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Edexcel GCSE English Literature · Paper 2, Section A
Mr Utterson, a respectable London lawyer, hears from his cousin Enfield about a disturbing incident: a man named Hyde trampled a young girl and paid compensation with a cheque signed by Dr Jekyll. Utterson discovers that Jekyll's will leaves everything to Hyde. Troubled, Utterson visits Dr Lanyon, who has fallen out with Jekyll over his 'unscientific' experiments. Utterson stakes out the door and finally meets Hyde - finding him inexplicably repulsive.
Jekyll reassures Utterson that Hyde is under control and can be dismissed at any time. A year later, Hyde brutally murders Sir Danvers Carew - a respected MP - beating him to death with a cane. Utterson identifies Hyde and visits Jekyll, who claims Hyde has fled and shows a forged letter. Utterson's clerk Guest notices the handwriting matches Jekyll's own.
Hyde disappears and Jekyll seems reformed - sociable and charitable for two months. Then Jekyll suddenly withdraws from society. Dr Lanyon, visibly shaken, falls ill and dies, leaving a letter for Utterson to be opened only after Jekyll's death or disappearance. Utterson tries to visit Jekyll but is refused.
Utterson and Enfield see Jekyll at a window, looking desperately ill, before he withdraws with an expression of 'abject terror.' Jekyll's servant Poole seeks Utterson's help - Jekyll has been locked in his cabinet for days, his voice has changed, and he sends desperate notes for a particular chemical. They break down the door and find Hyde's body in Jekyll's clothes, dead by suicide, with a confession beside him.
Lanyon's letter reveals that he witnessed Hyde transform into Jekyll before his eyes - the shock destroyed his will to live. Jekyll's own statement explains everything: he created a potion to separate good from evil in human nature. As Hyde, he felt liberated and guiltless. But Hyde grew stronger, the transformations became involuntary, and the chemical ran out. Trapped as Hyde with no escape, Jekyll writes his confession and takes his life.
A wealthy, respectable London doctor who creates a potion to separate the good and evil sides of his nature. Jekyll is outwardly virtuous but secretly desires to indulge his darker impulses without consequence. His experiment represents the Victorian obsession with maintaining a respectable facade. His tragedy is that he underestimates the power of his evil side - Hyde grows stronger until Jekyll can no longer control the transformations.
Jekyll's alter ego - the physical embodiment of his repressed evil. Hyde is smaller than Jekyll (because evil has been suppressed and underdeveloped), younger, and universally repulsive. Everyone who meets him feels an instinctive disgust they cannot explain. He is associated with animalistic imagery and darkness. Hyde commits escalating acts of violence - from trampling a child to murdering Carew - and feels no remorse.
Jekyll's lawyer and the novel's main narrator-figure. Utterson is the epitome of Victorian respectability - reserved, rational, loyal, and discreet. He investigates Hyde out of concern for his friend but is limited by his commitment to reputation and propriety. He represents the reader: trying to make rational sense of irrational events. His reluctance to pry reflects the Victorian code of silence around scandal.
A conventional, respected doctor and former friend of Jekyll. Lanyon dismissed Jekyll's experiments as 'unscientific balderdash.' When he witnesses Hyde's transformation into Jekyll, the shock is so profound that he dies within weeks. Lanyon represents orthodox Victorian science - he cannot accommodate what falls outside rational understanding. His death shows the danger of confronting truths that society refuses to acknowledge.
Jekyll's loyal butler who ultimately breaks the code of servant discretion when his master's safety is at stake. His fear and loyalty drive the climactic scene where he and Utterson break down the cabinet door. Poole's observations - the changed voice, the desperate notes - build suspense and confirm that something is deeply wrong.
An elderly MP and client of Utterson, murdered by Hyde in a fit of unprovoked rage. Carew represents innocent respectability - his murder demonstrates that Hyde's violence is random, senseless, and escalating. The brutality of the attack (beating him to death with a cane) shocks Victorian society and triggers the manhunt for Hyde.
The novel's central theme. Stevenson argues that every person contains both good and evil. Jekyll's experiment does not create evil - it releases what was already there. The tragedy is not that Hyde exists, but that Jekyll believed he could separate the two without consequence. Stevenson challenges the Victorian belief that people are simply 'good' or 'bad.'
Victorian society demanded an impeccable public image. Jekyll creates Hyde not because he is uniquely evil, but because he cannot reconcile his desires with his reputation. The novel suggests that the pressure to appear respectable actually breeds hypocrisy and drives evil underground. Every male character in the novella is concerned with appearances and discretion.
Jekyll's experiment represents science without moral limits - a Victorian anxiety as Darwin, industrialisation, and new technologies disrupted old certainties. Lanyon represents conventional science; Jekyll pushes beyond accepted boundaries. Stevenson warns that knowledge without ethics leads to destruction. The novel anticipates modern debates about the dangers of unchecked scientific ambition.
The novella is structured around secrecy. Characters refuse to discuss what troubles them, letters are sealed and deferred, and doors remain locked. Utterson, Enfield, and Lanyon all choose not to investigate too deeply - reflecting the Victorian code that a gentleman does not pry. This culture of silence enables Jekyll's double life and allows evil to flourish unchecked.
Hyde's violence is the eruption of desires that Jekyll has repressed. The trampling of the girl and the murder of Carew are gratuitous and disproportionate - they suggest that repression does not eliminate desire but amplifies it. Stevenson implies that the stricter the moral code, the more violent the inevitable release. Hyde grows stronger as Jekyll tries harder to suppress him.
Stevenson uses London as a Gothic landscape - fog, labyrinthine streets, gaslight, and locked doors create an atmosphere of claustrophobia and menace. The city mirrors Jekyll's psychology: respectable facades conceal dark interiors. Hyde's door (plain, blistered, without a knocker) is the back entrance to Jekyll's grand house - two faces of the same building, just as Hyde is the hidden face of Jekyll.
Memorise these quotes - the Edexcel exam is closed-book. Short quotes that you can embed naturally into sentences are best.
"Man is not truly one, but truly two"
- Jekyll (Ch. 10)
The thesis of the entire novella. Jekyll recognises the fundamental duality of human nature. Stevenson challenges the Victorian assumption that respectable people are morally simple.
"I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man"
- Jekyll (Ch. 10)
'Primitive' suggests this duality is ancient and unavoidable - not a flaw but a fundamental part of being human. It cannot be educated or moralised away.
"I concealed my pleasures"
- Jekyll (Ch. 10)
Reveals Victorian hypocrisy. Jekyll's 'pleasures' are never specified - Stevenson leaves them ambiguous, forcing readers to confront their own hidden desires.
"Satan's signature upon a face"
- Utterson (Ch. 2)
Religious imagery linking Hyde to the devil. Victorian physiognomy believed that moral corruption was physically visible - Hyde's appearance reflects his evil nature.
"Mr Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation"
- Narrator (Ch. 2)
Hyde's repulsiveness is felt but cannot be rationally explained - it operates on instinct. 'Dwarfish' suggests evil has been stunted by years of repression. The inability to name the deformity reflects Victorian reluctance to articulate uncomfortable truths.
"the man seems hardly human"
- Utterson (Ch. 2)
Dehumanisation of Hyde. Connects to Darwin's theory of evolution - Hyde represents a regression to a pre-civilised, animalistic state. Links to Victorian fears about degeneration.
"ape-like fury"
- Narrator (Ch. 4)
Simile comparing Hyde to a primate during Carew's murder. Evokes Darwinian anxiety - the idea that beneath civilisation, humans are still animals. 'Fury' suggests uncontrolled, instinctive rage.
"the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway"
- Narrator (Ch. 4)
The graphic violence of Carew's murder shocks Victorian sensibilities. The passive construction ('were shattered') distances the reader while emphasising the brutality. The body 'jumped' - even in death, Hyde's violence has physical force.
"If he be Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr Seek"
- Utterson (Ch. 2)
A pun on 'hide and seek' that encapsulates the novella's structure - a quest to uncover hidden truth. Utterson represents rational investigation, though he ultimately fails to prevent tragedy.
"I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask"
- Enfield (Ch. 1)
Captures the Victorian gentleman's code: do not pry, do not expose scandal. 'Queer Street' (meaning trouble) is itself a euphemism. This culture of silence enables Hyde's crimes to continue.
"I let my brother go to the devil in his own way"
- Utterson (Ch. 1)
Utterson's philosophy of non-interference. Ironic given that Jekyll is literally going 'to the devil.' The allusion to Cain ('Am I my brother's keeper?') suggests moral negligence disguised as tolerance.
"like a district of some city in a nightmare"
- Narrator (Ch. 4)
London is presented as a Gothic, nightmarish space. The fog, gaslight, and labyrinthine streets externalise the psychological confusion and moral darkness of the story.
"all human beings... are commingled out of good and evil"
- Jekyll (Ch. 10)
'Commingled' means mixed inseparably - Stevenson argues that good and evil cannot be cleanly separated. Jekyll's fatal error was believing they could be.
"I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse"
- Jekyll (Ch. 10)
The repetition of 'slowly' emphasises the gradual, irreversible nature of Jekyll's decline. 'Incorporated' (literally 'made into a body') - Hyde is taking over physically as well as morally.
"the fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city"
- Narrator (Ch. 4)
Personification of fog as something alive and oppressive. 'Drowned' suggests suffocation. The weather mirrors the moral atmosphere - nothing is clear, everything is obscured.
"I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end"
- Jekyll (Ch. 10)
The final line of Jekyll's confession. 'Unhappy' is an understatement that carries immense pathos. The formal, measured tone contrasts with the desperation of his situation.
"I have had a shock... and I shall never recover"
- Lanyon (Ch. 6)
Witnessing the transformation destroys Lanyon's worldview. He represents the limits of orthodox Victorian science - confronted with evidence that challenges everything he believes, he simply cannot survive.
"the door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained"
- Narrator (Ch. 1)
The door to Jekyll's laboratory - Hyde's entrance. Its neglected, sinister appearance contrasts with Jekyll's grand front entrance. The building itself embodies duality: respectable facade, hidden darkness.
"I felt younger, lighter, happier in body"
- Jekyll (Ch. 10)
Jekyll describes his first transformation into Hyde with language of liberation and pleasure. The attraction of evil is presented as seductive - freedom from moral constraint feels good, which makes it dangerous.
"the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound"
- Jekyll (Ch. 10)
Echoes the biblical temptation narrative. Jekyll, like Adam or Faust, cannot resist forbidden knowledge. Stevenson warns that scientific curiosity without moral restraint leads to damnation.
Context is assessed through the context skill. The best responses weave context into analysis rather than treating it as a bolt-on paragraph.
Victorian society placed enormous value on public reputation, moral propriety, and self-control - especially for middle- and upper-class men. However, this strict moral code often masked private vice. Stevenson exposes this hypocrisy: Jekyll is not unusual in having dark desires, only in finding a chemical means to indulge them. The novella asks whether enforced respectability actually creates the very evils it claims to suppress.
Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' (1859) challenged the idea that humans were created in God's image. Hyde's ape-like behaviour reflects Victorian 'degeneration anxiety' - the fear that humans could regress to a primitive, animalistic state. Hyde is frequently described in animal terms ('ape-like fury,' 'hissing'), suggesting that beneath civilisation lies a beast.
Stevenson wrote the novella in 1886 during a period of personal illness. He grew up in Edinburgh - a city literally divided between the respectable New Town and the dangerous Old Town - which inspired the novella's theme of duality. Stevenson was also influenced by the real case of Deacon Brodie, an Edinburgh cabinet-maker who was a burglar by night.
Although Jack the Ripper's murders occurred in 1888 (two years after publication), the novella tapped into existing Victorian anxieties about crime in London's dark streets. Hyde's violence - random, nocturnal, and occurring in foggy backstreets - captures the fear that civilisation was a thin veneer over chaos and brutality.
Victorian Britain was deeply religious. Sin, temptation, and damnation were taken seriously. Hyde is repeatedly linked to Satan and hell. Jekyll's experiment can be read as a modern version of the Fall - he overreaches, plays God, and is punished. The novella suggests that evil is not an external force but something within every person.
Although Freud's theories came after the novella (1890s-1900s), Stevenson anticipates his ideas. Freud's model of the id (primitive desires), ego (rational self), and superego (moral conscience) maps onto Hyde (id), Jekyll (ego/superego), and the potion (the mechanism that releases the id). The novella suggests that repression does not destroy desire - it strengthens it.
The novella belongs to the Gothic tradition - using darkness, mystery, doubles, and the supernatural to explore psychological and social anxieties. Stevenson updates the Gothic from remote castles to the modern city, making London itself a site of horror. The 'double' or 'doppelganger' motif (Jekyll/Hyde) reflects the fragmented modern self.
Jekyll and Hyde appears in Paper 2, Section A (19th-century novel). You will be given an extract from the novella and a question that asks you to analyse a character, theme, or idea. You must write about both the extract and the wider novella. The question is worth 40 marks (no SPaG marks on Paper 2).
Example Question
How does Stevenson present the theme of duality in this extract and in the novella as a whole?
Refer closely to the extract and to the novella as a whole in your answer. (40 marks)
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