Violent disruptions: Victorian Warnings & Fascination for a Dystopian and Inorganic Society which Became the Anthropocene

Abstract

While the Victorian Era has been analyzed as a period of slavery, colonialism, and race based on self-adjudicated supremacy, little thought has been given to the ecological implications of such imperialism and the warnings literary works presented such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This essay aligns itself with a body of literature that looks retrospectively at Victorian literature through the lenses of the geological time known as Anthropocene since, as proposed by Taylor, “Victorian studies in the Anthropocene […] align with the historical period during which the Anthropocene emerged” (574). By analyzing Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one may assert that it identifies warnings to the shift towards industrialization that impend in the Victorian era, and it offers possible implications for such a shift. Additionally, it makes acute emphasis on the novella’s imagery as redolent of a fascination for dystopianism, which is articulated, we argue, through the (self)-monster making of Dr. Jekyll. Hence, this paper is divided in three main sections. The first one is an introduction to the historical context that took place before Victorian times, making an emphasis on the transition from the Romantic, pastoral England when Romantics “recognized no radical separation between self and nature” (Reed 364) to the industrial, utilitarian England (Dimmock). The second section deals with illustrations and arguments of ecologically-monstruous behaviors of Victorian times materialized in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Lastly, the third section addresses (a) moral issues during said Victorian times, which might, in turn, become unheeded warnings for generations to come.