Repressed Sexuality and Drug Abuse in Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2012 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: A, Northern Arizona University, course: The Novel and Its Tradition, language: English, abstract: Few stories that are over a hundred years old retain as much importance in popular imagination as Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Aside from the title characters becoming a shorthand description for a person who manifests a frightening bipolarity, the novel's gothic depiction of London remains the popular conception of the city during the late Victorian era. Though the story is commonly interpreted as a depiction of good and evil and the duality of man, I submit that Jekyll and Hyde is in large part a gothic allegory about repressed homosexuality and covert substance abuse.