Hoarding Spaces:

The Laboratory in Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde and Wells’s The Invisible Man

Abstract

In The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Invisible Man, R L Stevenson and H G Wells respectively represent the laboratory as an invasive site that “hoards” public spaces. This paper argues that the two novels’ laboratory manifests as a heterotopic space that stands in radical opposition to the public space. This study further argues that the tensions in the two stories are founded on how the private practice of science within the laboratory invades public space. As a space of otherness cast in opposition to public visual accessibility, the laboratory in the selected novels becomes the approximation of concealment and hoarding of important, as well as dangerous, knowledge. Finally, this study compares the laboratory’s representations in the two books to show how the tensions between the private and the public spaces interact within and across narratives of the late Victorian period.