Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Includes in-depth Study Guide, Chapter Analysis, Biography, and the complete Novella)

By BookCaps

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the ultimate battle of good and evil. While it is a short book, it is packed solid with complex themes and characters. If you want to understand the book in greater depth, then let BookCaps help with this in-depth companion to Stevenson's classic work.

BookCap Study Guides are not meant to be purchased as alternatives to reading the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: May 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476173375

BookCaps

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Robert Louis Stevenson’s

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Includes Complete Text, Study Guide, Biography, and Character Index

Golgotha Press

By BookCaps Study Guides

© 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc.

Published at SmashWords

www.bookcaps.com

The Life and Times of Robert Louis Stevenson

Times

Robert Louis Stevenson was born into a mid-19th century Scottish upper middle-class family. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was from a dynasty of successful engineers who had much to do with the design and implementation of Scottish lighthouses. His mother’s family was headed by her father, a dour Presbyterian minister. The families on both sides were large, as was typical of the time. Untypically, Lewis, as his parents called him, was an only child.

Thomas and Margaret Stevenson were certainly Christians, traditionally so by their class, belonging to the Presbyterian Church, which was the state church of Scotland. Most of the middle and upper class and educated residents of Scotland would have attended the Presbyterian Church, or the Kirk as it was known, during the Victorian era. As also befitted their class, they were not evangelical or mystical – there was no adherence to anything fanatical or extreme. While the Presbyterian Church was Calvinist in origin and austere at its heart better off members would have conducted their religion in a quiet, civilized way. Thomas and Margaret devoted in their marriage and not distracted by a houseful of children left much of the upbringing of their only child to the family nurse. Alison Cunningham did adhere to a fanatical and less sophisticated form of Presbyterianism and passed on her brand of worship to young Lewis, who spent much of his formative years in her care. His rather sensitive and bohemian ways, even as an adult may have been influenced by Miss Cunningham, unbeknownst or ignored by his parents, who typical of parents of the time had little idea of how Lewis was being shaped.

Stevenson’s family background put some pressure on him to do well professionally if not academically. Even as an adult he felt he had not lived up to what he should have accomplished – he briefly studied engineering and successfully completed his law exams (though he never practiced law). Stevenson came from a society that placed high value on education – Scots valued scholarship and had a long tradition of achievement in science, engineering, and medicine. As a nation, they were considered to be industrious if dour.

As Robert Louis Stevenson matured, he developed into a restless young man. Thanks to advances in travel and his own parents’ comfortable circumstances, he was able to travel extensively. Europe was opening up to the wealthy – it was very fashionable to make grand tours and visit the repositories of antiquities. Had Stevenson been born even fifty years earlier, he would have been much curtailed in his ability to travel.

As a writer, Stevenson began his career when literacy had increased immensely in the English speaking world. As was the case for other Victorian writers at the time, there were countless periodicals that were eager for essays, stories, and poems. Stevenson was able to supply all three – he was adept in all the genres. He was a good story teller and the public was happy to lap up his adventure tales, even those ostensibly meant for youngsters.

When Stevenson declared himself an agnostic in his early twenties, his parents were appalled. Turning against religion was just not done in their times and their social circle. Stevenson never really forgave himself for telling his parents about his religious views. He genuinely cared for his parents and knew it was a terrible blow for them. His marriage to a divorced American did not go down very well either – Louis was not behaving conventionally for his time or class.

Stevenson’s health was fragile for most of his life, not unusual for the times he lived in, and his overall health might well have been weakened by living in damp houses. There was later speculation too, that some of the medicines and potions given to Louis as a child might have done some damage to his nervous system. He died at the age of forty-four, despite spending the last seven or eight years in the South Seas, where he had hoped the climate would improve his health.

Family

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. On the Stevenson side of his family, he was the son and grandson of engineers. In the seventeenth century earlier Stevensons had been farmers and maltsters near Glasgow. In the late eighteenth century Robert Louis’ grandfather, also named Robert, was taken into the engineering firm of his step-father, a man named Thomas Smith. Robert had a particularly close relationship with his stepfather, who had been widowed twice before marrying widow Jean (nee Lillie) Stevenson in 1791. In time, Robert’s son Thomas followed his father into the firm.

Robert Stevenson married his stepsister Jane Smith in 1799. There was no legal impediment to such an arrangement – after all, they were not blood relatives. Robert had known Jane since she was eight years old – and he was fifteen. A year after their marriage, Thomas made his stepson/son-in-law a full partner in his engineering firm. Smith had made a good business move – for Robert was ambitious and a brilliant engineer. The family firm specialized in lighthouses and became known for their innovative designs. Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer, always felt somewhat inadequate that he was a mere writer and not an engineer, or at least, that he had not succeeded at both occupations.

The Stevenson name was highly regarded in Edinburgh. Robert and Jane had thirteen children but of those, eight died in infancy. Four sons and a daughter survived. The youngest son, Thomas, would become the father of Robert Louis.

The Stevensons belonged to the Presbyterian Church and were strict Calvinists – hard work and frugality were their watchwords. Robert Stevenson heavily involved himself in his children’s lives and when they married, he did not change his style. Robert Louis referred to his grandfather as a martinet and recalled that no-one escaped his eagle eye.

Thomas, Robert Louis’ father, was not much of a student and did not do well at mathematics, a serious drawback for an engineer. Later he would almost encourage his son to neglect his lessons. Thomas had hated school and the corporal punishment he suffered there was certainly a factor.

Robert Louis’ parents met in the fall of 1847, when Thomas was almost thirty and his future wife, Margaret Isabella Balfour, was eighteen, the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman. She was the youngest of thirteen children and was attractive, intelligent, and of an optimistic nature. Thomas tended to indulge and protect her. The couple married about a year after they met, on the anniversary of her father’s ordination – and he performed the marriage ceremony.

Margaret, known as Maggie, was to be an ideal wife of the time, catering to her husband’s wishes and soothing him when his moods turned low. She generally closed her eyes to anything unpleasant, rather than try to face it head-on. She was thought to have suffered fragile health in her youth and spent the better part of her son’s youth dealing with one ailment or another, later in life she became a voracious traveler and coped with all kinds of rough conditions and inconveniences in her quest to see the world.

Thomas’ father, Robert Stevenson died in the summer of 1850 and when he and Margaret’s son was born a few months later Thomas named him for his father and Margaret named him for her father – the baby boy was given the name Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. His parents called him Lewis or Lew.

Margaret had no more children – highly unusual for her time, when families of eight to a dozen children were not uncommon. Young Lewis had fifty-four first cousins, many of them bearing the names Lewis or Robert! Whether Margaret’s lack of fecundity was due to deliberate birth control (methods were highly unreliable at the time) or a physical cause is not known but the couple did spend much time worrying about their health – possibly a decision was made not to put Margaret through childbirth again.

Lewis survived infancy intact but developed croup when he was third, and his survival increased his parents’ worries about his health. They also hired and lost several nurses for Lewis during his early years. One took the baby into a bar and left him on the counter while she downed a few gins. Finally they found their dream nurse – Alison Cunningham, a serious, non-drinking religious single lady – the perfect servant. She remained in the employ of the Stevensons for twenty years and was considered indispensable.

This was the family Lewis grew up in – an only child who while not enjoying the trappings of wealth, was far from living in poverty – cosseted and doted on by parents with no other children to see to – and his every need met by a faithful servant. The Stevenson and Balfour lineages were respectable enough to be proud of, and the families were staunchly connected the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Robert Louis Stevenson was steeped in a family tradition of hard work, a dour Christianity, and pride of forebears.

Childhood

Robert Louis Stevenson, born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh, Scotland on November 13th, 1850 was the only child of Thomas Stevenson and Margaret Balfour. The future writer was to be surrounded by adults as a child – his parents employed a nurse, Alison Cunningham, known as Cummy, who would be a good and faithful servant, remaining in the Stevenson household for twenty years. Miss Cunningham quite literally devoted her life to her young charge.

Lewis, as he was known to his family, was rather frail as he entered his pre-school years. He did suffer from chest ailments (the scourge of tuberculosis was always present in the 19th century world) and his growth was erratic. He was very thin and spent many days in bed suffering from a series of ailments. Margaret Stevenson kept a diary and recorded Lewis’ illnesses – which included bronchitis, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and a persistent cough that worried everyone. Considering his symptoms, today he might have been diagnosed with asthma. His continuing health problems may have been due to the damp houses the family lived in. But in 1857 the Stevensons moved to a house on Heriot Row, in the fashionable area of Edinburgh known as New Town. The house reflected wealth and gentility – there was more than enough room for a family of three and their servants.

Robert Louis Stevenson looked back on his own childhood as neither a time of wonderment nor a time of despair. It was a mixed blessing, in his view, to be the only child of financially secure doting parents and the charge of a dedicated nurse. It was later speculated that the sleeping potions and wine given young Lewis for his ailing stomach wreaked havoc on his developing constitution.

Lewis could probably have benefited from having a sibling, as he said later in life, the children of lovers are orphans. His parents, while devoted to each other, left much of his day to day care to Alison Cunningham. One of Cummy’s negative influences was her