It is also described as having “muddy ways.” This evokes an image of dirt and grime and unpleasantness. Words like “dismal” and phrases such as “like a district in some city in a nightmare” give the area a sinister and hellish quality. The description of Soho is also one of bleakness and squalor. “Darkness” also gives a bleak and obscure feeling to the area. It uses “mournful” to bring out feelings of melancholy and gloom. The idiom “mournful reinvasion of darkness” again portrays dark themes. Carew in the book, using him as the light and Hyde as the dark side. This makes you envisage the light as being very weak and thin, failing against the power of the darkness. The phrase “haggard shaft of daylight” is also used. The expression “strange conflagration” is also a simile and is used to make the area seems hellish as a conflagration is a fire. It is described as “a great chocolate coloured pall lowered over heaven.” This phrase is a simile and the chocolate coloured description gives a dark, sinister feeling and the “pall” is a funeral cloth, and is, therefore, linked with gloomy, sad things. This creates an atmosphere of suspense and actually physically hides the setting. We see this with fog that has fallen over London. The other theme running through this novel is that of mystery and obscurity. The flat is first described as “furnished with luxury and good taste.” But it is then described as bearing “every mark of a room that has been recently ransacked.” This shows duality because it is refined and stylish as in the manner of Jekyll, but is also in a state of chaos like the character of Hyde. When we get to Hyde’s flat, we also see duality. She is described as having an “evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy but her manners were excellent.” This shows duality because although she looks evil, her manners suggest that she is not. The first of these instances is when we meet Hyde’s landlady. Utterson goes to Hyde’s flat in Soho, the theme of duality is brought up in many places. Stevenson uses setting as a feature to portray the ideas that run through the book.
Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ expresses the belief that evil lives inside all of us, and that sometimes the evil can escape from the control of those who are good.
‘Jekyll and Hyde’ does this by portraying Hyde as being a hairy, ape-like human. The book was published twenty-seven years after Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’ and they both made a link between man and ape. It was one of many horror stories of its time, but was the first to use science as an explanation for the perpetration of evil. Hyde’ is a gothic horror story written by R.L.