Setting & Narrative
London as a Character
Stevenson’s London is a city of contrasts. Respectable streets give way to “dingy” lanes without warning. Fog descends and lifts unpredictably, concealing and revealing. The fog is not just weather — it is a metaphor for the obscured truth that pervades the novella. When Utterson investigates, he moves through “a great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven… the fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city.” The language of sleep and darkness suggests a city that does not want to see clearly.
Settings in the novella consistently reflect the theme of duality. Scenes of respectability are disrupted by violence: the Carew murder happens on a moonlit street, the trampling occurs at a busy corner. Stevenson shows that evil does not confine itself to dark alleys — it erupts in public spaces, breaking through the surface of civilised life.
Jekyll’s house is the novella’s most important setting. The handsome front door opens onto a respectable street; the sinister back door (where Hyde enters) opens onto a rundown lane. The two entrances represent Jekyll’s dual nature — the public face of respectability and the private entrance for vice. The laboratory connecting them is where the transformation occurs: the space where public and private selves meet.
Narrative Structure: Multiple Perspectives
Stevenson uses an unusual narrative structure. The first eight chapters are third-person narration focused through Utterson. Chapters 9 and 10 switch to first-person accounts from Lanyon and Jekyll respectively. This structure creates a layered revelation: the reader gets the “outside view” first (what people see) and the “inside view” last (what Jekyll feels). The truth is discovered in reverse — the explanation comes after the events, forcing the reader to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew.
The novella’s characters are almost entirely male. There are no significant female characters: the maidservant witnesses the Carew murder, and the child and the old woman are brief presences. This homosocial world reflects Victorian gentlemen’s culture of clubs, professional partnerships, and male friendships. It also intensifies the theme of secrecy: these men are bound by codes of discretion that prevent them from asking each other uncomfortable questions.
Some critics read the absence of women as significant for what it conceals. Jekyll’s “undignified pleasures” are never specified, and Victorian readers would have understood the implication: the vices of gentlemen were sexual, financial, or narcotic — but always hidden. Stevenson’s vagueness is deliberate: by not naming Jekyll’s sins, he makes them universal.
Gothic Techniques
Stevenson employs classic Gothic techniques: dark settings, locked doors, mysterious sounds, and a sense of building dread. But he adapts the Gothic for a modern urban setting. The terror of Jekyll and Hyde is not supernatural — it is psychological and scientific. The most frightening element is not a ghost or a monster but the discovery that the monster lives inside the respectable doctor next door.
Throughout the novella, characters use the language of concealment. Enfield tells Utterson: “I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.” Utterson reflects: “If he be Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr Seek.” Even when characters resolve to investigate, they wrap their intentions in wordplay and deflection. Stevenson shows that Victorian language itself is a form of concealment — a way of talking about things without naming them.
This linguistic concealment mirrors the novella’s larger argument: Victorian society has developed sophisticated ways of hiding its dual nature. The polished language, the codes of propriety, the refusal to ask uncomfortable questions — these are not just social habits but defence mechanisms against the terrifying truth that civilised people contain savage impulses.
Stevenson’s narrative structure (outside view first, inside view last) forces the reader to discover the truth in reverse. His language of concealment (characters refusing to name what they see) mirrors Victorian society’s defence against uncomfortable truths. Both techniques make the reader experience the same discomfort as the characters: we know something is wrong but cannot quite name it.