Science Flashcards
“War of attitudes”
“Unscientific balderdash”
The violent lexis in “war of attitudes” depicts this conflict within the scientific community and later Lanyon describes Jekyll’s work as “unscientific balderdash”. These comments highlight the conflict between Lanyon and Jekyll, as Lanyon prefers to balance his religious thought and scientific study by remaining in the sphere of material science, whilst Jekyll extends his work into the metaphysical. This conflict mirrors the tensions between religion and science which was apparent within society.
“added one of the powders”
This implies that Jekyll wishes to view his actions as scientific rather than self-indulgence, perhaps to justify his behaviour
“began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour”
This illogical word order shows Jekyll’s irrationality, which is juxtaposed with the traditional rationality of science, and this syntactic manipulation suggests that Jekyll is out of place in the scientific community.
“hardly human… troglodytic”
Darwin later argued that we descend from amphibians that turned into apes. This challenged religious dogma and presented new ideas that man descended
from a ‘hairy tailed quadruped’ creature,
which had evolved from “some amphibious creature’. Darwin had put forward his theory of evolution, and many
people were persuaded by it. In the early 1800s, Christianity taught that god created every species (creationism) and the ideas that Darwin proposed challenged these Christian ideals. Darwin’s book claimed that all creatures evolved from common
ancestors - and this went against one of the main Christian ideas that we are
created by god’s hand. This would have been very unsettling and a nightmarish notion for many Victorians. Stevenson aims to horrify the Victorian reader by engineering the themes of his novella to evoke their deep-seated fears. Mr Hyde is described as looking “hardly human…troglodytic’ This presents him as a criminal and someone who does not fit in with the rest of society. He is a physical manifestation of the pre-human animal. The idea that such an animal could hide behind the façade of a well-represented member of the community would have
been a shocking possibility for the Victorian reader, especially in a society
where the external appearances were of a
high value.
“chief of sinners?
“suffering’
“brute that slept?
“tortured with throes and longings?
Victorians thought that the earth was created by god - and scientists, like Darwin, contradicted this theory. This challenged the religious ideologies and views that many people held. The idea that science could create life was seen as dangerous, and Jekyll’s failed experiment leaves him as “chief of sinners?. By the final chapter, Jekyll is caught in a state of “suffering” where there is a “brute that slept” within him, and he is “tortured with throes and longings” to turn into Hyde. The language of agony that Jekyll uses links to the Christian notion of hell - his selfish motivations for the experiment leave him trapped in limbo.
“some white salt?
“some strange things?”
Jekyll’s experiments cause destruction and death of the people around him, and this shows the potential of science to destroy the order of society and disrupt the rigid Victorian expectations. Jekyll’s drugs are described as intrusive objects, “some white salt” and “some strange things” - this vague language is deliberately used to create ambiguity and mystery around his medicines, and evoke anxiety and fear in the reader.
