Robert Louis Stevenson Research Paper

Biography: Robert Louis Stevenson was born into a religious, middle class family in 1850. His father's side of the family were deep sea engineers who built lighthouses along the Scottish coast. His mother’s side were lawyers and church ministers (Barret). During childhood, Stevenson was often ill due to the weak lungs he inherited from his mother. As a result, he spent a lot of time with the family nurse who told him stories which may have cause “the instinct of authorship to fire within him” (Simpson). At age 17, Stevenson went to university to study engineering like his father. He soon dropped out with the compromise of studying law, however, he already knew that he wanted to be an author. After university, Stevenson became rebellious and

From a young age Stevenson wrote with strongly religious themes, most likely due to his strictly religious upbringing. However, after university, Stevenson went through a rebellious stage which his work reflected through his criticism of the “morbidity of religious education and the stiffness of middle class values” (Teuber). Later on, his persona matured in Samoa, where he still wrote critically about society, but he found joy in his work. Stevenson was frequently described as observant of humankind, and even a “debonair flaneur” (Barret). His observational skills are evident in his complex characterisation in which characters have psychological depth and moral ambiguity, such as Dr Jekyll in The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, who struggles with his own morality. Stevenson often writes in a “range of narrative voices [which encourage] constant questioning and analysis” (Macdougall). Stevenson’s work focusses more introspectively and emotionally rather than on fine details. Plot structures tend to be confusing and symbolic, ultimately ending with a moral lesson and explanation of the events, such as the last few chapters in The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where Stevenson explains the events of the book in a letter from Dr Jekyll . Fitting in with the characteristics of Victorian literature, dominant themes throughout Stevenson’s work include morality, hypocrisy of

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