Setting & Narrative
London: A City of Duality
Stevenson’s London is both real and symbolic. The city’s geography mirrors Jekyll’s duality: respectable streets sit next to squalid alleys; wealth borders poverty; daylight gives way to fog and darkness. The fog is described as “a great chocolate-coloured pall” that descends over the city, obscuring vision and blurring boundaries. When Utterson rides through Soho on the first foggy morning of the season, “the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber” — Stevenson uses pathetic fallacy to show that moral clarity is impossible in this world of concealment.
The contrast between day and night is central. By day, London’s streets are busy and respectable. By night, they become threatening and strange. Hyde operates at night; Jekyll maintains his reputation by day. The city itself has a dual identity.
London’s fog symbolises moral confusion and concealment. The city’s day/night contrast mirrors Jekyll/Hyde’s duality. Respectable streets border squalid alleys. The setting is not just background — it embodies the novella’s central theme.
The House with Two Faces
Jekyll’s house is the novella’s most powerful symbol. The front faces a respectable square and “wore a great air of wealth and comfort.” But the back is “a certain sinister block of building” on a by-street, with a door that is “blistered and distained” and has “neither bell nor knocker.” Hyde enters and exits through this back door. The house IS Jekyll’s duality made physical: a respectable front concealing a degraded rear.
Stevenson develops this symbolism throughout. Jekyll’s laboratory — where the transformations occur — is at the back of the house, hidden from view. The front rooms are elegant; the laboratory is a “dingy, windowless structure” — a former dissecting theatre. The architecture maps perfectly onto the theme: the pleasant, public rooms of Jekyll’s respectable life conceal the dark, private space where Hyde is created.
Doors and windows recur throughout the novella. The back door has no bell or knocker — it is designed for secret access. Jekyll’s window, from which Utterson and Enfield see him, is the threshold between his public and private selves: when they catch him there, his expression changes to one of “abject terror and despair.” The final scene involves Poole and Utterson breaking down Jekyll’s cabinet door — literally forcing open the space of concealment. Stevenson uses doors as structural metaphors for the barriers between public respectability and private truth.
Narrative Structure: The Mystery Unveiled
The novella uses a complex narrative structure with multiple perspectives. The first eight chapters follow Utterson’s investigation. Chapter 9 is Dr Lanyon’s narrative. Chapter 10 is ‘Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case.’ Each narrator sees only part of the truth; only when combined do they reveal the whole picture.
This structure serves several purposes. It creates suspense (the reader discovers the truth alongside Utterson). It mirrors the theme of concealment (the truth is literally buried in sealed documents). And it suggests that identity is never fully knowable from any single perspective. Stevenson tells us that even our closest friends may be strangers to us.
Three narrators: Utterson sees external evidence but not the truth; Lanyon witnesses the transformation and dies; Jekyll provides the full interior confession. Each perspective is partial. Only together do they reveal the whole story. This mirrors Victorian society’s fragmented understanding of the self.
Sealed Documents and Delayed Revelation
The truth about Jekyll and Hyde is contained in sealed documents: Jekyll’s will (which puzzles Utterson from the start), Lanyon’s letter (marked ‘not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr Henry Jekyll’), and Jekyll’s own statement. These sealed documents are a structural metaphor for repression: truth exists but is locked away, only to be released when concealment is no longer possible.
The novella’s final chapter — Jekyll’s statement — shifts from third-person mystery to first-person confession. This change in narrative voice forces the reader into Jekyll’s mind, creating uncomfortable intimacy with a man who has done terrible things. Stevenson wants us to understand Jekyll’s perspective, not just judge it.
The novella ends with Jekyll’s statement, not with Utterson’s reaction. There is no neat conclusion, no moral summary, no reassurance. Jekyll’s final words — “Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end” — leave us with his voice, his despair, and no comfort. Stevenson refuses to tidy up the horror. The reader must sit with the implications: that duality is universal, that repression creates monsters, and that no one can truly know another person.