Characters Flashcards
How does stevenson present Entfield
Stevenson presents Enfield as a dandy or flâneur - a wealthy man who cares deeply about his appearance, spends most of his time socialising, and potentially enjoys (vicariously or otherwise) seeking forbidden pleasures in less salubrious parts of the city.
Entfield: Key quotations/references
• He is ‘the well-known man about town’. (Ch 1)
• I was coming home from some place at the end of the world.’ (Ch 1)
• Although he claims to be ‘ashamed of [his] long tongue’, he clearly enjoys gossiping about rthe scandalous scene he witnessed. (Ch 1)
• He supposes the situation he relates to Utterson was a case of ‘Blackmail […] an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth’. (Ch 1)
How does stevenson present Utterson
He is a conflicted individual who represses aspects of his character, representing the duality of the Victorian gentleman: whilst he is a man of ‘custom’ and habit’, is ‘undemonstrative’, ‘unobtrusive’, ‘austere’, and ‘grave’, his secret ‘envy’ of the passionate ‘misdeeds’ of others motivates him more than his desire to protect them.
Stevenson frequently uses verbs that suggest Utterson’s internal struggle as well as his desire to uncover the truth: brooded’, ‘ruminated’, ‘gazed’, ‘reflected’, ‘debating’, ‘toiling’, besieged’, ‘preoccupied’, ‘disquieted’.
Stevenson repeatedly focuses our attention on the physical fear and repulsion experienced by Utterson — ‘shudder in his blood’, blood ran cold’, ‘froze [his] very blood’, ‘chill of horror’, ‘quailed’, ‘nausea’ - in order to amplify the overwhelming impact of Hyde’s monstrosity, as well as the unsettling events and circumstances of the case.
Utterson: Key quotations/references (Ch 1)
- His affections, like ivy, were the growth of time. (Ch 1)
- He was a man of rugged countenance…he was austere with himself. (Ch 1)
- ‘I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.’ (Ch 1)
- He was the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men. (Ch 1)
Utterson: Key quotations/references (Ch 2)
- [He was] humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done. (Ch 2)
- ‘his imagination […was] enslaved’ and ‘haunted’ by Hyde, culminating in a nightmare where he imagines Hyde at Jekyll’s bedside. (Ch 2)
‘If he be Mr Hyde’ he had thought, ‘I shall be Mr Seek.’ (Ch 2)
[Utterson is fascinated by Hyde’s] black secrets. (Ch 2)
Mr Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street. (Ch 2)
Utterson: Key quotations/references (Ch 3-8)
- Where Utterson was liked, he was well liked. (Ch 3)
- Professional honour and faith to his dead friend were stringent obligations [on not opening Lanyon’s letter]. (Ch 6)
- Your master, Poole, is plainly seized with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer.’ (Ch 8)
How does stevenson present Lanyon
Stevenson juxtaposes Lanyon and Jekyll by having Jekyll tell Utterson he is a hidebound pedant’, implying he is overly cautious, and Lanyon berate Jekyll’s ‘unscientific balderdash’.
Lanyon: Key quotations/references (chapter 2 and 3)
- This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman. (Ch 2)
- He sprang up and welcomed him with both hands. (Ch 2)
- ‘A hidebound pedant.’ [Jekyll’s words] (Ch 3)
Lanyon: Key quotations/references (chapter 6)
• He [Utterson] was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor’s appearance. (Ch 6)
• He had a death warrant written legibly upon his face. (Ch 6)
• The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older. (Ch 6)
• ‘I have had a great shock…I shall never recover.’ (Ch 6)
• ‘I wish to see or hear no more of Dr Jekyll…I am quite done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead.’ (Ch 6)
• Lanyon declared himself a doomed man. (Ch 6)
Lanyon: Key quotations/references (chapter 9)
• The more I reflected, the more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral disease. [on Jekyll’s plea in his letter] (Ch 9)
• My mind submerged in terror.’ [at seeing Hyde turn into Jekyll] (Ch 9)
• ‘My life is shaken to its roots.’ (Ch 9)
How does Stevenson present Hyde as the opposite of Jekyll
Hyde is a warped reflection of the Victorian gentleman: his crimes are a ‘career’ parallel to the professions of the other characters; his Soho quarters are ‘ransacked’ but ‘furnished with luxury and good taste; ultimately, he ends his life symbolically right in the middle of the ‘most commonplace’ scene of domestic life - a lamp, a fire, papers, and a tea set -
mirroring the quiet, closeted places inhabited by the other characters, and revealing their complicity in his evil.
How is Hyde presented throughout the play
Hyde’s indescribable deformity is referred to repeatedly throughout the novella by all the characters, but is never detailed by the narrator. Stevenson frequently uses hellish semantics to describe him: ‘damned’, ‘wicked’, ‘evil’, ‘hellish’, ‘child of hell’, like Satan’, ‘my devil’. He is a ‘troglodytic’ subhuman or ‘savage’, ‘ape-like’ beast that snarls and hisses - he is utterly ‘abnormal and misbegotten’.
Hyde: Key quotations/references (chapters 1 and 2)
• The man trampled calmly over the child’s body…It wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned juggernaut.’ (Enfield, Ch 1)
• ‘the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy.’ In Utterson’s mind (Ch 2)
Mr Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of breath. (Ch 2)
• The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh. (Ch 2)
• Mr Hyde was pale and dwarfish; he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation. (Ch 2)
• The man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say?’ (Utterson, to himself, Ch 2)
How does stevenson present Jekyll
Although he is an established and respected scientist like Lanyon, Jekyll is drawn to the ‘mystic and transcendental’ aspects of his profession. This is driven by his belief in the ‘primitive duality of man’, and his own personal desire to find a way to enable the ‘separation’ of the good and evil within him, so that both can be housed in separate identities’. He desires this so that he can freely enjoy the ‘undignified’ and ‘monstrous’ pleasures that he has so far ‘concealed’, without any consequences for his good reputation.
Jekyll: Key quotations/references (Chapters 2 and 3)
• He began to go wrong, wrong in mind.’ (Lanyon, Ch 2)
• He is in deep water…he was wild when he was young. (Utterson Ch 2)
• He was a well-made, smooth faced man of fifty. (Ch 3)
• You do not understand my position…it’s a very strange one.’ (Ch 3)
• There came a blackness about his eyes [at the mention of Hyde]. (Ch 3)
• ‘I tell you one thing, the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr Hyde.’ (Ch 3)
