Jekyll and Hyde

quotes, big ideas, context

Jekyll’s freeing of repression

“i was the first that could plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings, and spring headlong into the sea of liberty”

“i knew myself, at the first breath of my new life, to be wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil”

“my devil had been long caged he came out roaring… instantly the spirit oh hell awoke in me with a rage”

Hyde as indescribable/odd/disturbing

“something displeasing, something downright detestable”

“Mr Hyde was pale and dwarfish… a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness”

“strong feeling of deformity”

Hyde as satanic

“your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan”

“if i ever read Satan’s signature on upon a face before it is on that of your new friend”

Hyde as animalistic + devolved

“the other snarled into a savage laugh”

“Mr Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of breath”

“that masked thing like a monkey”

Jekyll’s friendship

“he cherished for Mr Utterson a sincere and warm affection”

Mr Utterson’s friendship

“His friends were those of his own blood... his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time” 

“Professional honor and faith to his dead friend were stringent obligations: and the packet slept at the inmost corner of his private safe”

“he condemned the fear as a disloyalty and broke the seal”

“it turns me cold to think of this creature steal

ing like a thief to Harry’s bedside”

Mr Utterson’s hypocrisy

“I incline to Cain’s heresy… i let my brother go to the devil in his own way”

“If he shall be Mr Hyde i shall be Mr Seek”

“i shall consider it my duty to break down the door”

“down with the door, Poole!”

“Hyde sat heavy on his mind” + “besieged with questions”

Dr Lanyon vs Jekyll

“More than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in the mind, such unscientific balderdash.”

“that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what he called my scientific heresies… but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant”

Dr Lanyon’s encountering

“There was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature… something seizing surprising and revolting”

“the rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away” - “this was a heart, healthy, dapper red-faced gentlemen”

“my arms raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror. O god"! I screamed and O god! again and again”

“I must die and yet i shall die incredulous”

Dr Lanyons secrecy/loyalty

“i want to see or hear no more of Dr Jekyll, one who i regard as dead.”

“I felt obliged to do as he requested”

Mr Enfield

“the more it looks like queer street the less I ask”

“I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning”

“make his name stink from one end on London to the other”

“I am ashamed of my long tongue. let us make a bargain to ever refer to this again”

“only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once more in silence”

“we told the man we would and could make such a scandal out of this”

Poole quotes

“why did he cry like a rat and run from me?”

“he shut up in the cabinet and i don’t like it sir - i wish i may die if i like it… i can bear it no more… i can bear it no more”

“Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shocked the building”

“do you think i don’t know my master after twenty years?”

“he spoke with a ferocity of accent that testified to his own jangled nerves”

setting quotes

“A great chocolate-colored pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors” + “like a district of some city in a nightmare” (C4) - in Soho

"Through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city."-Chapter 2 (Utterson's nightmare)

“the fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city” (C5)

jekyll’s courtyard is described as “very cool and a little damp and full of premature twighlight” (C7)

“thin trees in the garden were lashing against the railing”

how is the laboratory described?

the door is “blistered and disdained”

“dingy windowless structure”

what is the purpose of the weather and setting and when are they shown?

darkness: danger, secrecy (C8+C1+C2)

Fog: danger, uncertainty (C4+C5)

Wind: wildness, uncontrolability (C8)

Gothic settings = dark locations, poor visibility

like a dream - eerie

what does the shattered mirror symbolise

Jekyll felt pleasure in looking at himself as Hyde at first but later on as he lost control to Hyde he resented him thus couldn’t stand looking at him so shattered the mirror

this represents the fracturing of their relationship as Hyde gets more powerful

what does the splitting of Jekyll’s walking stick symbolise?

similar to shattered mirror, Hyde breaking the walking stick represents the fracturing of their relationship - Hyde becomes more powerful

who was William Brodie?

A man from an upper-class family and respectable job who was hung for theft in 1788