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Comparing Jekyll and Hyde to Ted Bundy

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Themes

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Upgrade your vocab to describe and refer to HSC in Jekyll

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Upgrade your vocab to describe and refer to HSC in Jekyll

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Lit Drive

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credit: pcb_1981 Lit Drive

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1941

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1941. Director: Victor Fleming.

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Trailer of another adaptation: pastiche-subverting the horror genrre

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Trailer of another adaptation: pastiche-subverting the horror genrre

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ITV's adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde-complete series link

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ITV's adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde-complete series link

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Jekyll and Hyde Season 1 Episode 1 - Full HD Episodes

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Jekyll and Hyde Season 1 Episode 1, Jekyll and Hyde Season 1, Jekyll and Hyde Episode 1, Jekyll and Hyde full episodes, full episodes, Jekyll and Hyde S01E01,

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You're welcome

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The Id, Ego, and Superego in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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The Id, Ego, and Superego in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Kaleb, Isaac, and Alexsenia Thesis Statement This book although written before Sigmund Freud's Theory of Mind, represents it almost perfectly. This theory states that the mind consists of three drives, the id, the ego, and the

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A musical summary of the plot set to rhythm

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A musical summary of the plot set to rhythm

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Significance of Utterson's dream Chapter Two from Y11s

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Significance of Utterson's dream Chapter Two from Y11s

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Significance of Utterson's dream in Chapter Two

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Significance of Utterson's dream in Chapter Two

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For a grade 7+: further reading of HSC factors

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For a grade 7+: further reading of HSC factors

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BBC - Ian Rankin Investigates: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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Writer Ian Rankin investigates The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, tracing Robert Louis Stevenson's story back to events in Stevenson's childhood. Crime writer Ian Rankin investigates The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Starting with Robert Louis Stevenson's nightmare in September 1885, Rankin traces the roots of this story, which stretches back to Stevenson's childhood.

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Mrs R: This blew me away. Grade 8 for a critical sophisticated and intellectual interpretation.

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Mrs R says: 'Great link to historical context. Close analysis of word choices highlighted too!'

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Mrs R says: 'Good start, own opinion on religious connotations given. Sounded lie you had more to say?'

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Mrs R: Good ideas and analysis. Could you express it more concisely?

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Mrs R says: Amazing teamwork! A strong, focused answer with many links to the historical and social context. I like the analysis of the contrast! Try not to repeat your ideas though...

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Mrs R says: A focused answer on the theme of madness. Could you give alternate meanings too?

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Mrs R says: A mature response, well done. Good choice of quotes!

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Mrs Rawcliffe says: Excellent specific techniques explained! For a higher grade, have a social, political or psychological interpretation too.

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Mrs Rawcliffe says: This must have been pasted elsewhere. Why else would there be ?? instead of " ".....

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Mrs R says: Amazing improvement including references to other gothic literature, psychological theories and careful analysis of language! Best one!

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Mrs Rawcliffe says: Excellent zooming in on the language used and reference to Juggernaut. Well done. What about expanding to historical and social context?

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Mrs Rawcliffe says: Good quote and reference to the id. Can you develop this further and also point out the technique in the quote? Grade 5.

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Welcome! Please download me for today's task

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https://kahoot.it/

Click on the above link and paste the PIN to play a Jekyll and Hyde quiz against each other in real time!

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Articles to deepen your understanding of contextual factors

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Articles to deepen your understanding of contextual factors

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or sometimes known more simply as Jekyll & Hyde has entertained readers for over 100 years.

Written by Robert Louis Stevenson the novella has impacted our natural language with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next.

Our GCSE series has been written so that you will fully understand the context, genres, themes and characters of this wonderful novella and will guide you through the course and help prepare you for your GCSE English Literature exam.

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GCSE English Literature Resources | Revision and Coursework

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or sometimes known more simply as Jekyll & Hyde has entertained readers for over 100 years. Written by Robert Louis Stevenson the novella has impacted our natural language with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next.

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From the British Library

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Curator Greg Buzwell considers duality in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, exploring how the novel engages with contemporary debates about evolution, degeneration, consciousness, homosexuality and criminal psychology.

Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a late-Victorian variation on ideas first raised in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Stevenson's monster, however, is not artificially created from stitched-together body parts, but rather emerges fully formed from the dark side of the human personality. In the story Dr Jekyll, an admired member of the professional Victorian middle-classes, conducts a series of scientific experiments which unleash from his own psyche the 'bestial' and 'ape-like' Mr Hyde (ch. 10). Gothic fiction had examined the idea of the sinister alter ego or double before on many occasions but Stevenson's genius with Jekyll and Hyde was to show the dual nature not only of one man but also of society in general. Throughout the story, respectability is doubled with degradation; abandon with restraint; honesty with duplicity. Even London itself has a dual nature, with its respectable streets existing side-by-side with areas notorious for their squalor and violence.

Evolution and degeneration

Viewed on a simple level, Dr Jekyll is a good man, much admired in his profession. Mr Hyde, meanwhile, is evil. He is a murderer; a monster who tramples upon a small girl simply because she happens to be in his way. On a deeper level, however, the comparison is not merely between good and evil but between evolution and degeneration. Throughout the narrative Mr Hyde's physical appearance provokes disgust. He is described as 'ape-like', 'troglodytic' and 'hardly human' (ch. 2). As Mr Enfield, a well-known man about town and distant relative of Jekyll's friend Mr Utterson, observes 'There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable' (ch. 1). Some 15 years before Jekyll and Hyde, Charles Darwin had published The Descent of Man (1871), a book in which he concluded that humankind had 'descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped' which was itself 'probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal'. Going back even further, Darwin hypothesised that these stages of evolution had been preceded, in a direct line, by 'some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal'. Such a nightmarish biological lineage that denied the specialness of humans, feeds into many late-Victorian Gothic novels. Dracula's ability to transform into the shape of a wolf or a bat is one example, while Dr Moreau's experiments upon the hapless animals on his island as he attempts a barbaric form of accelerated evolution is another. Stevenson's portrayal of Hyde works in a similar fashion. Mr Hyde is regarded as physically detestable but perhaps only because he subconsciously reminds those he encounters of their own distant evolutionary inheritance. When Dr Jekyll's medical colleague, Dr Lanyon, witnesses Hyde transform back into Jekyll, the knowledge that the ugly, murderous beast exists within the respectable Victorian scientist sends him first to his sick-bed, and then to an early grave.

Double lives and misleading appearances

The depiction of Dr Jekyll's house was possibly based on the residence of famous surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793), whose respectable and renowned house in Leicester Square in the late 18th century also had a secret. In order to teach and to gain knowledge about human anatomy, Hunter required human cadavers, many of them supplied by 'resurrection men' who robbed fresh graves. These were brought, usually at night, to the back entrance of the house, which had a drawbridge leading to the preparation rooms and lecture-theatre

The front aspect of Dr Jekyll's house presents a 'great air of wealth and comfort' (ch. 2). Meanwhile Mr Hyde, soon after we first encounter him, is seen entering a building which displays an air of 'prolonged and sordid negligence' (ch.1). The twist is that the reputable front and the rundown rear form two sides of the same property. Stevenson is not only making the point that the respectable and the disreputable frequently exist in close proximity, but also that a respectable façade is no guarantee against dark secrets lurking within. In a similar fashion, the seemingly decent Mr Enfield, a friend of the lawyer Mr Utterson, first encounters Hyde while 'coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o'clock of a black winter morning' (ch. 1). Exactly where Mr Enfield has been, and what he has been up to, are never made clear but it sounds far from innocent. Throughout the book the people and events that initially seem innocent and straightforward become dark and sinister when viewed more closely.

Double-consciousness

Just as the differing appearances of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde play upon the theories emerging from Charles Darwin's work, so their differing personalities explore contemporary debates about moral behaviour and the possible plurality of human consciousness. By literally splitting the consciousness of Dr Jekyll into two - the decent side that attempts, and largely succeeds, in suppressing desires that run contrary to the dictates of society; and the amoral side that runs riot in an attempt to gratify animal desire - Stevenson explores in a heightened fashion the battles played out in every one of us. As Dr Jekyll observes 'I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both' (ch. 10). Through Hyde, the respectable Dr Jekyll is freed from the restraints imposed by society - 'my devil had been long caged, he came out roaring' (ch. 10). In his confession at the end of the book, Jekyll observes that, ultimately, he will have to choose between being Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde. To become the latter would mean giving up on noble aspirations and being 'forever despised and friendless'. (ch. 10) To become Jekyll, however, means giving up the sensual and disreputable appetites he can indulge as Hyde. In spite of the curious circumstances of his own case it is, as the melancholy Jekyll observes, a struggle and debate 'as old and commonplace as man' (ch. 10).

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Homosexuality

In an early draft of the book, Stevenson has Dr Jekyll confess 'From an early age ... I became in secret the slave of certain appetites'. Such an observation inevitably leads us to wonder what such 'appetites' could have been. For some as the book's other characters - as well as the first readers of the book - unaware that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, the relationship between the two must have appeared puzzling. Why would the respectable Jekyll grant the vile Hyde free access to his house, let alone alter his will so that in the event of his death or disappearance Hyde will inherit. For Mr Enfield there can only be one answer: 'Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth' (ch. 1). Stevenson, because of the era in which he was writing, could not make specific references to homosexuality, but much of the plot initially hints at Hyde blackmailing Jekyll because of the doctor's unorthodox sexual preferences.

Homosexuality and blackmail were frequently linked in this period. Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885 (the year in which Stevenson was writing his tale), made 'gross indecency' - a nebulous term that was not precisely defined - a criminal activity. In practice, the Act was primarily used to prosecute homosexuals on the flimsiest of evidence and was dubbed a 'Blackmailer's Charter'. Dr Jekyll is a bachelor - indeed the entire story is played out amongst a small circle of unmarried men. As implied by comments such as Mr Utterson's 'It turns me cold to think of this creature [Hyde] stealing like a thief to Harry's bedside', homosexuality (either as a secret from the doctor's past, or else as a current relationship between the youthful Hyde and the lonely Jekyll) is a thinly-veiled theme throughout (ch. 2). Even the behaviour of the elderly MP Sir Danvers Carew, who meets his death at Edward Hyde's hands after 'accosting' Hyde 'with a very pretty manner' late one night down by the river, takes on a new light once the reader becomes aware of homosexuality as an undercurrent in the story (ch. 3). In this tale of double-lives nobody is quite what they initially appear to be.

The fascinating instances of doubling in Stevenson's tale did not come to an end upon the book's publication. In a macabre twist, events from real life began to overlay themselves upon the narrative. The Whitechapel Murders occurred in the autumn of 1888, two years after the publication of Jekyll and Hyde, and the real murderer and the fictitious Mr Hyde were swiftly paired in the public imagination. Indeed, the murders became so entangled with the story, Richard Mansfield who famously played Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the stage adaptation produced a year after the publication of the novel, was accused of being the Ripper murderer by a member of the public.

When Hyde attacks Sir Danvers Carew he beats him to death with his walking stick, commenting afterwards 'With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow' (ch. 10). The ferocity of the attack mirrors the intensity of the Ripper murders. Jekyll and Hyde pointed towards an unpalatable truth. Mr Hyde, with his 'ape-like' appearance conformed to contemporary criminological theory in which delinquents displayed visible traits indicative of their unpalatable natures. Dr Jekyll, however, a 'large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty' would not conform to such a theory and yet, as we know, Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same; two faces of a single personality (ch. 3). This leads to the uncomfortable possibility that one could pass a monster such as Jack the Ripper in the street and yet only see a respectable, civilised gentleman exhibiting absolutely no trace of the depraved killer lurking within Jekyll and Hyde and Jack the Ripper.

Footnotes

[1] Charles Darwin, The Origins of Species and The Descent of Man (New York: The Modern Library, 1936), p. 911.

Greg Buzwell is Curator of Contemporary Literary Archives at the British Library. He has co-curated three major exhibitions for the Library - Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination; Shakespeare in Ten Acts and Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty. His research focuses primarily on the Gothic literature of the Victorian fin de siècle. He has also edited and introduced collections of supernatural tales by authors including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edgar Allan Poe and Walter de la Mare.

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'Man is not truly one, but truly two': duality in Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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Curator Greg Buzwell considers duality in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, exploring how the novel engages with contemporary debates about evolution, degeneration, consciousness, homosexuality and criminal psychology. Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a late-Victorian variation on ideas first raised in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818).

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - GCSE English Literature Revision - AQA - BBC Bitesize

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GCSE English Literature Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde learning resources for adults, children, parents and teachers.

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Learn definitions of unfamiliar vocab

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Learn spellings of words below

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Due Monday 7th December

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Chapter 7

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example answers to a question on anxiety in the novel

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example answers to a question on anxiety in the novel

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PEE

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Key quotes with brief notes

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From 2013-2011

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An interesting blog about the miconceptions of the novella

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An interesting blog about the miconceptions of the novella

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And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. Not just most people today don't understand the original story-though that's true-but every retelling of the story, from the earliest stage plays to Steven Moffat's otherwise brilliant miniseries Jekyll, misses a key point of Robert Louis Stevenson's original story:

There is no Mr. Hyde.

Edward Hyde is not a separate personality living in the same body as Henry Jekyll. "Hyde" is just Jekyll, having transformed his body into something unrecognizable, acting on unspecified urges that would be unseemly for someone of his age and social standing in Victorian London (i.e. some combination of violence and sex. Torture is specifically mentioned).

Jekyll did not create a potion to remove the evil parts of his nature. He made a potion that allowed him express his urges without feeling guilty and without any consequences besmirching his good name. That's also why he names his alter ego "Hyde," because Hyde is a disguise, to be worn and discarded like a thick cloak. He might as well have called Edward "Mr. Second Skin," or "Mr. Mask."

It's important that it's Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Jekyll is a respected professor. Hyde is a lower class schlub. Hyde is also much younger than Jekyll. Both of these facts allow Jekyll as Hyde to get away with a lot worse behavior.

Crucially, we never get Hyde's point of view. Because it does not exist. Even when he looks like Hyde, Jekyll always thinks of himself as Jekyll. In his testament that ends The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll always talks about his time in Hyde's body using "I" statements: I looked in the mirror and saw Hyde, the pleasures I sought in my disguise, I awoke to see I had the hand of Hyde. Even when describing the murder of Sir Danvers, the worst thing he ever does as Hyde, Jekyll says "I mauled the unresisting body" and then, "I saw my life to be forfeit." That is, he both takes responsibility for the murder (and the pleasure it brought him) and has a very Jekyll-like fear of losing the good life he has. He is always Jekyll, no matter what he looks like, or how he's behaving.

One source of the misinterpretation of the story is that Jekyll himself refers to Hyde as a separate person, an other, one who has desires and cares completely separate from Jekyll's. Jekyll claims that while he may want to commit the sins of Hyde, Hyde doesn't care about the friends, respect, wealth, or love that Jekyll needs.

But Jekyll's an extremely unreliable narrator in this respect, because his own account belies this conclusion. Not just specifically when recounting the times that he was disguised as Hyde and he still refers to himself as Jekyll, but because "Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case" is written by Jekyll when he's stuck in the body of Hyde. If there were ever a time for Hyde to exert himself, talk about himself as an autonomous being, it would be then. But he does not. Because he can't. Because he does not exist.

The fundamental mistake most versions of Jekyll and Hyde make is not understanding that Jekyll wants to do all the things he does as Hyde. He loves being Hyde. He revels in the freedom of being Hyde and it's only when the consequences catch up to him anyway that his duel personality becomes a problem for him.

This fundamental mistake leads to further misunderstandings. First, Jekyll is not good. He's not bad, either, so much as Jekyll is a deeply repressed man who has hidden his violent and sexual urges. His biggest sin is that he wants to face no consequences for anything he does.

Second, Hyde is not the accidental result of an unrelated experiment. Hyde is the absolutely intended result of Jekyll's experiment. Hyde is not Jekyll's punishment for playing God. Hyde is Jekyll's reward.

Third, Jekyll is not unaware or out of control when he's Hyde. He does not wake up with no memory of what happened the night before. He remembers perfectly everything he does as Hyde, because he was in control the whole time.

And finally, Hyde is not a monster. He's not the grotesque pink giant Hulk of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or the super-fast, super-strong, super- handsome superhuman of Jekyll. He's a nasty, brutish, and short ape-like man whose great advantage over Jekyll is that he's young and seemingly lower class, and therefore can get away with a lot of shit.

Obviously, this rant is one hundred years too late to change the popular perception of this classic of horror. To most people, Jekyll and Hyde is the story of two completely separate personalities, one good and one evil, that share a body and are at war with each other, and that's not going to change.

That said, I think the original is a much more complicated take on the nature of evil, society, shame, and repression than any that have followed it, and I'd love to see a version that really explored the appeal of Hyde to Jekyll. What would you do if you could be someone else for a night, do whatever you wanted to do, commit whatever sins you wanted to commit, without fear of consequences of any kind? Are we good because we want to be good, or are we good because we just don't want to be punished?

The idea of evil as "that guy, over there, who takes over my body sometimes against my will" is too simple, and dissociative, and irresponsible. It's the mistake Jekyll himself makes. Hyde is not someone else who commits Jekyll's sins for him. Hyde does not exist. Jekyll commits all of his sins on his own.

Steven Padnick is a freelance writer and editor. By day. You can find more of his writing and funny pictures at padnick.tumblr.com.

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What Everybody Gets Wrong About Jekyll and Hyde

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And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. Not just most people today don't understand the original story-though that's true-but every retelling of the story, from the earliest stage plays to Steven Moffat's otherwise brilliant miniseries Jekyll, misses a key point of Robert Louis Stevenson's original story: There is no Mr. Hyde.

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"I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point.
Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the
thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable;
the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together-that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated?"
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Quotes

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"I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens.

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Not my words, but a good PPT nevertheless on this theme!