Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Essay | Critical Essay #1

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Critical Essay #1

Perkins is an associate professor of English atPrince George's Community College inMaryland and has published several articles on British and American authors. In the following essay, she examines how The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reflects the influence of two important ideological forces in VictorianEngland: utilitarianism and Evangelicalism.

Two ideologies, utilitarianism and Evangelicalism, shaped the customs and mores of Victorian society inEnglandduring the nineteenth century. In Victorian People and Ideas, Richard D. Altick analyzes the impact of these two forces on Victorians, concluding "together they were responsible for much that was unappealing—to some Victorians as to us—in the age's thought and manners. . . . Both left their ineradicable imprint upon the whole of the Victorian period." They also left their mark on the literature of the age. In his classic tale The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson illustrates the...
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