Jekyll and Hyde key quotes Flashcards
Lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet, somehow loveable
- asyndetic list of neutral/ pejorative adjectives contrasted with ‘somehow loveable’
- sets up typical Victorian gentleman as a focaliser for the first 8 chapters so readers accept him as an authentic narrator
- suggests duality of man from the first sentence in the novel (emphasizing what a key theme it is)
The street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest
- light vs dark imagery and simile
- suggest good vs evil and the duality of London that mirrors the duality of its inhabitants
The man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground
- oxymoronic phrase and violent verb
- animalistic connotations and suggests rapidity, carelessness and aggression
- calmly adverb suggests intentional action, no conscience because it is a word usually associated to a lack of movement
- emotive verb screaming
- contemporary readers would understand the reference to the undercover journalist’s scoop on child prostitution in London
Something displeasing, something downright detestable
- Repetition of the indefinite pronoun
- Hyde’s negative qualities can’t be determined
- heavy plosive alliteration
- highlights these negative phrases
- deformity would have been unnatural = ableist (link to Lombroso)
- links to the study of physiognomy
too fanciful… unscientific balderdash
- adjective fanciful
- Jekyll’s science is beyond the rational explanations favoured by Lanyon
- emotive, colloquial phrase balderdash
- highlights Lanyon’s ridicule of Jekyll’s experiments
The man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic
- alliteration
- adds emphasis to the phrase hardly human
- plays on Victorians’ post-Darwinian fears of regression
- indefinite pronoun reinforces Hyde’s undistinguishable qualities
The cancer of some concealed disgrace
- metaphor
- for Victorian gentlemen, damaging secrets had the potential (like cancer) to spread and damage them and their reputations
- alliteration of the harsh consonant highlights the damage
- verbal motif concealed recurs in Chapter 10 (I concealed my pleasures) suggests the ongoing vice of repression
Something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness
- indefinite pronoun
- Jekyll’s secretive qualities can’t be determined (parallel to Hyde)
- verbal motif equally associated with Hyde so links the two characters
- contrast between the pejorative adjective slyish and the positive nouns capacity and kindness
- suggest duality
A fog rolled over the city in the small hours… the lane… was brilliantly lit by the full moon
- verb suggests the fog has agency which builds on the ominous atmosphere
- gothic trope of the full moon
- foreshadows impending evil actions
- acts as a plot device allowing the maid to view the murder of Sir Danvers Carew and report on it
- fog = metaphor for secrecy
with ape-like fury he was trampling his victim underfoot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped on the roadway
- noun phrase implies animalistic tendencies and plays on Victorian readers’ post-Darwinian fears of regression
- noun fury suggests uncontrolled, extreme anger, perhaps rather instinctive than rational
- metaphor storm of blows
- implies repeated violence of Hyde’s actions
- onomatopoeic verb shattered allows the reader to imagine the sounds of the attack and imagine its consequences
- verb jumped emphasizes the force of Hyde’s attack
A great chocolate coloured pall lowered over heaven
- London smog is vividly described through colour imagery
- LITERALLY pall suggests the way the fog is covering London like a cloth
- FIGURATIVELY (because of its associations with funerals), it references the murder the reader has just witnessed
- lowers over heaven could symbolise the way in which Hyde’s monstrous actions have overtaken Jekyll’s goodness
- pollution from factories during the industrial revolution
If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also
- alliteration highlights religious references to sin and suffering and reveals Jekyll’s moral torment
- repeated noun chief suggests Jekyll sees himself as an innovator
- he is leading the way in discovering how to split himself into his ‘polar twins’
Weeping like a woman or a lost soul
- first sympathetic description of Hyde given by Poole (turning point)
- emotive verb weeping and soft consonants in the alliteration with woman evokes pity
- noun phrase in the simile like a lost soul implies Hyde’s damnation
I could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive actions of his jaws
- adjective implies loss of control
- auditory imagery and almost onomatopoeic verb grate extenuate Hyde’s animalistic nature
I concealed my pleasures… I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life
- Verbal motif pleasures used repeatedly in Chapter 10 emphasize the fact that although Jekyll’s actions were deemed evil by Victorian society, they were pleasurable to him
- noun duplicity reinforced by adjective profound implies that Jekyll had to live a life of lies
I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck, that man is not truly one, but truly two
- verb doomed has religious connotations
- heavy plosive alliteration emphasize the enormity of Jekyll’s realisation
- metaphor of a shipwreck implies that the duality of man is something catastrophic and out of man’s control
- repetition of truly emphasizes the universal truth which Jekyll feels he has uncovered through his self-appointed role of trailblazer
The primitive duality of man; I saw that of the two natures, I was radically both
- adjective primitive implies that this duality is something innate and atavistic
- adverb radically implies that Jekyll has found a new way of thinking about this ancient truism
I felt younger, lighter, happier in body… a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy
- triplet of positive, comparative adjectives
- emphasizes the initially welcome feelings Jekyll experiences when turning into Hyde
- simile emphasizes the rush of feelings Jekyll experiences
My pleasures were undignified… but in the hands of Edward Hyde they soon began to turn towards the monstrous
- verbal motif pleasures used frequently in Chapter 10 emphasize that Jekyll’s actions were deemed evil by Victorian society, but were pleasurable to him
- adjective undignified
- Jekyll’s actions were disreputable rather than immoral
- contrast between this and the emotive, hyperbolic adjective monstrous
- shows the catastrophic effect of splitting off the dual sides of man using scientific methods that were considered ‘unscientific balderdash’
My devil had long been caged, he came out roaring
- possessive pronoun my
- implies Jekyll’s ownership of Hyde
- religious imagery of devil
- suggests a recognition of the evil he has created (even if he initially felt ‘lighter, happier when splitting off his immoral side)
- verb caged has connotations of a penned in animal but also reflects the way in which Victorian gentlemen had to repress their feelings
- onomatopoeic verb roaring
- suggests savagery of a beast and reflects the language surrounding Hyde in earlier chapters of the novel
Streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot
- third person
- Jekyll is no longer sure of his own identity after he killed Carew
- emotive description streaming tears and religious imagery
- Jekyll seeks for grace but like all other characters in the novel who call on God, his prayers seem unanswered
- metaphor veil of self-indulgence
- he recognises that his attempts to section off his pleasures as Hyde have been self-indulgent
- clothing imagery veil
- implies its impermanence (it is easily ‘rent’ or torn apart)
I saw the Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him
- even a respectable doctor has the capacity for violence
- respectable vs murderous intentions
Snarled aloud into a savage laugh
- sibilance
- evil
- zoomorphism
- wild, atavistic, primitive nature
Scientific heresies
- Jekyll’s contrasting version of Lanyon’s opinion of his ‘unscientific balderdash’
Blackness about his eyes
- duality
- eyes are the windows to the soul
Trampling calmly (chapter 1) - trampling his victim underfoot (chapter 4)
- verbal echo of chapter 1
- suggests Hyde’s consistency with these violent acts, potentially second nature?
Foggy cupola
- even though there is light there is still secrecy
- cf to beginning of the novel with the windows that were shut but clean
- progressing to dusty windows barred with iron
The packet slept in the innermost corner of his private safe
- secrecy
Axe, kitchen poker, stick on the walk with Enfield, Carew’s walking stick
- shows different statuses of wealth
Lanyon
- hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman
- somewhat theatrical
- traditional and reliable
- religious and a ‘boisterous’ people pleaser who adheres to the code of secrecy amongst gentlemen
- represents the ideal Victorian gentleman
- acts as a foil to Jekyll
I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim
- Hyde (the instinctive, evil side of man) was repressed and so came out worse than ever
- Stevenson warns the readers about the consequences of repressing vices
Something not only hellish but inorganic
- Jekyll’s description of Hyde gets more intense further on
- Hyde is a dangerous individual
Proceed to seal up my confession
- Jekyll sees creating Hyde as a sin
- Stevenson didn’t end the novel with a response from Utterson to say there is no rational explanation for Jekyll’s scientific experiments
- Victorian readers would have felt confused and may have relished Utterson’s attempts at rationalising Jekyll’s confession
