Chapter 10 Key Quotations Flashcards
The main idea in this chapter 10:
- Jekyll believes that the separate facets of humanity’s duality are entwined from conception.
- The repressive society in which he lives forces him to practise restraint, leading to frustration.
- He must repress his desires to maintain his reputation in public, causing distress.
- He therefore creates Hyde as a way to separate his good and evil side, allowing a balance between his duality.
Jekyll’s main issue:
- “a certain impatient gaiety of disposition” could not be reconciled with his “imperious desire to carry [his] head high”
- “I concealed my pleasures”
- “I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.”
The idea of shame in seeking pleasure in the repressive Victorian society (also links to maintenance of reputation):
- “hid [his “irregularities”] with an almost morbid sense of shame”
- “plunged in shame”
Jekyll’s dual life (bad and good):
- Bad: “laid aside restraint and plunged in shame”
- Good: “laboured […] at the furtherance of knowledge”
Jekyll’s science:
“wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental”
Jekyll’s description of the internal conflict between good and evil:
- “perennial war among my members”
- “in the agonised womb of consciousness these polar twins [are] continuously struggling”
Jekyll’s ultimate realisation (his “dreadful shipwreck”):
“man is not truly one, but truly two”
Jekyll suggests the duality of man is inherent within everyone:
“thorough and primitive duality of man”
Jekyll on the separation of good and evil:
“if each […] could but be house in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable”
Pain of transformation:
“the most racking pangs succeeded”
Triad to describe pleasure after transformation:
“I felt younger, lighter, happier in body”
- The asyndetic triad creates a powerful crescendo effect that reflects the intense pleasure Jekyll feels as Hyde.
Imagery relating to pleasure after the transformation:
- “incredibly sweet”
- “braced and delighted me like wine” (temptation of evil)
- “exulting in the freshness of these sensations”
Hyde’s evil nature:
- “more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil”
- “Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.”
- Exemplifies the extent of Hyde’s iniquity and the fact that he is the pure evil extracted from Jekyll’s nature.
Choosing between Jekyll and Hyde:
“Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence”
- “Smartingly” implies agony, while “fires” is hell-related imagery; this reflects Jekyll’s torment, caused by the repressive society in which he lives.
Hyde’s deformity (physiognomy):
“Evil […] had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay”
- Horrifying appearance, alluding to gothic horror and conventions.
Jekyll’s escape from Hyde’s actions:
“a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion”
Jekyll losing control over his life:
“slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse”
THE BEST QUOTE EVER!!!!!
“MY DEVIL HAD BEEN LONG CAGED, HE CAME OUT ROARING”
- use of “caged”, “devil” and “roaring” depicts Hyde as animalistic and Hellish, exemplifying his inhuman evil.
- also reflects the destructive effects of the repression of desire.
Hyde before Carew’s murder:
“Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged.”
Hyde after Carew’s murder:
“ecstasy of mind”
- Hyde’s pure evil nature is furthered here, since he feels pleasure at committing acts of violence
Jekyll describing Hyde as inhuman:
“That child of Hell had nothing human”
- Hyde is a direct product of Hell and the Devil, exemplifying his evil.
Hyde is trapped inside Jekyll:
“the brute that slept within me”
Animalistic imagery:
- “apelike tricks”
- “apelike spite”
- Alludes to the theory of evolution; Stevenson appeals to society’s fears that all humans were once apes - he suggests that evil is inherent in all, as a primitive instinct.
Final, depressing statement:
“I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.”
