Jekyll and Hyde

In this novel, setting plays a particularly large role and gives the reader a sense of anticipation of what types of things are to come. Stevenson does a very interesting job in contrasting the two very different sides of London. When contrasting two streets he states, "the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighborhood." (62). Throughout the novel Stevenson contrasts two different settings, light and dark, good vs evil with a direct correlation to the charracters that were in the scene. Whenever Dr. Jekyll was in the scene, readers were left with a sense of positivity and good because of the adjectives to describe the setting. For one thing, scenes wih Dr. Jekyll took place in the light, in which there was no mystery to his appearance.
On the contrary, scenes with Hyde were almost all in the dark. Even scenes that were in the day time, as soon as Hyde would be close to entering the scne, immediate darkness and fog would enter,only mysteriously lit by moonlight or street lights, building the reader's anticipation and deepening the sense of terror and curiosity. When Utterson goes to visit Dr. Jekyll in his theatre in daylight, the setting changes drastically, "...and he eyed the windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed around with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre...and the light falling dimly through the cupola." (p.82). Stevenson's extreme contrast in setting mirrors his theme of the duality of man. I believe that he is saying everything in this world has a duality, even nature.
Stevenson's setting is a bit different from Castle of Otronto in that his setting isn't stationary like the old castle was in COO. Instead Stevenson's setting follows the characters. I got the image of this big cloud of fog constantly following Hyde to conceal his identity, let him continue to hide and maintain that sense of mystery to the novel, which only added to the sense of terror.
In addition to the settings following the characters, there were stationary settings typical of gothic novels. The windowless house of Hyde in Soho created a sense of mystery right off the bat, especially with the description of the door which "was eqipped with bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained." (63)
Setting plays a very large role in this novel and builds the readers sense of terror and anticipation.