Use of Imagination in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Study in Scarlet and Sig

While reading Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Arthur Conan Doyles A Study in Scarlet and Sign of the Four, I found myself impatiently competing against Mr. Utterson and Sherlock Holmes to find out the solutions to the crimes. Stevenson and Doyle cleverly use the conceit of their protagonists to discover through fictional literature the concern late Victorians felt to the highest degree the rise of a new science. The characters of Utterson and Holmes resemble each other in their roles as objective observers who use imagination to create a cipher in the readers mind about the narrative. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Utterson is a prominent capital of the United Kingdom lawyer retained to oversee Dr. Jekylls personal affairs. Utterson is characterized as an upright and ingenuous man who is genuinely interested in his clients well being. Through his acquaintanceship with Enfield, a man about London, Utterson learns more about Dr. Jekylls fri end, the mysterious Mr. Hyde. For the readers benefit, Utterson exhibits his imagination by opening a window to the discrete aspects of Dr. Jekylls life. It is important for readers to look the discrete aspects of Jekylls character including his good and evil nature that he continually experiments with through scientific study. This display of imagination allows the narrative to smoothly dilate and quantify Stevensons attempt to reveal late Victorian concerns through fiction. In the same way, Sign of the Fours character of Holmes uses imagination through his role as an optimistic, amateur detective. Holmes is portrayed as being driven by his imagination, which compels him to level cocaine in order to alleviate the feeling of boredom... ... at Pondicherry excite and while Uttersons concern with character of Jekyll discloses an aspect of the new science that probes the dichotomy of good versus evil. Works Cited and Consulted Doyle, Arthur Conan. A Study in Scarlet in The Co mplete Sherlock Holmes. New York Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1930. 22-75. Chesney, Kellow. The Victorian Underworld. New York Schocken Books, 1970. Macdonald, Ross. The Writer as Detective Hero. Detective Fiction A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. redbreast W. Winks. Englewood Cliffs, London Prentice-Hall, 1980. Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. First vintage Classics Edition. New York Vintage Books, 1991. Veeder, William. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde after One Hundred Years. Eds. William Veeder and Gordon Hirsch. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1988.