Bachelorhood and Friendship Theme Analysis

Like many stories of Robert Louis Stevenson’s era, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde shows a world dominated by men and most of the featured characters are male. The streets of London, where all this violence takes place, are painted by the writer as a masculine society, particularly full of academic, well-educated men who keep in each other’s confidence and entertain a certain level of professional respect. Utterson and Jekyll are old friends, for example, and see each other often socially, but Jekyll also entrusts Utterson with his financial affairs, and so the relationship is both personal and professional. Lanyon and Jekyll are also old friends and dine together, but are first and foremost important to each other as professional rivals.

But though the male oriented society is perhaps not surprising for the time period, all of the main male characters are single bachelors. Traditional family life is unexplored in the book. This gives the personal lives of Utterson, Jekyll and others a lonely, isolated feeling. They live alone. They visit each other and then depart, but even their social calls have something that feels official about them. It is implied that the social constructs for these men, who have to deal with money, law, and science, may be taking them away from the communal traditions of family and friendship, and perhaps even religion, so that these men must relate to each other in a different, distanced way rather than talking face to face.