Concetti Chiave
- The setting highlights London's duality, contrasting the respectable West End with the disreputable East End, echoing Edinburgh's New and Old Towns.
- Jekyll's house features a dual entrance: a formal front on a respectable street and a laboratory opening onto a dark alley, emphasizing the theme of duality.
- The novel employs a multi-narration structure with four narrators, offering varied perspectives and maintaining suspense throughout the story.
- This is a multigenre novel incorporating Gothic elements, detective story aspects, and science fiction, with themes of duality and Victorian hypocrisy.
- Similar works exploring comparable themes include Frankenstein, William Wilson, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Heart of Darkness.
Setting:
-London, duplicity of the city (respectable West End vs disreputable East End, reminiscent of Edinburgh’s New Town and Old Town)
Description of Jekyll's House
-Main inside setting: Jekyll’s house (double entrance: official part of the house opening on a wide, respectable street/ laboratory opening on a narrow dark alley)
-Time: mostly night, or stormy weather (dark, cold and fog, nightmarish atmosphere)
Narrators:
- oblique, multi-narration structure (4 narrators: Enfield, Lanyon, Utterson and Jekyll) effect: various points of view, suspense
Genre of the Novel
Genre:
- multigenre novel: Gothic elements (the transformation, the night scenes), detective story (Mr Utterson as detective, playing “hide-and-seek), science fiction elements (the potion)
Characters:
- all “respectable” professional men, no women.
Themes:
- theme of the double ( Doppelgänger) – ( Jekyll as the whole man and Hyde as the unconscious side, the id)
-hypocrisy and double nature of the Victorian society
-function of science – sin of hybris – Jekyll as an overreaches (Faustian figure)
Similar Works
Other works with similar themes:
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818); Edgar Allan Poe’s short story William Wilson (1839); Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891); Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899).
Domande da interrogazione
- How does the setting of Jekyll's house reflect the novel's themes of duality and duplicity?
- In what ways does the novel incorporate elements from different genres?
Jekyll's house, with its dual entrances—one opening onto a respectable street and the other onto a dark alley—mirrors the novel's exploration of duality and duplicity, symbolizing the contrast between Jekyll's public persona and his hidden, darker side.
The novel is a multigenre work, blending Gothic elements like transformation and night scenes, detective story aspects with Mr. Utterson's investigations, and science fiction elements through the use of a potion, creating a rich tapestry of themes and styles.
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