Chapter 10 Key Quotations Flashcards
The main idea in this chapter 10:
- Jekyll believes that the separate facets of humanity’s duality are entwined from conception.
- The repressive society in which he lives forces him to practise restraint, leading to frustration.
- He must repress his desires to maintain his reputation in public, causing distress.
- He therefore creates Hyde as a way to separate his good and evil side, allowing a balance between his duality.
Jekyll’s main issue:
- “a certain impatient gaiety of disposition” could not be reconciled with his “imperious desire to carry [his] head high”
- “I concealed my pleasures”
- “I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.”
The idea of shame in seeking pleasure in the repressive Victorian society (also links to maintenance of reputation):
- “hid [his “irregularities”] with an almost morbid sense of shame”
- “plunged in shame”
Jekyll’s dual life (bad and good):
- Bad: “laid aside restraint and plunged in shame”
- Good: “laboured […] at the furtherance of knowledge”
Jekyll’s science:
“wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental”
Jekyll’s description of the internal conflict between good and evil:
- “perennial war among my members”
- “in the agonised womb of consciousness these polar twins [are] continuously struggling”
Jekyll’s ultimate realisation (his “dreadful shipwreck”):
“man is not truly one, but truly two”
Jekyll suggests the duality of man is inherent within everyone:
“thorough and primitive duality of man”
Jekyll on the separation of good and evil:
“if each […] could but be house in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable”
Pain of transformation:
“the most racking pangs succeeded”
Triad to describe pleasure after transformation:
“I felt younger, lighter, happier in body”
- The asyndetic triad creates a powerful crescendo effect that reflects the intense pleasure Jekyll feels as Hyde.
Imagery relating to pleasure after the transformation:
- “incredibly sweet”
- “braced and delighted me like wine” (temptation of evil)
- “exulting in the freshness of these sensations”
Hyde’s evil nature:
- “more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil”
- “Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.”
- Exemplifies the extent of Hyde’s iniquity and the fact that he is the pure evil extracted from Jekyll’s nature.
Choosing between Jekyll and Hyde:
“Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence”
- “Smartingly” implies agony, while “fires” is hell-related imagery; this reflects Jekyll’s torment, caused by the repressive society in which he lives.
Hyde’s deformity (physiognomy):
“Evil […] had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay”
- Horrifying appearance, alluding to gothic horror and conventions.
