Jekyll and Hyde - Certified Expert Knowledge (Year 11)

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "a new province of knowledge shall be laid open to you" (Chapter 9)

Jekyll presents his 'transcendental' experiment to 'hide-bound pedant' Lanyon. Reflects the Victorian scientific zeitgeist. Alludes to medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae: "what evil is must be known from the nature of good"). Stevenson (an atheist) speculates whether religious answers to evil are still valid in a scientific world.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "all intelligent, reputable men and all judges of good wine"

Wine is a motif of class and socially acceptable liberation in Victorian high society. Utterson conforms publicly with wine (though he drinks gin alone to mortify his taste), while Jekyll says turning into Hyde felt 'like wine'. Casts Jekyll ('wild when he was young') as a 'Byronic hero' / aristocratic rebel using wealth to indulge desires.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "captives of Philippi" (Chapter 10)

Jekyll says the drug "shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth." Alludes to Acts 16:16-33 where God sends an earthquake to free Paul and prisoners from jail. Likens Jekyll's repressed desires (Hyde) to religious captives desperate to escape, suggesting these desires are natural and human.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "Such unscientific balderdash… would have estranged Damon and Pythias"

Lanyon explains why he and Jekyll are no longer friends. Damon and Pythias were a famous Victorian idiom for ultimate friendship (each willing to die for the other under Dionysius I). Emphasises how close Jekyll and Lanyon once were to secure their juxtaposition as foil characters.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "Jekyll was now my city of refuge"

Alludes to Joshua 20 (Old Testament) where 'Cities of Refuge' protected people who committed manslaughter from the 'avenger of blood' until trial. Shows Jekyll retreating into his respectable doctor form to escape the consequences of Hyde's actions—suggesting society must return to social pretences to avoid judgement.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "I incline to Cain's heresy… I let my brother go to the devil in his own way."

Alludes to Genesis where evil Cain slew his good brother Abel. Foreshadows how the 'good brother' (Jekyll) must kill the 'evil brother' (Hyde), while Hyde tries to take over his elder brother's body/possessions. Reflects Stevenson's strict Presbyterian upbringing and marks Utterson as accepting of others' sins despite his own austerity.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "The thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing"

Symbolic of the Christian ritual of self-flagellation ("mortification of the flesh", Romans 8:13—whipping oneself to purge sin). Either shows Hyde's malevolence requires divine sacrifice to purge, OR (since Stevenson was an atheist) criticises the anguish of individuals imprisoned by the 'railings' of religious piety and repressed desires.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "the dark influence of Hades had been withdrawn…"

In Greek mythology, Hades is the god of the underworld—a mysterious lurking presence rather than a personal torturer, much like Hyde within Jekyll. Since Hades also means 'hell', Stevenson uses the allusion to communicate the severity of Hyde's crimes without specifying them.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "…like some damned Juggernaut…"

Written during the colonial era, fusing Eastern and Western culture (duality). 'Juggernaut' comes from the Hindu god Jagannath ('Lord of the Universe'), where devotees threw themselves under giant temple chariots as sacrifices. Casts the trampled girl as an innocent devotee and highlights Hyde's unstoppable, supernatural brutality.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "…resulting in the punishment coming, PEDE CLAUDO."

Utterson suspects Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll over an "old disgrace". 'Pede Claudo' is a Latin phrase from Horace meaning "punishment comes limping". Shows the timelessness of Jekyll's ordeal and acts as a plot device (red herring) to build mystery around blackmail.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace"

Links Jekyll's 'concealed pleasures' to homosexual desire. One year before publication, the Labouchere Amendment (1885) criminalised homosexuality as 'gross indecency' (punished by prison, asylum, or electroshock) and was known as the 'blackmail charter' (echoing Hyde's 'Blackmail House'). Explores the hidden duality of homosexual men when reputation was everything.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "something troglodytic shall we say? Or can it be the old story of Dr Fell?"

'Troglodytic' (caveman-like) plays on Victorian fears of degeneration/atavism and Lombroso's theory of physiognomy (that 'born criminals' have physical defects). 'Dr Fell' is a proverb about an irrational, unexplained dislike for someone—allowing the reader to project their own ideas of innate evil onto Hyde.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "He came out of his seclusion… he was much in the open air… his face seemed to open and brighten…" (Chapter 6)

When Jekyll controls Hyde, he is 'in the open air'. Alludes to Victorian 'Muscular Christianity'—the belief that physical fitness, fresh air, and religious morality were linked as the antidote to vice and idleness. Shows Jekyll's temporary return to charity and Christian observance.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "'ape-like fury' / 'ape-like tricks' / 'ape-like spite'"

Alludes to Charles Darwin's 'The Origin of Species' (1859) and the Theory of Evolution, which Victorians saw as a dangerous scientific attack on religion. Describing Hyde as 'ape-like' explores the conflict of science vs. religion and plays on society's atavistic fears that a primitive beast resides within everyone.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon"

Alludes to John Hunter, a respected 18th-century surgeon whose reckless experimental methods shocked peers (just as Jekyll shocks Lanyon). Hunter's real house had two faces: a grand front and a 'blistered and distained' back entrance used to bring in dead bodies for dissection—an architectural manifestation of Jekyll's double life.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "God forgive us! God forgive us!"

Utterson begs for divine intervention after witnessing Jekyll at the window, unable to find answers through law or science. Earlier, Utterson only read 'dry' divinity (suggesting boredom/skepticism). Exposes Victorian hypocrisy: only turning to religion when pushed by extreme terror.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "Babylonian finger on the wall"

After transforming involuntarily into Hyde, Jekyll references Daniel 5 (Old Testament), where King Belshazzar refused to humble himself before God and a ghostly hand wrote his doom on the wall. Shows Jekyll's mental state—feeling he has defied God and faces impending doom, moral judgment, and death.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot"

Alludes to Matthew 27:51 ("the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom" after Jesus's death, removing the division between God and man). Hints at a Godlike revelation of complete self-knowledge for Jekyll, who now sees both Jekyll and Hyde as legitimate parts of himself.

Jekyll & Hyde Expert Knowledge: "co-heir with [Mr. Hyde] to death"

Alludes to Romans 8:17 ("heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ… to share in his glory"). Instead of inheriting salvation through Christ, Jekyll's inheritance is death alongside Hyde (an anti-saviour). Emphasises to a Christian audience that Jekyll has permanently embraced Hyde's deviance with no hope of salvation.