Gothic Genre: Jekyll + Hyde
Here are they key elements of the Gothic in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Use these to help you add contextual detail to essays, especially if you’re writing about the setting or atmosphere! There are actually several other relevant genres to the text too, including Crime, Proto-Detective Fiction and Science Fiction, so make sure you understand those in detail as well.
These notes are from our ‘Complete Jekyll + Hyde Revision Bundle’, click the link below to find out more about our complete study pack!
THE GOTHIC
The Gothic is a literary genre originating from the 18th century, which uses a sinister, grotesque or mysterious atmosphere to startle and unsettle readers. Gothic novels are often set in dark places or ruined buildings. They also incorporate dark, intense themes, such as the tension between science and religion, explorations of the nature of death, violence and sin or evil.
The Gothic is characterised by its gloomy settings, which are used to create lots of tension, suspense, and mystery — these horrific tales evoke a sense of foreboding in the reader through the feeling that the environment is almost a character in itself - full of symbolism and potential darkness.
The setting for The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the dark streets of London, revolving around the activities and pastimes of the middle classes in the Victorian era. In this time period, London is heavily industrialised — which accounts for the heavy descriptions of fog which surround the area. The fog cloaks Hyde’s shady deeds in a mysterious and secluded atmosphere.
There is always a sense of horror. In the case of this story, it is not the kind of blood and gore horror that can be found in modern films, but the kind of horror that is more psychological, using tension and suspense to provoke a sense of uneasiness and latent fear within readers. It also involves events that seem supernatural and are unexplainable to normal people, with ‘the supernatural’ being another key element of gothic literature.
These elements are appropriate for the narrative, which centres around a London doctor who, having pushed the boundaries of science to develop a magical potion, can turn himself into a monstrous being — he is liberated from the strict rules of Victorian society, and able to indulge his base urges, committing sinful and violent acts as he pleases.
Gothic fiction developed as a special section of Romanticism, focusing mostly on death and the irrational. The setting in gothic novels is gloomy and populated by decrepit mansions, dark streets, cemeteries, abandoned buildings, odd characters, unnatural desires, etc.
The action in “Jekyll and Hyde” is set in a strange house hiding a second entrance that leads to a laboratory, and Hyde is a typical gothic character with his despicable personality and monstrous exterior reflecting it. The suspense is built gradually, with the narrator revealing only bits of the story to allow the reader and the characters to make suppositions about what is happening.
KEY TERMS:
Gothic Elements - typical features of a text that we would associate with the Gothic genre, e.g. a deep unsolved mystery, a dark atmosphere, the thematic tension of good vs evil
Liminality - blurring the boundaries between two opposite or conflicting ideas to create ambiguity, e.g. is Jekyll a tragic victim, or the villain of the piece
TASK: Stevenson’s work was inspired by other Gothic pieces. A few of these stories have been noted below, research them and then explain how they may have influenced The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
E. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs
James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire
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