In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Stevenson created a gripping Gothic horror story, a timeless allegory of human psychology, and a reflection of behavior particular to his era but not unknown in ours. The focus is on the rigid ideal of social respectability in Stevenson’s era that stood in stark contrast with less acceptable inner impulses and appetites.
Uncertainty, respectability, and repression. The late Victorian period (c. 1875-1901) was a time in which British society increasingly questioned the comfortable assumptions of an earlier age. After several decades of stability and prosperity, starting in the 1870s a series of social and economic crises led to an atmosphere of growing disquiet. To many Britons it seemed that even hallowed traditional institutions in British life were being cast into doubt. Most significantly, perhaps, religious skepticism became the order of the day, as many in the late Victorian era questioned the unhesitating faith that had distinguished their forebears.
One such literary figure was Robert Louis Stevenson’s mentor Sir Leslie Stephen, a leading man of letters who from 1871 to 1882 edited the influential Cornhill Magazine, in which many of Stevenson’s early stories and poems were published.
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