What's more shocking is the detailed violence that's wrapped up in this formal little Victorian package. Of course, modern readers will find some of the language here a bit out of touch ("a great flame of anger," "the air of one very much surprised"). Here, Stevenson relates the murder of Sir Danvers Carew by Mr.
At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt and at that Mr. In keeping with the book's theme of the split between the civilized and the uncivilized sides of human nature, though, the writing style is at once formal and proper, as well as dark and grimy.Īll of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman.
Today, we're far more laid back, but it's important to realize that this book was written for a different time and place. To the Victorians, manners were everything, and the appearance of being prim and proper counted for a whole heck of a lot. To be sure, Stevenson's work is full of antiquated structures and expressions, but it's also very Victorian in another sense, too: it minds its manners. What that means for us modern readers is that this book's style comes across as, well, old.
On the one hand, he's writing in the Victorian era, for a Victorian audience. In a book about the duality of human experience, we think it's only fitting that Robert Louis Stevenson uses a kind of split approach when it comes to the writing style of Strange Case of Dr.
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