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Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde Practice Questions

Question 1

30 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 1, ‘Story of the Door’, of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, which opens the novel, the narrator describes Mr Utterson and his friendship with Mr Enfield.

1Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never
lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward
in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At
friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something
5eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never
found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent
symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts
of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone,
to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had
10not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved
tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high
pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity
inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline to Cain’s heresy,”
he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the devil in his own
15way.” In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last
reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of
downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his
chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative
20at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar
catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his
friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was
the lawyer’s way. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom
he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of
25time, they implied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt the bond
that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the
well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these
two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in common.
It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks,
30that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with
obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put
the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of
each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even
resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them
35uninterrupted.

From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 1, ‘Story of the Door’.

‘In the novel, Utterson is presented as a loyal and respectable gentleman.’

Starting with this extract, explore how far you agree with this view.

Write about:

  • how Stevenson presents Utterson in this extract
  • how Stevenson presents Utterson in the novel as a whole.

[30 marks]

Question 2

30 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 2, ‘Search for Mr Hyde’, of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, Utterson has waited at the door in the by-street and has just met Mr Hyde for the first time.

1Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden
reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared
at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. “Now I shall know you
again,” said Mr. Utterson. “It may be useful.”
5“Yes,” returned Mr. Hyde, “it is as well we have met; and à propos, you
should have my address.” And he gave a number of a street in Soho.
“Good God!” thought Mr. Utterson, “can he, too, have been thinking of
the will?” But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in
acknowledgment of the address.
10“And now,” said the other, “how did you know me?”
“By description,” was the reply.
“Whose description?”
“We have common friends,” said Mr. Utterson.
“Common friends,” echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. “Who are they?”
15“Jekyll, for instance,” said the lawyer.
“He never told you,” cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger. “I did not
think you would have lied.”
“Come,” said Mr. Utterson, “that is not fitting language.”
The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with
20extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into
the house.
The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of
disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every
step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental
25perplexity. The problem he was thus debating as he walked, was one of a
class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an
impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a
displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of
murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky,
30whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him,
but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown
disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. “There
must be something else,” said the perplexed gentleman. “There is
something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man
35seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be
the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul
that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The
last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s
signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”

From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 2, ‘Search for Mr Hyde’.

Starting with this extract, explore how Stevenson presents Mr Hyde as a frightening outsider.

Write about:

  • how Stevenson presents Mr Hyde in this extract
  • how Stevenson presents Mr Hyde as a frightening outsider in the novel as a whole.

[30 marks]

Question 3

30 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 4, ‘The Carew Murder Case’, of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, a maid describes what she saw from her window in the middle of the night.

1Nearly a year later, in the month of October, 18—, London was startled
by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by the
high position of the victim. The details were few and startling. A maid
servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone
5upstairs to bed about eleven. Although a fog rolled over the city in the
small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless, and the lane,
which the maid’s window overlooked, was brilliantly lit by the full
moon. It seems she was romantically given, for she sat down upon her
box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a dream of
10musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated
that experience), never had she felt more at peace with all men or
thought more kindly of the world. And as she so sat she became aware of
an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near along the
lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small gentleman, to
15whom at first she paid less attention. When they had come within speech
(which was just under the maid’s eyes) the older man bowed and accosted
the other with a very pretty manner of politeness. It did not seem as if
the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his
pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way;
20but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to
watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness
of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded
self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was
surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited
25her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand
a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word,
and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a
sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot,
brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a
30madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very
much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all
bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like
fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of
blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped
35upon the roadway. At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid
fainted.

From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 4, ‘The Carew Murder Case’.

Starting with this extract, explore how Stevenson presents violence.

Write about:

  • how Stevenson presents violence in this extract
  • how Stevenson presents violence in the novel as a whole.

[30 marks]

Question 4

30 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 4, ‘The Carew Murder Case’, of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, Utterson is taking a police inspector to Mr Hyde’s house in Soho on the morning after the murder of Sir Danvers Carew.

1It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the
season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the
wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so
that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a
5marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be
dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich,
lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for
a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of
daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal
10quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways,
and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been
extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful
reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of
some city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the
15gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was
conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law’s
officers, which may at times assail the most honest.
As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little
and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating house,
20a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged
children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different
nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the
next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as
umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the
25home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of
a million sterling.
An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an
evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy: but her manners were excellent. Yes,
she said, this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in
30that night very late, but he had gone away again in less than an hour;
there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and
he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she
had seen him till yesterday.

From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 4, ‘The Carew Murder Case’.

Starting with this extract, explore how Stevenson uses the setting of London to create a sense of mystery and fear.

Write about:

  • how Stevenson uses setting in this extract
  • how Stevenson uses the setting of London in the novel as a whole.

[30 marks]

Question 5

30 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 5, ‘Incident of the Letter’, of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, Utterson visits Dr Jekyll in his cabinet after the murder of Sir Danvers Carew.

1“I am quite sure of him,” replied Jekyll; “I have grounds for certainty
that I cannot share with any one. But there is one thing on which you
may advise me. I have—I have received a letter; and I am at a loss
whether I should show it to the police. I should like to leave it in
5your hands, Utterson; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so great
a trust in you.”
“You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?” asked the
lawyer.
“No,” said the other. “I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I
10am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, which this
hateful business has rather exposed.”
Utterson ruminated awhile; he was surprised at his friend’s selfishness,
and yet relieved by it. “Well,” said he, at last, “let me see the
letter.”
15The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed “Edward Hyde”:
and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer’s benefactor, Dr.
Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand
generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had means
of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked this
20letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he had
looked for; and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions.
“Have you the envelope?” he asked.
“I burned it,” replied Jekyll, “before I thought what I was about. But
it bore no postmark. The note was handed in.”
25“Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?” asked Utterson.
“I wish you to judge for me entirely,” was the reply. “I have lost
confidence in myself.”
“Well, I shall consider,” returned the lawyer. “And now one word more:
it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that
30disappearance?”
The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness; he shut his mouth
tight and nodded.
“I knew it,” said Utterson. “He meant to murder you. You had a fine
escape.”
35“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctor
solemnly: “I have had a lesson—O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have
had!” And he covered his face for a moment with his hands.

From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 5, ‘Incident of the Letter’.

Starting with this extract, explore how Stevenson presents ideas about secrecy and reputation.

Write about:

  • how Stevenson presents secrecy and reputation in this extract
  • how Stevenson presents secrecy and reputation in the novel as a whole.

[30 marks]

Question 6

30 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 9, ‘Dr Lanyon’s Narrative’, of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, Hyde has come to Dr Lanyon’s house at midnight to collect a drawer of chemicals from Jekyll’s cabinet, and has just mixed a potion.

1“And now,” said he, “to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you
be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go
forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of
curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall
5be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were
before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service
rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches
of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of
knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you,
10here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by
a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan.”
“Sir,” said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly
possessing, “you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I
hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too
15far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end.”
“It is well,” replied my visitor. “Lanyon, you remember your vows: what
follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so
long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have
denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your
20superiors—behold!”
He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he
reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with
injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I
thought, a change—he seemed to swell—his face became suddenly black and
25the features seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had sprung
to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to shield me
from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.
“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there before my
eyes—pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his
30hands, like a man restored from death—there stood Henry Jekyll!
What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on
paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at
it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if
I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep
35has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and
night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and
yet I shall die incredulous.

From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 9, ‘Dr Lanyon’s Narrative’.

Starting with this extract, explore how Stevenson presents the character of Dr Lanyon.

Write about:

  • how Stevenson presents Lanyon in this extract
  • how Stevenson presents Lanyon in the novel as a whole.

[30 marks]

Question 7

30 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 10, ‘Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case’, of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, which opens his written confession, Dr Jekyll describes his early life and the ideas behind his experiment.

1I was born in the year 18— to a large fortune, endowed besides with
excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of
the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been
supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished
5future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety
of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I
found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head
high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public.
Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I
10reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock
of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a
profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazoned such
irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had
set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of
15shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any
particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with
even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those
provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature.
In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that
20hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the
most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer,
I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I
was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame,
than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge
25or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction
of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the
transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of
the perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides
of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily
30nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery 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
35polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens. I, for my
part,

From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 10, ‘Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case’.

Starting with this extract, explore how Stevenson presents ideas about the duality of human nature.

Write about:

  • how Stevenson presents duality in this extract
  • how Stevenson presents duality in the novel as a whole.

[30 marks]

Question 8

30 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 10, ‘Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case’, of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract from his confession, Jekyll describes his decision about whether to keep on transforming into Hyde.

1Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory
in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between
them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive
apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the
5pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or
but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which
he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father’s
interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference. To cast in my lot
with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly
10indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was
to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow
and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal;
but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while
Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be
15not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances
were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much
the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and
trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a
majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found
20wanting in the strength to keep to it.
Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by
friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the
liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and
secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made
25this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither
gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde,
which still lay ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was true
to my determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I
had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an
30approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the freshness
of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of
course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde
struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I
once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.

From The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 10, ‘Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case’.

‘Jekyll is not a victim: he is to blame for everything that happens to him.’

Starting with this extract, explore how far you agree with this view.

Write about:

  • how Stevenson presents Jekyll in this extract
  • how Stevenson presents Jekyll in the novel as a whole.

[30 marks]