Victorian Gothic Literature
Especially useful for Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein, The Sign of Four
Origins of Gothic Fiction
Gothic fiction grew in popularity at the same time as Romantic poetry. These novels shared many similarities: strange and unexplained events; buildings which had a presence or persona, like a character; passionate and intense feelings; a rich or noble villain or anti-hero and anxious characters.
The genre gradually became extreme and dramatic – my favourite plot description comes from Professor John Mullan, “Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796), was an experiment in how outrageous a Gothic novelist can be. After a parade of ghosts, demons and sexually inflamed monks, it has a final guest appearance by Satan himself.” This theme of evil being embodied by a Satanic character is one which Stevenson draws on.
In 1817, Jane Austin wrote a satire of the Gothic genre, Northanger Abbey. There are elements of this satiric tradition carried on by Stevenson in his treatment of the violence in his novel.
As if timed to bring something new to the genre, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley in 1818, introduced the idea of a double or doppelgänger, and this was picked up as a tradition in future Gothic novels, which we can again trace in Jekyll’s creation of Hyde.
By the 1840s many of the uncanny elements and heightened emotions of the Gothic had entered mainstream fiction. Some of the most famous novels – Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights – are heavily influenced by it and both published in 1847.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is not just a Gothic novel. It’s title strongly alludes to the conventions of detective fiction, which became popular in American fiction in the 1840s before gaining popularity in Britain in the 1860s. The Sherlock Holmes stories were first published 6 years after Jekyll and Hyde, in 1891 and borrow the idea of the ignorant narrator who, like Utterson, sees everything, and understands so little.
Victorian Statistics
In the 19th century London had become the largest city in the world, and had grown from around 1 million in population in 1800 to over 6 million by 1900.
All the action in Jekyll and Hyde takes place in the centre of London, which had already been well established in 1800, which is why the male characters represent the establishment, the ruling classes.
London was also the centre of the British Empire, so it was full of immigrants. We get a sense of the fear of foreign immigration in the description of Utterson’s trip to Hyde’s Soho lodgings. Hyde himself is described as “swarthy”, as though part of his unnatural appearance reminds the reader of immigrants from which we can infer an element of fear of cultural change. This same fear is echoed by the reaction to Darwin’s theory of evolution and the threat this makes to the dominant Christian culture.
Because houses were heated by coal or wood burning, London experienced terrible air pollution which often resulted in orange, grey or black fog, which would often cause an extra 700 Londoners to die each day. The crime rate would also rise, as criminals found it easier to escape detection. Stevenson setting of the fog is not just a Gothic convention, but a real fear Londoners faced.
Drug Use in Victorian England
Opium and cocaine could be bought at any chemist in London. Patients would take these as medicines, as well as recreationally. It isn’t known how widespread this use was, but even medicines given to children contained opiates.
By the time Stevenson was writing, other writers were including unflattering descriptions of addicts, which implies that drug taking was becoming viewed differently, with the beginnings of a view which saw drug addiction as a moral weakness, rather than an addiction for which we should have sympathy.
At the time Stevenson was writing, however, the medical benefits were seen to far outweigh the dangers of addiction, and it is widely assumed that Stevenson wrote this novel while taking cocaine as a medicine.
Literacy in Victorian England
It is difficult for us to imagine now, when even an adult with the reading age of a ten year old can read The Sun newspaper and understand every word in it, but we are living in a golden age of literacy.
In 1840, 50% of brides could not write their own name, and neither could 35% of grooms. For women, this represented a 10% improvement since 1800, while there had been no improvement for men.
But by 1885, over 90% of men and women could read and write, and in 1900 over 95% could do so. There are many explanations for this incredible revolution, but it also explains why there are so many brilliant novels written in the 1900s – books are pretty much the only game in town. Even the explosion in magazines was just another way to consume books in smaller chunks, as novels were often serialised, and readers eagerly waited a week for the next chapter.
We can also see that the group who benefited most were women. The other factor dramatically increasing the number of female readers is the rise of the middle class. One way of defining the Victorian middle class is any household which had a servant. Women with servants had leisure time. Books were Hollywood, TV, YouTube, Amazon and Netflix all rolled in to one, and the Victorian readers were the first in history to have the leisure time for a huge number of the population to simply read.
But, just as modern audiences will binge watch through a series, Victorian readers would binge read through a genre.
Stevenson was riding the crests of these waves, the established Gothic genre, the newly popular Penny Dreadfuls, and the recent development of detective stories. But this also means he was writing for a mass market he didn’t necessarily respect.
We get a strong sense in Jekyll and Hyde of the struggle Stevenson had in writing the story he wanted to write, about the political and moral corruption of middle class men, and giving the public what they want – a whodunit, with fear, violence and supernatural or uncanny horror. This struggle is particularly strained in dealing with the readers’ Christian viewpoint, while Stevenson is an atheist. We might also sense the struggle in his unflattering portrayal of women, in particular the maid and her vicarious enjoyment of the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, as a rejection of his female readers, or the controlling influence of his wife Fanny, who burned his first draft of the novella!
Victorian Scandals
Victorian newspapers did not have to worry about a person’s right to privacy – such a law did not exist. The desire to keep family and personal secrets was not seen as wrong, but a natural way to protect the family. A Victorian reader would understand and applaud the need for cover up, where our own modern audience would see it as hypocritical.
For this reason, Stevenson does not give any of the men families: they have no one to protect but themselves. Their desire for secrecy is therefore more suspect and self-interested.
The huge growth in newspapers coincided with the huge improvements in literacy. But it also coincided with the changes in divorce law. Up until 1857, only the church could grant divorce. In the preceding 200 years there had been only around 300 divorces in the country. After this date, there were 1200 a year!
Another feature of the divorce law was that you had to be rich to pay for the court proceedings. So, each divorce was the equivalent of a celebrity scandal. To make things even more exciting for the newspapers, women couldn’t divorce men simply because they were repeatedly unfaithful. There had to be special cruelty, or incest or bestiality. Well you can imagine this made quite an impression in the newspapers.
There were also many famous newspaper stories associated with the theatre: actors murdering each other, female actresses faking suicide, numerous affairs of course, drag queens cited as love rivals, homosexual affairs, etc. This resonates when we learn that Utterson forbids himself to return to the theatre, though he had much enjoyed its pleasures before he learned to see them as sins.
We can also see why Stevenson disliked his own novel - it was designed to entertain the sorts of readers he disliked, those desperate for scandal and bloodshed. This is why the whole novel deals with hypocrisy and also helps explain why he left the UK forever shortly after it was published.
You can get top grades without knowing all this, but I hope to make it easier for you to get grade 9, and to develop interesting interpretations of your own.
This is based on an extract from my Guide to Doctor Jekyll and Hyde, available on Amazon.