Jekyll and Hyde flashcards
14 cards on Jekyll and Hyde: the key points, worked examples and the slips to watch. Swipe through them, or print them.
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Jekyll and Hyde
Duality: building an argument
What argument about human nature can drive a whole Jekyll and Hyde essay?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Duality: building an argument
Key points
- Lead with a thesis: Stevenson argues that respectability and savagery live inside the same man.
- Duality is having two opposite natures in one person; Jekyll insists both selves are truly his.
- Hyde is not a separate villain: he is the hidden side Jekyll chose to set free.
“man is not truly one, but truly two”
The novella's thesis, in Jekyll's own words.
“I was in no sense a hypocrite”
Duality, not pretence: both sides are really him.
Watch out
Retelling the mystery chapter by chapter is not an answer: choose the moments that prove your argument.
Jekyll and Hyde
Mystery structure and Utterson
How does Stevenson's structure keep the truth hidden until the end?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Mystery structure and Utterson
Key points
- Most of the novella follows Utterson, a cautious lawyer, so we share his puzzlement.
- The truth waits for the last two chapters, Lanyon's narrative and Jekyll's statement.
- They are epistolary: documents in the characters' own words, like evidence read out at the end of a case.
“lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable”
A dry, rational man: when even he is shaken, it is truly unnatural.
“I shall be Mr. Seek”
A pun on hide and seek: the story becomes a hunt for a hidden self.
Watch out
First readers did not know Jekyll and Hyde were one man: never write as if we know from Chapter 1.
Jekyll and Hyde
Gothic London and the fog
How does Stevenson's gothic setting add to the novella's menace?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Gothic London and the fog
Key points
- Stevenson moves the gothic from ruined castles to modern London, behind respectable doors.
- Fog hides and distorts, which suits a story about concealment.
- Pathetic fallacy: the gloomy weather matches the dark mood of the murder case.
“like a district of some city in a nightmare”
Soho in the fog seems unreal and full of hidden evil.
“A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven”
A pall is also the cloth over a coffin: the sky seems to mourn.
Jekyll and Hyde
The door: duality in brick
What does the building with Hyde's door symbolise?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
The door: duality in brick
Key points
- Jekyll's house has a handsome front, while Hyde comes and goes by a neglected back door.
- It mirrors Jekyll's double life: a respectable face for the world, a hidden side for secrets.
- Only later do readers learn that the door belongs to Jekyll's laboratory.
“blistered and distained”
Neglect and stain: the outward sign of a hidden, corrupt life.
Watch out
Name it as a symbol, then say what it stands for: the building is Jekyll's divided self.
Jekyll and Hyde
Hyde's growing violence
How does Hyde's violence grow across the novella?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Hyde's growing violence
Key points
- Chapter 1: he tramples a girl without a flicker of feeling.
- Chapter 4: he beats Sir Danvers Carew, an elderly MP, to death.
- Each time Hyde is let out he grows stronger, and so does his violence.
“trampled calmly over the child’s body”
"Calmly": rage would be human, calm is monstrous.
“with ape-like fury”
The maid's account: the cold cruelty has become a frenzy.
Watch out
Track the change from one moment to the next: whole-novella knowledge earns the marks, not one page.
Jekyll and Hyde
Jekyll loses control
How does Stevenson show Jekyll losing control of Hyde?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Jekyll loses control
Key points
- At first Jekyll is sure he can stop whenever he likes, like an addict.
- Then he wakes as Hyde without taking the potion, and later changes on a park bench in broad daylight.
“the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde”
Ironic confidence: Hyde will take over.
“I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde”
The first change without the potion: the balance tips.
“I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self”
He knows the struggle is being lost.
Jekyll and Hyde
The last night and the confession
What do the final chapters reveal, and how do they end Jekyll's story?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
The last night and the confession
Key points
- Utterson and Poole break into the cabinet and find Hyde dead by his own hand, in clothes far too big for him.
- Jekyll cannot change back: his first salts held an impurity he can never find again.
“Weeping like a woman or a lost soul”
Trapped and terrified, Hyde is more than simply a monster.
“I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end”
He writes of himself as if he is already gone.
Jekyll and Hyde
Context: Darwin and the beast within
How do Victorian fears stirred by Darwin explain the way Stevenson describes Hyde?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Context: Darwin and the beast within
Key points
- Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) suggested humans had evolved from animals.
- Many Victorians feared people could slide back into savagery beneath a civilised surface.
- A semantic field of animal words makes Hyde that primitive self.
“Something troglodytic”
A cave-dweller: a throwback to a less civilised human.
“shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath”
Snake-like, recalling the serpent in Eden.
Jekyll and Hyde
Context: respectability and repression
Why does Victorian respectability lead Jekyll to create Hyde?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Context: respectability and repression
Key points
- Published in 1886, the novella reflects a society that demanded a spotless public face.
- Jekyll hides shameful desires to protect his reputation, then makes Hyde to enjoy them.
- Locked away for years, his dark side is far wilder once it is free.
“I concealed my pleasures”
Reputation came first, so pleasure went into hiding.
“My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring”
What respectability locks away does not vanish: it grows.
Watch out
Facts about Victorian London earn nothing alone: say how each one shapes the moment you analyse.
Jekyll and Hyde
Context: the gentlemen's silence
How does the gentlemen's code of silence let Hyde's evil carry on?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Context: the gentlemen's silence
Key points
- Gentlemen avoided awkward questions to protect each other's reputations.
- Utterson and Enfield even agree never to speak of the story of the door again.
- Utterson's tolerance makes him a loyal friend, but it keeps Jekyll's secret safe.
“the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask”
The worse things look, the less a gentleman asks.
“I incline to Cain’s heresy”
Like Cain, he will not be his brother's keeper.
Jekyll and Hyde
Science: Lanyon against Jekyll
What does the quarrel between Lanyon and Jekyll show about science?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Science: Lanyon against Jekyll
Key points
- Lanyon trusts only proven, material science; Jekyll strays into the mystical.
- Watching Hyde turn into Jekyll shatters Lanyon's rational world, and he dies soon after.
- Stevenson questions both narrow reason and reckless experiment.
“unscientific balderdash”
His scorn for Jekyll's work.
“I have had a shock”
What reason cannot explain destroys him.
Jekyll and Hyde
Hyde: evil that cannot be named
Why can no one describe Hyde properly, and what does that suggest?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Hyde: evil that cannot be named
Key points
- Hyde's evil is sensed, not seen: no one can say exactly what is wrong with him.
- Evil that cannot be named could be in anyone, so he disturbs more than a visible monster.
“an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation”
The vagueness itself is the horror.
“He is not easy to describe”
Even a witness cannot pin him down.
“if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend”
Religious language makes Hyde devilish, not just criminal.
Jekyll and Hyde
Embedding quotations
How do you weave short quotations into your sentences in a Jekyll and Hyde essay?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Embedding quotations
Key points
- Take a few words, not a whole paragraph, and build them into your own sentence.
- Choose quotations with one word to analyse closely, such as "calmly" or "troglodytic".
- Short quotations are far easier to carry into a closed-book exam.
A quotation woven in
Hyde "trampled calmly" over the girl, and the adverb "calmly" shows a man without conscience.
Stevenson makes his cruelty cold, which is more frightening than rage.
Watch out
A copied-out paragraph leaves no time to analyse: trim the quotation to the words that matter.
Jekyll and Hyde
Planning and pacing the essay
How should you plan and pace a 30-mark Jekyll and Hyde essay?
Answer it in your head, then turn the card over.
Planning and pacing the essay
Key points
- This question has no marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar: every mark is argument, analysis and context.
- Spend about five minutes planning three or four points that answer the question.
- Give each point a paragraph, linking the extract to another moment in the novella.
- Keep the last two minutes to check that every paragraph still answers the question.
Watch out
Without a plan, essays drift into retelling; one sentence linking back to the question can rescue a paragraph.
Print these cards
Four cards to an A4 sheet, each the size of a standard A6 revision card.
One-sided
Each card prints on one face: the question at the top, the notes under it.
Two-sided
Questions on the front, notes on the back. Print double-sided and flip on the long edge, then cut along the lines.