Jekyll and Hyde extracts final

Revision extracts Jekyll and Hyde
There are no questions with these extracts.
• Read them
• Remind yourself of the different parts of the
narrative - where tension rises and where it heads
towards the climax. There are 10 chapters in total -
chapter 1 is the exposition and sets out the story -
the enigma to solve, chapter 2 onwards is rising
tension, chapter 4 is a crisis point, chapter 5
onwards is rising tension again, chapter 8 is the
climax, chapters 9 and 10 are the denouement -
tying the threads together.
• Identify themes, motifs and methods in each
extract that relate to the whole.

Chapter 1 Story of the door
Mr. 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 eminently 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 not 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 way.” 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.

Chapter 2 Search for Mr Hyde
Six 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 and 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 trod 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 even 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 street 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 features 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 clause of
the will. At least it would 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.

Chapter 2 Search for Mr Hyde
And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. “Poor Harry
Jekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was
wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of
God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of
some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment
coming, PEDE CLAUDO*, years after memory has forgotten and self-
love condoned the fault.” And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded
awhile on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, least by
chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there.
His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life
with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill
things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude
by the many he had come so near to doing yet avoided. And then by a
return on his former subject, he conceived a spark of hope. “This Master
Hyde, if he were studied,” thought he, “must have secrets of his own;
black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor
Jekyll’s worstwould be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they
are. It turns me cold to think of this creature stealing like a thief to
Harry’s bedside; poor Harry, what a wakening! And the danger of it; for
if this Hyde suspects the existence of the will, he may grow impatient to
inherit. Ay, I must put my shoulders to the wheel—if Jekyll will but let
me,” he added, “if Jekyll will only let me.” For once more he saw before
his mind’s eye, as clear as transparency, the strange clauses of the will.
* halting -pausing walking pace - coming slowly

Chapter 4 - The Carew Murder case
It 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
marvelous 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 quarter 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 gloomiest 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, a 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 home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite; of a
man who was heir to a quarter of a million sterling.

Chapter 5 Incident of the Letter
It 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 dissecting 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 structure 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 end, 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 fire 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.
“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 want 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 help; 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.”

Chapter 6 The remarkable incident of Dr Lanyon
There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he was shocked at
the change which had taken place in the doctor’s appearance. He had his death-
warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had
fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much these tokens
of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer’s notice, as a look in the eye and
quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind. It
was unlikely that the doctor should fear death; and yet that was what Utterson was
tempted to suspect. “Yes,” he thought; “he is a doctor, he must know his own state
and that his days are counted; and the knowledge is more than he can bear.” And yet
when Utterson remarked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of great firmness that
Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.
“I have had a shock,” he said, “and I shall never recover. It is a question of weeks.
Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it; yes, sir, I used to like it. I sometimes think if
we knew all, we should be more glad to get away.”
“Jekyll is ill, too,” observed Utterson. “Have you seen him?”
But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. “I wish to see or hear
no more of Dr. Jekyll,” he said in a loud, unsteady voice. “I am quite done with that
person; and I beg that you will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead.”
“Tut-tut,” said Mr. Utterson; and then after a considerable pause, “Can’t I do
anything?” he inquired. “We are three very old friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to
make others.”
“Nothing can be done,” returned Lanyon; “ask himself.”
“He will not see me,” said the lawyer.
“I am not surprised at that,” was the reply. “Some day, Utterson, after I am dead, you
may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you. And in the
meantime, if you can sit and talk with me of other things, for God’s sake, stay and do
so; but if you cannot keep clear of this accursed topic, then in God’s name, go, for I
cannot bear it.”
As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and wrote to Jekyll, complaining of his
exclusion from the house, and asking the cause of this unhappy break with Lanyon;
and the next day brought him a long answer, often very pathetically worded, and
sometimes darkly mysterious in drift. The quarrel with Lanyon was incurable. “I do
not blame our old friend,” Jekyll wrote, “but I share his view that we must never
meet. I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be
surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you.
You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment
and a danger that I cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of
sufferers also. I could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and
terrors so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this destiny,
and that is to respect my silence.” Utterson was amazed; the dark influence of Hyde
had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his old tasks and amities; a week ago,
the prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age; and
now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole tenor of his life were
wrecked. So great and unprepared a change pointed to madness; but in view of
Lanyon’s manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper ground.

Chapter 8 The Last Night
It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on
her back as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most
diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and
flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets
unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Uttersonthought he had
never seen that part of London so deserted. He could have wished it
otherwise; never in his life had he been conscious of so sharp a wish to
see and touch his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he might, there was
borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity. The square,
when they got there, was full of wind and dust, and the thin trees in the
garden were lashing themselves along the railing. Poole, who had kept all
the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in the middle of the
pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took off his hat and
mopped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief. But for all the hurry of
his coming, these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped away, but
the moisture of some strangling anguish; for his face was white and his
voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken.
“Well, sir,” he said, “here we are, and God grant there be nothing wrong.”
“Amen, Poole,” said the lawyer.
Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was
opened on the chain; and a voice asked from within, “Is that you, Poole?”
“It’s all right,” said Poole. “Open the door.”
The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the fire was built
high; and about the hearth the whole of the servants, men and women,
stood huddled together like a flock of sheep. At the sight of Mr. Utterson,
the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the cook, crying out
“Bless God! it’s Mr. Utterson,” ran forward as if to take him in her arms.

Chapter 9 Dr Lanyon’s Narrative
These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed
him into the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my hand ready
on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had
never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as I
have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face,
with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great
apparent debility of constitution, and—last but not least—with the odd,
subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore some
resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked
sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic,
personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the
symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much
deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the
principle of hatred.
This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance,
struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was
dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person
laughable; his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and
sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in every
measurement—the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep
them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the
collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this
ludicrous accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as
there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of
the creature that now faced me—something seizing, surprising and
revolting—this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce
it; so that to my interest in the man’s nature and character, there was
added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the
world.
These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set
down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed,
on fire with sombre excitement.
“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?”

Chapter 10 Henry Jekyll’s full statement of the case
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones,
deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be
exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies
began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a
great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations,
something indescribably new and, from its very novelty,
incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within
I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered
sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution
of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent
freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this
new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave
to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced
and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting
in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, I was
suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.
There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which
stands beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for
the very purpose of these transformations. The night however,
was far gone into the morning—the morning, black as it was,
was nearly ripe for the conception of the day—the inmates of
my house were locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber;
and I determined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to
venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the
yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I could
have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that
their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole
through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming
to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward
Hyde.

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