jekyll and hyde

• Merciless


  No mercy, pity or compassion for others, completely evil
• Amoral

  Unaware of social codes and consequences of actions, like an animal
• Barbaric


  Savage, cruel, no regard for feelings or physical damage caused
• Physiognomy


  Victorian belief that appearance indicates internal nature
• Diction - 'wrong'


  Connotes immorality, closely linked to evil and sin
• Hyde's appearance


  Inextricably linked to immorality, evil and sin
• Oxymoron


  Indicates Hyde's dual nature
• Damned


  Biblical allusions to hell
• Juggernaut

  Religious allusions
• Stevens creates an eerie atmosphere around Hyde from the beginning, presenting him as barbaric, heinous and amoral
• The perennial war among my members

  • chapter ten
  • war connotes violence and a battle, suggesting a psychological battle between what society expects and the repressed dual side of man
  • links to the repeated motif of duality through the novella
  • parallels duality seen within the bible
  • Victorian society were highly religious
  • alludes to the duality between Cain and Abel ''Cain's heresy'' in chapt 1
  • duality is innate and this duplicitous side of man cannot be repressed, and is even alluded to in the most sacred of texts
• ID


  houses animalistic primal instincts which Hyde is a microcosm for
• Ego


  represents who we believe we are, and the persona we put forward

  Jekyll acts as the metaphor for the ego, as he does not show his true nature and ''undignified pleasures''
• Super ego


  internalised part of the brain that conforms to societal expectations

  Utterson could be a metaphor for the Super ego because he is an authority figure who steps in and tries to stop Jekyll meddling with Hyde
• class system

  • book published 1886, there were class stereotypes
  • people believed different classes were different types of humans
  • lower class were animalistic, primitive, dangerous, and criminal
  • middle class above the law, morally superior, incapable of crime and more evolved
  • Stevenson challenged these stereotypes
  • Hyde symbolises the lower class
  • Jekyll symbolises middle class - assumed morally superior and no one suspects him of committing the crime
  • Stevenson encourages readers to challenge stereotypes and there's no difference between classes
• science created gothic horror 


  -published in 1886

  -during era there were revelations in the world of science - not always met positively

  -people concerned about developments, that people were beginning to play God and the consequences it can bring

  -this fear created the literary genre of gothic horror

  -gothic horror explores predictions of future science

  -like how Jekyll's experiment goes wrong
• detective genre 


  -at the time becoming popular due to increasing crime rates in London

  -text is responding to detective fiction of the time

  -text creates terror due to the jack the ripper murders combining reality and fiction
• duality


  -Hyde becomes a metaphorical manifestation of the ''undignified pleasures'' that Jekyll self-abandons

  -Jekyll cant accept the true duality that lies within himself

  -ultimately leads to his downfall

  -overall message of jekyll and hyde is that its impossible to separate good and evil

  -perhaps is about learning to accept our flaws