The Victorian period was one of ever-increasing prosperity and power for the British, but it was also characterised by social problems arising from the new industrial conditions, by doubts and hopes inspired by the new science and by debates about what constitutes crime and what punishment. At the same time interest in the workings of the mind and human motivation grew together with an exploration of good and evil that went beyond the rules provided by religion. Sir Robert Peel as Home Secretary had brought in measures which developed a modern police force and created a modern bureaucratic state, and it was in this context that detective fiction as a literary form originated.
Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde begins like a detective story but turns into something much darker and more Gothic; what appears to be a case to be solved, leaves the reader not only puzzled as to the outcome but also concerning the identity of the narrator. Jekyll’s discovery that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” comes at a time when doubles or second selves have long been the staple of a literature fascinated by psychology and the recognition that every personality contains good and evil. We shall discuss these preoccupations and other influences which shaped the writing of Stevenson’s story, as well as the theories of atavism and heredity that inspired parts of The Hound of the Baskervilles. In this story, Sherlock Holmes appears to have to fight supernatural forces, but as always he insists that the detective’s first principle should be to separate the empirical from the fanciful and the reliable from the imagined. In his “consulting detective”, Conan Doyle created a character who embodies a kind of reassurance, a certainty that order will be restored, crime will be solved, that the criminal will leave behind a trail of evidence that can be recovered and will enable the forces of justice to trace him, that the rational mind will triumph over the messy and cruel reality of human life. So we expect a tidy resolution!
Learning outcomes
- To gain a critical appreciation of literary and historical contexts;
- To articulate an informed response to the texts and some of the issues covered on the course;
- To demonstrate an analytical, literary-critical approach to reading these works.
