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 If
you had a friend that was doing
something that you were sure could
either get them into trouble or cause
them harm, would you…
• Become involved, even if they didn’t want you to,
and do everything in your power to convince
them to change. Why?
• Do not interfere. Leave them to their own devices
– if they need you, they’ll let you know. Why?
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 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
was written in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson.
 Interested in what made up a person’s character,
both good and evil.

Came from a good family, but fascinated by the
"dregs of humanity", something that the upper
class pretended never existed.

After a nightmare, Stevenson wrote the story
of Dr. Jekyll in just three days.
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 Nineteenth
Century/Victorian Era
• Concerned with the concept of a ‘double self’ or
‘twin’, often referred to as a Doppelgänger.
• Genre began with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,
published in 1818.
• These characters have become part of our
cultural mythology:
 Jekyll and Hyde,
 Dracula and Frankenstein
 Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty
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 Victorian Era
 People, especially
with ideas of
•
•
•
•
authors, were concerned
death and rebirth,
urbanism,
imperial decline,
sexual revolution and sexual epidemics.
 For
Stevenson’s audience, the novel would
have begun as a mystery
• each new chapter would have involved an attempt to
discover the identity of Hyde
• and how he was using Dr Jekyll in some evil way.
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Stevenson was very interested in the contrast between
good and evil.
He showed this in how he described the setting before
Mr. Enfield and Mr. Utterson start talking about Mr.
Hyde.
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Ch. 1, Paragraph 3:
What words/phrases stand out in this passage?
What tone does the author establish, and how?
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a
by-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was small and
what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the weekdays.
The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed and all hoping to do
better still - the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an
air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even on Sunday,
when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty
of visitors, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy
neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted
shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and
cheerfulness of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the
passenger.
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After the positive description of the
street, comes the negative.
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Chapter 1, paragraph 4:
What words and phrases stand out in this passage? What
tone does the author establish, and how?
Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east the line was
broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain
sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It
was two storeys high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the
lower storey and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper;
and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid
negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor
knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess
and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps;
the schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a
generation, no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors
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POSITIVE
NEGATIVE
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 What
do you know about each of the
characters mentioned so far:
 Mr. Utterson
 Mr. Enfield
 Mr. Hyde
 How do people in the story react to Mr.
Hyde, and why? What information is the
reader left wondering about?
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 Text
Analysis
• Look at the passage beginning with “Six
o’clock struck” and ending with “enduring
hatred” (paragraph 13).
 Look closely at Stevenson’s choice of language
and sentence lengths. How does the author
use language to build the sense of
apprehension and terror in this passage?
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 Look
at the passage beginning, “He was
wild when he was young…’ and ending
‘…cancer of some concealed disgrace” (last
paragraph of chapter).
• Discuss the concept of GOOD vs. EVIL as addressed
in this passage.
• To what extent do you think Stevenson is saying that
Hyde is not totally evil but a part of all people, and
the very sight of him brings out the worst in us? By
expressing our desire to kill Hyde, are we rejecting
that evil part of our nature?
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• In the first chapter, we were only
distantly involved with Hyde. What else
do we now know?
• What might Hyde be? What clues could
you extract from the text? Cite specific
quotes and examples to support your
hypothesis.
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