1. Jekyll and Hyde
Notes

2. Setting: - Darkness and light (including street lighting)
-   Dirt and dust
-   Fog
-   Housing – contrast of different areas
-   Cupboards, closets, cabinets- things shut away

3. Structure and Narration:
- 3rd Person Narrative
-   seen mostly from the perspective of Utterson (characterisation)
-   Maud’s story of the Carew murder (Hyde’s second crime)

4. Structure and Narration:
- 1st Person Narration:
-   Enfield’s story (Hyde’s first crime)
-   Jekyll’s letters
-   Lanyon’s story
-   Jekyll’s statement

5. Structure and Narration:
- Framing: everything is at one remove:
-   seen through the eyes of others
-   told in letters or statements
-   seen only in part
seen through a window (Utterson talks to Jekyll through a window) (Imagery)

6. Structure and Narration:
- Draws us in further and further: even if we already know or have guessed who Hyde is, we want to find out: how, why and what it felt like.
- Structured and written like a Report (cf Language)

7. Characterisation: Utterson - of unimpeachable probity
-   totally reliable
-   has led a very sheltered life
-   probably very dull – even boring (cf after J’s party)
Lanyon
Jekyll
Hyde
The relationship of Jekyll to Hyde

8. Imagery and Language: - Wine - hearth fires - animals
-   cupboards, closets, cabinets
-   windows
-   dirt, dust
-   fog
-   formal language
-   detailed language

9. Theme, Message and Relevance:
-   Jekyll well respected and the evil Hyde
-   Jekyll though it been a very pure powder, but it had been contaminated: the unknown impurity lent efficacy
-   Front of J’s house very respectable, but back is on dingy street (setting)
-   Framing – who and what do we believe – difficulty of knowing the truth

10. Theme, Message and Relevance:
-   Criminals who were well respected (eg Shipman, Soham murderer)
-   Political systems that claimed to be good but produced evil (Nazism, Communism, Inquisition, Prohibition (USA))

11. Theme, Message and Relevance:
The nature of personality:
-   Personality changes caused by illness, injury, trauma, stress, alcohol, drugs
-   Multiple personality
-   Brain research (cf Jekyll: “a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens”)

12. Theme, Message and Relevance:
3.The nature of evil:
- our propensity to evil (cf Crime and Punishment )
-   dualism
-   Is pure evil more powerful than our normal mix of good and bad?
Torturers (cf Psychological experiments)

13. Theme, Message and Relevance:
4. The risks of scientific experiment:
-   nuclear technology
-   genetic modification
-   cloning (cf Frankenstein )

14. Antecedents: Historical: - Deacon Brodie
-   Dr Knox and the body snatchers, Burke and Hare (Stevenson wrote a short story based on this also The Bodysnatchers)
Literary:
-   Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
-   Confessions of a Justified Sinner (James Hogg)
-   Tales of Hoffman
-   Murders in the Rue Morgue (Edgar Allan Poe)
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoievsky)

15. Genre links:
 The Gothic – esp Frankenstein (pre); Dracula (post)
-   Crime ficion – Edgar Allan Poe (pre); Sherlock Holmes (post); stories about Jack the Ripper (post); modern psychological crime fiction (eg Val McDermid)
-   Horror
-   Psychological fiction: Confessions of a Justified Sinner (pre);
-   Multiple Narratives: Confessions of a Justified Sinner (pre); Dracula (post);

16. Higher Essay Questions:
development or deterioration of a character: Jekyll and Hyde
contrast between characters: Jekyll and Utterson
key scene
the importance of setting: buildings/fog/light/rooms to eg appearance and reality
narration: different narrators, framing, characterisation of Utterson, language
imagery
theme, message or relevance