Nabokov once described 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as having an almost winey quality to it and I think that sums up the unique atmosphere Stevenson is able to conjure up really well; the book transcends the conventionalities of the Gothic genre which inspired it to become something far greater and grander, as it becomes a kind of treatise on the duality of good and evil in people. Dr. Jekyll's experiments lead to him concocting a drug that creates an inverse of his supposedly benign essence. In contrast, Hyde is outwardly kind and gregarious, the dwarfish Hyde causes an instant sense of disgust in those who meet and is cruel and capricious. Yet, as Nabokov states, the characters aren't as binary as you would think, neither character is wholly good or evil, instead, they are entwined with one another, Jekyll being able to let go of the sense of unfettered freedom which Hyde is able to realize and Hyde is unable to let off the sense of responsibility and respectability which keep his vices in check.
The London in which the book is set comes alive during the night; macabre and ghost-like, its empty streets, shimmering under the pale glow of a diaphanous moonlight act as the center stage for Hyde's monstrosities. That the novel is told mainly from the perspective of the conventional Utterson only adds to the strange beauty which Stevenson is able to interweave in the novel, it is as if the creation of Hyde creates a sense of poetry in Utterson's prosaic life, the ripples of Dr. Jekyll's experiments impacting on the wider world around him. 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the greatest Victorian novels, a novel which transcends the conventions of the area and creates something ineffably majestic.
