London—and even the modern city in general—is the key to fully exploring Stevenson's theme of duality. The London street on which the novel begins is an important setting throughout the story. Victorian London was new and exciting, and Stevenson portrays it as both beautifully majestic and mysteriously dark.
The duality of the story would have a very hard time existing without London. Bustling crowds provide anonymity, dim gaslit streets provide the cover of night, and the urban underworld provides the perfect location for Hyde. Within this side of London, Hyde enjoys a certain form of freedom, and one could argue that Jekyll would not be able to pursue this duality without London being idyllic on one side and dark on the other.
London can also be seen as a direct representation of Jekyll and Hyde themselves. Jekyll contributes to London society and is also well-liked and highly-respected. He is the personification of idyllic London: intelligent, respectable, and generous. Hyde, on the other hand, is ugly, frightening, and crude. It seems perfect that he stalks the foggy streets of London after nightfall; we would never imagine seeing the proper Dr. Jekyll lurking around during the night.
London is a two-faced city. There is the respectable side, represented by the grand entrance to Dr. Jekyll's estate, with its butler and drawing room. But there is a back entrance too, suggesting that the two worlds coexist, overlap, and are eternally connected. The scenes in which Stevenson comes to describe the London underbelly are interesting in their presentation. Despite being one of the largest cities in the world at this time, London still manages to be deserted, creepy, foggy, surreal, and unsettling at these key scenes.
In the "Incident of the Letter," Stevenson writes this:
The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room was gay with firelight.
Here we see this duality—the gleaming, cozy interior and the world that is strange, dark, anonymous. At other times, it is the interior which is the place of desperation, while the outside world is comfortable and safe.
Many Romantic novels set themselves in the natural world. Stevenson gets around this by making London itself both a civilization and a wilderness. In the last chapter, he writes, "It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face."
Here we see the wild power of nature invading the city—as we have already seen the bestial tendencies of nature invading the human heart.
Just as Mr. Hyde represents the dark underbelly of Dr. Jekyll, the setting of Victorian London possesses such a duality as well. On the surface, London is the civilized, cosmopolitan capital of one of the most powerful countries in the world. Society is polite, and high moral standards are firmly in place. This is one reason that Dr. Jekyll feels the need to experiment with his fundamental humanness in the first place. He has found himself drawn to things -- what those things are we never learn -- that are less than seemly for a morally upright, well-respected doctor. Rather than deal with his own demons or accept himself as humanly flawed, Jekyll decides to try to eliminate his own darkness by separating it from his goodness. The problem? Once separated, the darker part of his nature actually becomes more powerful than the good. Just like Dr. Jekyll possesses a fundamental human propensity for breaking rules or doing things that would not be socially acceptable, so too does London possess a dark, hidden, side: this is the era, after all, of Jack the Ripper and the sensationalized rise of garrotting (street robberies). While Londoners often tried to maintain appearances of propriety, they were simultaneously drawn to stories of crime and murder. Just as Jekyll cannot hide his dark side, neither can London or London society.
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