classes are divided causing major shocking theories of people like the novel of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Context Analysis

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	Created by Marwan Hamed over 6 years ago