Question

Questions to Answer in Your Reading Journal:

What mood results from the description of the buildings and the weather?
What Gothic qualities are present in the description of the setting?
How does the description contribute to the suspense and mystery?
What, if anything, is lost in the translation from text to film?

Answer 1

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Setting

Utterson sought to locate Hyde and waited for him at Dr. Jekyll's laboratory, which Jekyll had completely given over to the mysterious man, and at an address in Soho not be as live to be known to be his residence.

The laboratory was two doors from one corner, on the left hand, going east the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two stories high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower story and a blind forehead of discolored wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was now blistered and distained.

Other days, Mr. Utterson waited to sight him in Soho. It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-colored pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare.

As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little and showed him a
dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating house, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry Jekyll's favorite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a million sterling.