Biography of Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson {originally named Robert Lewis Stevenson} was born November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the only son of respectable middle-class parents.
Throughout his childhood, he suffered chronic health problems that confined him to bed. In his youth, his strongest influence was that of his nurse, Allison Cunningham, who often read Pilgrim's Progress and The Old Testament to him. In 1867, Stevenson entered Edinburgh University as a science student, where it was tacitly understood that he would follow his father's footsteps and become a civil engineer. However, Robert was at heart a romantic, and while ostensibly working towards a science degree, he spent much of his time studying French Literature, Scottish history, and the works of Darwin and Spencer. When he confided to his father that he did not want to become an engineer and instead wished to pursue writing, his father was quite upset. They settled on a compromise, where Robert would study for the Bar exam and if his literary ambitions failed, he would have a respectable profession to fall back on.
In order to fully comprehend the world in which Stevenson was raised, it is necessary to understand that there were two Edinburghs, both of which helped mold his personality and life outlook. On the one hand, there was the respectable, conventional, deeply religious, and polite New Town. On the other hand was a much more bohemian Edinburgh, with brothels, shady characters and underhanded dealings. The juxtaposition of these starkly different parts of town made a deep impression on Stevenson and strengthened his fascination with the duality of human nature, later providing the theme for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the fall of 1873, Stevenson fell ill, suffering from nervous exhaustion and a severe chest condition. His doctor ordered him to take an extended period of rest abroad. For the next six months, he convalesced in the South of France, and worked on essays. On his return to Edinburgh, he spent much of his time writing book reviews and articles and experimenting with short stories. Slowly but surely, he earned a name for himself in journalism and his pieces began appearing in distinguished journals such as The Fortnightly Review. While establishing his name as a writer, Stevenson met an American married woman, Fanny Vandergrift Osbourne, who was ten years his senior. Osbourne had traveled to Europe in an attempt to escape her estranged husband's influence. For three years, Stevenson, who was still in ill health, continued his relationship with her and eventually followed her to San Francisco, where she divorced her husband and married Stevenson in May 1880.
In 1878, Stevenson published An Inland Voyage, which recounts a canoeing holiday in Belgium. In August 1880, the Stevensons returned to England. He and his wife wintered in the South of France and lived in England from 1880-1887, a period of time was marked by great literary achievement. Stevenson's first novel, Treasure Island, was published in 1883, followed by The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Kidnapped (1886). Stevenson's work was highly popular and he received great critical acclaim.
Upon his father's death in 1887, Stevenson chose to leave England and sailed for America, where he stayed for a year. In May 1888, accompanied by his wife, stepson, and mother, he set sail for the South Seas. Stevenson grew so enchanted by the life of the South Seas that in December 1889 he bought an estate in Apia, Samoa, convinced that he could never again endure the harsh winters of his native Scotland or England.
Apia was a perfect location because the climate was tropical but not wild, the people were friendly and hard working, and there was good postal service in the country.
Stevenson lived at his 300-acre estate, Vailima, in the hills of Apia until his death in 1894. While in Vailima, Stevenson wrote a great deal, completing two of his finest novellas, "The Beach of Falesa" and "The Ebb Tide", two novels, The Wrecker and Catriona, the short stories "The Bottle Imp," "The Isle of voices," and "The Waif Woman." He also published short works under the title Fables. Stevenson left a significant amount of work unfinished, including St. Ives, The Young Chevalier, Heathercat, and Weir of Hermiston, which he worked on enthusiastically until the day of his death. On December 3, 1894 he dictated another installment of the novel, seemed in excellent spirits, and was speaking with his wife in the evening when he felt a violent pain in his head and lost consciousness. Stevenson had suffered a brain hemorrhage and died a few hours later at the age of forty-four.
About Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at Bournemouth in 1885, while convalescing from an illness. The original idea occurred to him in a nightmare from which his wife awakened him. In fact, Stevenson was disappointed that she had interrupted a "fine bogey-tale," but eventually developed the idea into a full-length narrative. Originally, Stevenson's idea was to compose a straightforward horror story, with no allegorical undertones. However, after reading the original version to his wife, she suggested more could be made of the tale. After initially resisting, Stevenson burned the original manuscript and rewrote the entire novel in only three days.
Immediately upon its publication in January of 1887, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was recognized as a grand work. An anonymous review in "The Times" praised the book highly, observing that, "Nothing Mr. Stevenson has written as yet has so strongly impressed us with the versatility of his very original genius." The review concluded with the plea that the story, "be read as a finished study in the art of fantastic literature."
Critics claim that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the first work in which Stevenson sustained a full-length narrative that was not only exciting, but also well-composed story with a powerful and timely parable.
Stevenson lived and wrote during the Victorian era, when Queen Victoria ruled England. The Victorian era brought a great deal of technological progress and the advancement of European power throughout the world. However, during the height of Stevenson's writing at the end of the nineteenth century, artists, writers and intellectuals were beginning to move away from the celebration of "progress" that had so defined the times, and were questioning the relevance and permanence of the global domination of Western culture. As a part of this increasingly pessimistic group of writers, Stevenson based this book on his own experiences. He focuses on a milieu he knew well: the upper middle class highly social world of powerful men in which issues such as appearance and dress are extremely important. In examining this superficial existence, Stevenson targets the hypocrisy of social strata and the danger of allowing the innate evilness of human nature to run free in his narrative of a respectable doctor who transforms himself into a savage murderer.
The conclusion of the book reveals the now universally known revelation that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde inhabit the same body. Dr. Jekyll is the picture of social class and professional excellence, while Mr. Hyde is the embodiment of Jekyll's otherwise hidden evil nature. By distinctly separating these two ironically inextricably combined polar opposites, Stevenson examines man's relationship with good and evil, and comments on the constant war and balance between the two. In the broadly cultural context of the Victorian era, Hyde might be comparable to Western culture's fascination with perceived "savage" countries and cultures, specifically in Africa and the West Indies, while Jekyll is the embodiment of English manners, pride, and high culture. In examining, visiting and conquering remote countries, England and Europe believed they were civilizing savage peoples, most often working to convert the inhabitants to Christianity. Although fascinated by these strange new cultures, Europeans dismissed their ways of life as base. Thus, Dr. Jekyll represents the European approach to colonization in his examination of base, savage ideals. However, he proves unable to control his evil self or hide (Hyde) his fascination with it and thus dies in the process of trying to regain his original refined identity.
Many critics have mentioned the undercurrent of homosexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The men in the novel have very close personal relationships, women play no role in the story or in the men's lives, and at times, it seems that outsiders believe Dr. Jekyll and the mysterious Mr. Hyde's relationship is sexually deviant in nature. However, this notion is never directly expressed. Interestingly, in every stage or film version of the story from 1920 to the present, both Jekyll and Hyde's involvement with women has been an essential part of his/their image. Stevenson's 1886 narrative contains no focus on women or romantic relationships, and is instead an "intellectual" horror story that examines the fundamental nature of man.
Although Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is widely recognized as a monumental piece of fiction, Stevenson's concept of duality within human identity was not completely originally. In fact, he had encountered precursors to his tale long before he wrote the novel. Most frequently as influential to the development of Stevenson's work are E.T.A. Hoffman's The Devil's Elixirs (1816), Thomas Jefferson Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson (1839), and most significantly, Theophile Gautier's Le Chevalier Double (1840). Gautier's story centers on the protagonist, Oluf, who has a double nature and leads a tormented life, much like Jekyll and Hyde.