It is very interesting to start reading Robert Louis Stevenson's, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Mary Shelley's short story, "The Mortal Immortal", at the same time because it draws a new light on Gothic literature. It still is a form of romanticism, because the reader still gets indulged and swept away in the possibility of the impossible, but instead of Abbey's and Heroines, these two authors tell a tale with more of a scientific spin to the Gothic era.
In the "Mortal Immortal", Shelley brings in potions to create things that could never happen in real life. The first potion to create perfect love and the second to give the main character, Winzy, immortality. Through these romanticized, scientific experiments, we can question Shelley about the reliability of her narrator. He claims to have been living for 323 years! We can either blindly trust him, or wonder if the potion really gave him immortality, or if he literally went crazy by drinking some sort of mixed up concoction, that nobody really knows what is inside.
In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson is presenting a similar scenario. This narrator is describing the situation in which Mr. Utterson, the lawyer, is trying to comprehend the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So far the narrator seems to be accurately recording the situation, and there is no reason for the reader to question his or her reliability. Just like Shelley, Stevenson incorporates a new type of romanticism. The novel is still very much in the Gothic era, with Gothic characteristics such as architecture, darkness, and suspense, but once again you see mystery and impossibilities through experiments and testing instead of bleeding statues or secret passage ways.
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