Power point presentation about a book

1. ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’
What does this title mean to
you?

2. Does ‘The Strange Case…’
suggest anything more?

3. Doppelganger
German word literally translated
‘double-goer’.
‘An apparition or double of a living
person’.

4. What would YOUR doppelganger be
like?
Appearance?
Personality?

5. ‘Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde’ was written at a
time when the concept of a ‘double-self’
or ‘twin’ and the idea that things are
not always as they appear were
discussed and explored in literature.

6. ‘Frankenstein’ by
Mary Shelley
Published 1818

7. Dr. Jekyll &
Mr. Hyde
By
Robert Louis
Stevenson
Published
1886

8. ‘The
Picture of
Dorian
Gray’
by
Oscar
Wilde
Published
1891

9. The theme of ‘the double’
• The two faces of Edinburgh
• Stevenson’s own double life
• Darwin’s ‘The Origin of the Species’

10. The Two Faces Of Edinburgh
The prosperous,
middle class New
Town where
Stevenson grew
up.

11. The Two Faces of Edinburgh
• The ‘old black city’ with
its poverty, disease and
overcrowding.
• Much of the novel takes
place at night. The
characters come and go
either late at night or
in the early hours of
the morning.

12. William ‘Deacon’ Brodie
• Edinburgh had a dark
past that fed the young
Stevenson’s imagination
and taste for horror.
• The story of William
Brodie, well respected
craftsman by day,
criminal by night & hanged
in 1788 interested
Stevenson. In his
bedroom he had a cabinet
made by Brodie.

13. Stevenson’s own double life
• When he was 17 and
studying engineering at
Edinburgh University,
Robert Louis spent a lot
of time in the Old Town.
• It is argued that he, like
Jekyll, was leading a
double life- respectable
by day, debauched at
night.

14. The Church
• Although he enjoyed this bohemian lifestyle, his
witnessing of these double standards made him
determined to avoid hypocrisy and to react
against the strict Scottish Presbyterian
background which he felt created it.
• Through the teaching of his strongly
Presbyterian nanny, Stevenson was given the
impression that the church saw things as very
black and white- there are ‘good’ people and
‘bad’ people. Stevenson refutes this in ‘Jekyll
and Hyde’ and argues that there is good and
bad in all mankind.

15. ‘The Origin of the Species’
• Published in 1859.
• The unpalatable theory
that man had descended
from apes.
• Stevenson used this
controversial idea and
wanted to introduce his
ideas about the ‘beast in
man’ and the attempts to
hide, if not subdue,
animal passions.
• Victorian society was
strict- you had to hide
secret desires in public
and indulge them at night.

16. Repressed Sexual Desire
• Especially prey to these animal passions were
men who believed that they could exist
perfectly well ‘without the aid of women’, men
like Enfield, Utterson, Layton and Jekyll.
• There are repeated references to locked doors,
cabinets and secret chambers reinforcing the
idea that the beast must not only be hidden but
imprisoned.
• ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ is partly about sexual
repression but the subject of sex is never
explicitly mentioned in the novel.

17. Jack the Ripper
• Jack the Ripper killed
five prostitutes within two
years of Stevenson’s novel
being published and at the
same time that a
dramatised version was
playing in the West End.
• People got confused, could
not remember which came
first, and some blamed
Stevenson for inspiring
the murders.