Choose a novel in which setting is an important feature.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is a novel in which setting plays an important feature. In the book Dr Jekyll represents good and Mr Hyde represents evil, yet they are technically the same person and come to symbolise the good and evil in all of us. The novel is set in London but draws heavily on Stevenson’s knowledge of his hometown Edinburgh to create a chilling setting which emphasises the themes of good and evil.

Setting is most important as a symbol for the characters of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Jekyll owns a fancy town house with a tumble down lab on the back. The town house is described as having an ‘open fire’ in the front hall. This represents Jekyll as it is warm and inviting and hugely welcoming – all things that match Jekyll’s character. The fact that he can build a fire in his front hall and not just his main rooms suggests he is wealthy and likes to display his wealth. Again it is a symbol for the man himself. We are also told that the street on which his house sits is filled with similar houses – his though is the only one kept clean and tidy and whole, the rest have become slightly messy. This is in keeping with Jekyll’s character as we know he is concerned with his reputation and making himself look good to other people which his house certainly does. Hyde on the other hand is a secretive creature who doesn’t so much lurk in the shadows as lives only in the night. He doesn’t hide from other people but he doesn’t really interact with them either, or encourage interactions. The lab door sums up his character perfectly. Unlike the main house it juts out on an alley street, its windows are covered and the door bears no knocker and hasn’t been cleaned for entry. The windows emulate Hyde’s private nature, he doesn’t want people prying into his business. The lack of a knocker shows he doesn’t want or expect guests. The untidiness of the doorway similarly keeps people from visiting. The text also describes the lab as a ‘sinister block of buildings’ – there is something off about them, just like we are told there is something off or ‘deformed’ about Hyde’s appearance. Setting here, in the form of the house, serves to reinforce the characters of Hyde and Jekyll and further highlights the theme of good versus evil.

The Victorian London setting is important because it is what pushes Jekyll into making Hyde. Stevenson had apparently considered setting his tale in Edinburgh, with its sordid, poverty-stricken old town and glossy, illustrious new town making clear allusions to Jekyll and Hyde’s personalities again. However, in high London society a man’s reputation was everything and he had to behave. It is far easier to explain Jekyll’s actions against the backdrop of London society than Edinburgh’s. Jekyll is repressed by his lifestyle as a rich doctor, it is only as Hyde that he can do what he actually wants and so he creates Hyde. The setting is important here because it is what forces Jekyll’s hand into making an alternative persona for himself.

Setting is important in the initial chapters where Utterson’s dream makes the minotaur and his maze a metaphor for Hyde and his London. We have already had descriptions of Hyde as a ‘juggernaut’ something huge and threatening. This image is built up further with his comparison to the minotaur, a monstrous beast that was used to control and terrorise the Greek town of Minos. Hyde similarly terrorises the occupants of London as he will trample and destroy any who get in his way – the little girl and Sir Carew. London’s twisting medieval streets and fogged new streets become the maze in which the minotaur was kept. You never know when the minotaur or Hyde might appear to hurt you. Setting then becomes a metaphor for the playground of evil.

Setting is also important as Stevenson often uses dramatic epithet to show a change in the mood of a scene to show that something is about to happen. We are often told about the ‘rolling fog’ in the streets of London. It hides Hyde literally and cloaks the shady characters of the night. In the final chapters of the novel the fog becomes a horrible storm, rain lashes and the streets are empty. This adds a sense of foreboding as we know something is going to happen the streets are too physically quiet of people as if something bad is about to happen. Utterson is then escorted by Poole to Jekyll’s house and we finally discover that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. Setting here was used to suggest and hint that the plot was about to take a turn for the worst.