Context — Jekyll and Hyde — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Context
Introduction
What you need to know
The Victorian context of Jekyll and Hyde: respectability and reputation among gentlemen, Darwin and fears of degeneration,
science and religion, Stevenson's Edinburgh and Deacon Brodie, late-Victorian London, and the Gothic.
How to use this context in an answer about the novella rather than as background.
Victorian respectability: gentlemen, reputation and hidden vice, and the professional men of the novella.
Darwin's On the Origin of Species and fears of degeneration, and Hyde's 'ape-like' violence.
Stevenson's Edinburgh, Deacon Brodie's double life, and Stevenson's Calvinist upbringing.
Science and religion in the 1880s, and the Gothic novella or 'shilling shocker'.
Eduqas's essay on this novel marks context as much as response and analysis: weave context into the argument, and treat the printed extract as a starting point, ranging across the beginning, middle and end of the novel.
