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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Practice Questions

Question 1

40 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 1, ‘Story of the Door’, and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, Mr Enfield tells Mr Utterson what he saw one night as he walked home through London.

1All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along
eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who
was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the
two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came
5the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the
child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to
hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some
damned Juggernaut. I gave a few halloa, took to my heels, collared my
gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group
10about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and made no resistance,
but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like
running. The people who had turned out were the girl’s own family; and
pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent, put in his
appearance. Well, the child was not much the worse, more frightened,
15according to the Sawbones; and there you might have supposed would be an
end to it. But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a
loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child’s family,
which was only natural. But the doctor’s case was what struck me. He was
the usual cut and dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with
20a strong Edinburgh accent and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well,
sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I
saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I
knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing
being out of the question, we did the next best. We told the man we
25could and would make such a scandal out of this as should make his name
stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friends or any
credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we
were pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best
we could for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such
30hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black
sneering coolness—frightened too, I could see that—but carrying it off,
sir, really like Satan.

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

(a)

Explore how Stevenson presents Mr Hyde in this extract.

Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

(20)

(b)

In this extract, Enfield and the doctor threaten to make Hyde’s ’name stink from one end of London to the other’.

Explain how Stevenson portrays the importance of reputation elsewhere in the novel.

In your answer you must consider:

  • whose reputations are at risk
  • how characters try to protect their reputations.

(20)

Question 2

40 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 2, ‘Search for Mr Hyde’, and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, Mr Utterson lies awake at night, thinking about Enfield’s story and Dr Jekyll’s will, which leaves everything to Mr Hyde.

1Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently
near to Mr. Utterson’s dwelling, and still he was digging at the
problem. Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but
now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay
5and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room,
Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted
pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal
city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child
running from the doctor’s; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut
10trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or else he
would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming
and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be
opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and
lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and
15even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. The figure in
these two phases haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he
dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping
houses, or move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to
dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and at every
20street corner crush a child and leave her screaming. And still the
figure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had
no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes; and thus it
was that there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer’s mind a
singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the
25features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but once set eyes on him, he
thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as
was the habit of mysterious things when well examined. He might see a
reason for his friend’s strange preference or bondage (call it which you
please) and even for the startling clauses of the will. At least it
30would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was without bowels
of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind
of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.

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

(a)

Explore how Stevenson presents Mr Utterson’s thoughts about Mr Hyde in this extract.

Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

(20)

(b)

In this extract, Utterson becomes determined to uncover the mystery of Mr Hyde.

Explain how Stevenson portrays secrecy elsewhere in the novel.

In your answer you must consider:

  • the secrets that characters keep
  • why characters keep them.

(20)

Question 3

40 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 3, ‘Dr Jekyll Was Quite at Ease’, and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, Mr Utterson stays behind after one of Dr Jekyll’s dinner parties to speak to him about his will.

1“I have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll,” began the latter. “You
know that will of yours?”
A close observer might have gathered that the topic was distasteful; but
the doctor carried it off gaily. “My poor Utterson,” said he, “you are
5unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a man so distressed as you
were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what
he called my scientific heresies. O, I know he’s a good fellow—you
needn’t frown—an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of him;
but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant. I was
10never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon.”
“You know I never approved of it,” pursued Utterson, ruthlessly
disregarding the fresh topic.
“My will? Yes, certainly, I know that,” said the doctor, a trifle
sharply. “You have told me so.”
15“Well, I tell you so again,” continued the lawyer. “I have been learning
something of young Hyde.”
The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and
there came a blackness about his eyes. “I do not care to hear more,”
said he. “This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop.”
20“What I heard was abominable,” said Utterson.
“It can make no change. You do not understand my position,” returned the
doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. “I am painfully situated,
Utterson; my position is a very strange—a very strange one. It is one of
those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.”
25“Jekyll,” said Utterson, “you know me: I am a man to be trusted. Make a
clean breast of this in confidence; and I make no doubt I can get you
out of it.”
“My good Utterson,” said the doctor, “this is very good of you, this is
downright good of you, and I cannot find words to thank you in. I
30believe you fully; I would trust you before any man alive, ay, before
myself, if I could make the choice; but indeed it isn’t what you fancy;
it is not as bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I
will tell you one thing: the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.
I give you my hand upon that; and I thank you again and again; and I
35will just add one little word, Utterson, that I’m sure you’ll take in
good part: this is a private matter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.”

From Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 3, ‘Dr Jekyll Was Quite at Ease’.

(a)

Explore how Stevenson presents the relationship between Dr Jekyll and Mr Utterson in this extract.

Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

(20)

(b)

In this extract, Jekyll tells Utterson that he ’would trust you before any man alive’.

Explain how Stevenson portrays friendship elsewhere in the novel.

In your answer you must consider:

  • the different friendships that are shown
  • how these friendships are tested.

(20)

Question 4

40 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 4, ‘The Carew Murder Case’, and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, a maid describes what she saw from her window one night in October.

1A maid servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone
upstairs 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
5moon. 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
musing. 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
10an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near along the
lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small gentleman, to
whom 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
15the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his
pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way;
but 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
20self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was
surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited
her 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
25sudden 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
madman. 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
30fury, 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
upon the roadway. At the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid
fainted.

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

(a)

Explore how Stevenson presents the murder of Sir Danvers Carew in this extract.

Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

(20)

(b)

In this extract, Hyde attacks Sir Danvers Carew ’with ape-like fury’.

Explain how Stevenson portrays violence elsewhere in the novel.

In your answer you must consider:

  • the violence that is shown
  • how violence affects those involved.

(20)

Question 5

40 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 5, ‘Incident of the Letter’, and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, after the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, Mr Utterson visits Dr Jekyll and is taken to his laboratory for the first time.

1It was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Utterson found his way to Dr.
Jekyll’s door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down
by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden,
to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or
5dissecting rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a
celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than
anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of
the garden. It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in
that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless
10structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of
strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students
and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical
apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw,
and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the further
15end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize; and
through this, Mr. Utterson was at last received into the doctor’s
cabinet. It was a large room fitted round with glass presses, furnished,
among other things, with a cheval-glass and a business table, and
looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred with iron. The
20fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the chimney shelf,
for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and there, close up
to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deathly sick. He did not rise to
meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him welcome in a
changed voice.
25“And now,” said Mr. Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them, “you have
heard the news?”
The doctor shuddered. “They were crying it in the square,” he said. “I
heard them in my dining-room.”
“One word,” said the lawyer. “Carew was my client, but so are you, and I
30want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide this
fellow?”
“Utterson, I swear to God,” cried the doctor, “I swear to God I will
never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with
him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not want my
35help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my
words, he will never more be heard of.”

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

(a)

Explore how Stevenson presents Dr Jekyll’s state of mind in this extract.

Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

(20)

(b)

In this extract, Utterson sees the laboratory at the back of Jekyll’s house for the first time.

Explain why the setting is important elsewhere in the novel.

In your answer you must consider:

  • the different locations
  • how important they are.

(20)

Question 6

40 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 7, ‘Incident at the Window’, and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, Mr Utterson and Mr Enfield stop in the court behind Dr Jekyll’s house during one of their Sunday walks.

1“So you found it out, did you?” said Utterson. “But if that be so, we
may step into the court and take a look at the windows. To tell you the
truth, I am uneasy about poor Jekyll; and even outside, I feel as if the
presence of a friend might do him good.”
5The court was very cool and a little damp, and full of premature
twilight, although the sky, high up overhead, was still bright with
sunset. The middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and
sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of
mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.
10“What! Jekyll! Jekyll!” he cried. “I trust you are better.”
“I am very low, Utterson,” replied the doctor drearily, “very low. It
will not last long, thank God.”
“You stay too much indoors,” said the lawyer. “You should be out,
whipping up the circulation like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is my
15cousin—Mr. Enfield—Dr. Jekyll.) Come now; get your hat and take a quick
turn with us.”
“You are very good,” sighed the other. “I should like to very much; but
no, no, no, it is quite impossible; I dare not. But indeed, Utterson, I
am very glad to see you; this is really a great pleasure; I would ask
20you and Mr. Enfield up, but the place is really not fit.”
“Why, then,” said the lawyer, good-naturedly, “the best thing we can do
is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are.”
“That is just what I was about to venture to propose,” returned the
doctor with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile
25was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject
terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below.
They saw it but for a glimpse for the window was instantly thrust down;
but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and left the court
without a word. In silence, too, they traversed the by-street; and it
30was not until they had come into a neighbouring thoroughfare, where even
upon a Sunday there were still some stirrings of life, that Mr. Utterson
at last turned and looked at his companion. They were both pale; and
there was an answering horror in their eyes.
“God forgive us, God forgive us,” said Mr. Utterson.
35But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once
more in silence.

From Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 7, ‘Incident at the Window’.

(a)

Explore how Stevenson presents Dr Jekyll’s isolation in this extract.

Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

(20)

(b)

In this extract, something terrible and unexplained happens to Jekyll at the window.

Explain how Stevenson portrays the supernatural elsewhere in the novel.

In your answer you must consider:

  • the supernatural events and descriptions
  • how they affect the characters.

(20)

Question 7

40 marks

Read the following extract from Chapter 9, ‘Dr Lanyon’s Narrative’, and then answer the question that follows.

In this extract, from his letter to Mr Utterson, Dr Lanyon describes the visitor who came to his house at midnight to collect a drawer of chemicals from Jekyll’s cabinet.

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.

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

(a)

Explore how Stevenson presents Dr Lanyon’s reaction to what he sees in this extract.

Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

(20)

(b)

In this extract, Lanyon sees the result of Jekyll’s experiments for himself.

Explain how Stevenson portrays science elsewhere in the novel.

In your answer you must consider:

  • the different attitudes to science
  • how science affects the characters.

(20)

Question 8

40 marks

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

In this extract, from the statement he leaves for Mr Utterson, Dr Jekyll describes how he came to think about the two sides of his nature.

1In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that
hard 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
5was 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
or 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
10the perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides
of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily
nearer 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
15point. 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
20person, 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
25possibility 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
30twin; 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
35polar twins should be continuously struggling. How, then were they
dissociated?

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

(a)

Explore how Stevenson presents what Jekyll thinks about his own nature in this extract.

Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.

(20)

(b)

In this extract, Jekyll describes ’the thorough and primitive duality of man’.

Explain how Stevenson portrays the duality of human nature elsewhere in the novel.

In your answer you must consider:

  • where duality is shown
  • how duality affects the characters.

(20)