The maid’s account of Carew’s murder is often regarded as a parody of popular Romantic fiction of the period. The maid watching the road on the night of the murder is described as “romantically given,” and this is borne out in her description of Danvers Carew:
[...] the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content.
Nowhere else in the novella can such a Romantic character description be found. From the way the moon seems to beam directly down on Carew, to the apparent “innocence” written on his face, to his resemblance to a stereotypical “old-world” gentleman, the maid’s account seems to be pulled through a sentimental sensibility that almost casts doubt on her story. Sir Danvers Carew is an extremely powerful man, a member of Parliament, walking in the middle of the night through what is likely a suspicious part of town (given that Hyde is walking down the same street). What he is doing there is anyone’s guess—and yet, he looks innocent and helpless to the young maid. This detail betrays her naivety; the borrowed trope of “old-world kindness” reveals a view of the world shaped largely by novels.
The maid’s naive, borrowed language creates a distinct tone, different from the other reported accounts (Lanyon’s, Jekyll’s, Poole’s, etc.) throughout the piece. While Jekyll and Lanyon’s letters read more like legal depositions, full of formal language and specific details (e.g. exact dates), the maid includes more self-consciously stylized descriptions that seem ridiculous in the context of Stevenson’s darker, more cynical depiction of London. Even Poole and Enfield, while retelling their versions of events, rely on slang or more direct language, compared to the maid’s long, flowery descriptions. The contrast between the melodramatic tone of the maid’s testimony and the events therein suggests that the Romantic ideals of popular fiction at the time were incompatible with or insufficient to capture the brutal reality of people’s lives in London.
