Open your copy of Jekyll and Hyde at random, take a paragraph and have a go at analysing it. What does it tell you about key characters and themes? Are there any contextual links you can make?

Finished? Do the same for Macbeth and An Inspector Calls.

Check out https://revisionworld.com/a2-level-level-revision/english-language-gcse-level/english-language-gcse-past-papers for some great past papers. Make sure you click on AQA as the exam board.

Every day between now and your last English exam, check back for a new revision top tip.

Today’s top tip: When friends or family test you on key quotations, emphasise the key words in the quotation which you could ‘zoom in’ on and analyse. This will help remind you to analyse language in the exam.

A great quotation from Macbeth is “Stars hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires”.

1. Read the following extracts from student answers and the mark scheme criteria for this Assessment Task.
2. What level would the extract be if the response continued in the same way? Justify your answer with reasons.

Candidate A

Is it me, or is everything just irritating? What is it about MOBILE PHONES though that wind me up so much?

The other day I was on the underground in London, the sort that don’t actually go underground for part of the journey. Contradiction in terms as this is, it offers those of us with a mobile the chance to call others whilst on the underground. Great! And you can hear one side of the conversation loud and clear as you sit there, casually minding your own business reading the paper, looking at your strangely distorted reflection in the window opposite – scary, or checking out someone else across the carriage, hoping they might see you, you’ll go on a date and eventually get married and have lots of children together.

Hello, it’s Rob here.

I’m on the underground.

Oh, one of those that you aren’t always underground on.

Earls Court.

Of course, by the time you’ve heard them give the other person all the details of where you are and not why you are actually calling, you go back into a tunnel.

One man called back his mate after reappearing from this void in the mobile world and apologised. ‘I’m sorry, just gone into no man’s land.’

No man’s land?

Excuse me; this is not ‘no man’s land’. You are in a tunnel on the underground in London. ‘No man’s land’ is a place where millions of people were killed in the First world war. Not some small zone where there are no bars on your phone because you are underground!

And people complain because there is no mobile reception underground as well. Can you imagine it at rush hour on the trains? Hundreds of people all crammed together as tightly as possible in the carriage and then your phone starts sounding off. And you have it set to some ridiculous tune, which is funny only to you and exceptionally annoying to everyone else in the whole world! Better still, it’s on vibrate in your trouser pocket.

How do you get to it?

Excuse me, sorry, oh was that your leg? Sorry.

You will be very sorry!

Candidate B

Why do adults ignore what students want?

It’s a situtation that I get all the time. Teachers and parents who ignore what I want. It’s really frustrating to be told what to doall the time, but wen I arsk for something I’m just ignored as if I don’t matter.

Come on, help me out. I’m not askig for much, just a new phone, or a CD or some nice clothes.

I went out the other night and it wasn’ long befour my mum was on the phone callin me all sorts and telling me to cum home now. she didn’t give me a gud reason, and its so annoyin as I didn’t do nothik wrong.

I fink it may be catching as my older brother was telling me to tidy my room the other dya. I donno if it was cos my mum told him to or what, but it was just annoyin and I ingnored him.

I like goin out at the weekends and hanging around wiv me mates and stuff and talkin’ and doing stuff. It’s better than doing what your told by gorwn ups who don’t respect you.

Candidate C

Why do we have to wear a school uniform? It’s uncomfortable, ugly and just looks old fashioned and silly.

There are those who argue that a school uniform gives each school it’s own identity and a sense of unity is formed between the students. This contradicts a society that is trying to encourage the individual to strive above the rest.

It is almost impossible to wear school uniform in some lessons. There is the dangerous element to it when doing experiments in chemistry or physics. What happens if a tie gets in a Bunsen burner or caught in a piece of machinery in the CDT lab? Blazers can’t be worn as they might get covered in dangerous chemicals, or a sleeve can accidentally catch the edge of a test tube and send it flying to the floor.

Everyone looks the same. We all walk into assembly wearing the same blazer, the same tie, the same trousers and shirt. Are we trying to create a society of machines, all looking the same: surely it is hard for teachers to tell us apart if we are all wearing exactly the same uniform?

• At this time women couldn’t vote.
• Mr Birling uses women as cheap labour: “We were paying the usual rates and if they didn’t like those rates, they could go and work somewhere else”.
• Sheila however, views these women as individuals rather than a group: “But these girls aren’t cheap labour – they’re people”
• As Eva Smith is the only character that is part of the lower class we see that she is used in many ways: Gerald sees her as a mistress who could be discarded at will, he only saw her as “young and fresh and charming”.
• When poor girls couldn’t find a job they only had one option and that was to become a prostitute: “she stopped being Eva Smith, looking for a job, and became Daisy Renton, with other ideas”. Those ideas would be to become a “women of the town”.
• At the Palace Variety Theatre, both Gerald and Eric use Eva for sex.
• The husband was usually chosen for benefit of the family, Sheila marrying Gerald is getting Mr Birling thinking about how “perhaps we may look forward to the time when Crofts and Birlings are no longer competing but are working together”.
• We can guess that the role of a woman in those times would have been to get married, we are told about Eric’s “public-school-and-Varsity life” but it never talks about Sheila going to school or doing any sort of work.
• Mrs Birling doesn’t believe that “a girl of that sort would ever refuse money” she must see the lower class as beggars that would take money from anywhere or anyone.
• We are not told much about Edna but we can tell she is a women of lower class that is working in an upper class family, a job like that would have been lucky in that time; she respects her bosses calling them “Sir” and “Ma’am”.

• Because Eva was a woman – in the days before women were valued by society and had not yet been awarded the right to vote – she was in an even worse position than a lower class man. Mrs. Birling describes Eva as: “A girl of that sort” Her charitable committee was a sham: a small amount of money was given to a small amount of women, hardly scratching the surface of the problem. She couldn’t believe that: “a girl of that sort would ever refuse money.”
• Even upper class women had few choices. For most, the best they could hope for was to impress a rich man and marry well – which could explain why Sheila spent so long in Milwards. “I’d persuade mother to close our account with them [if Eva isn’t fired]” proves she goes there a lot.
• For working class women, a job was crucial. There was no social security at that time, so without a job they had no money. There were very few options open to women in that situation: many saw no alternative but to turn to prostitution. “Women of the town”
• Birling is dismissive of the several hundred women in his factory: “We were paying the usual rates and if they didn’t like those rates, they could go and work somewhere else.” He also describes his workers as: “cheap labour”.
• Gerald saw Eva as “young and fresh and charming” – in other words, someone vulnerable he could amuse himself by helping.

Don’t forget that you get marks for SPAG in Macbeth and An Inspector Calls. Make sure you learn the key spellings below.

Macbeth

Superstition

Atmosphere

Scene

Character

Birling

Socialism

Capitalism

Soliloquy

Courageous

Responsibility

Conscience

Appearance

Supernatural

Hypocrisy

Infirmary

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/11547057/Last-minute-revision-tips-for-GCSE-English.html

‘Man is not truly one, but truly two’: duality in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Article by:Greg Buzwell

Themes:Fin de siècle, The Gothic, London

Published:15 May 2014

Curator Greg Buzwell considers duality in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, exploring how the novel engages with contemporary debates about evolution, degeneration, consciousness, homosexuality and criminal psychology.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a late-Victorian variation on ideas first raised in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Stevenson’s monster, however, is not artificially created from stitched-together body parts, but rather emerges fully formed from the dark side of the human personality. In the story Dr Jekyll, an admired member of the professional Victorian middle-classes, conducts a series of scientific experiments which unleash from his own psyche the ‘bestial’ and ‘ape-like’ Mr Hyde (ch. 10). Gothic fiction had examined the idea of the sinister alter ego or double before on many occasions but Stevenson’s genius with Jekyll and Hyde was to show the dual nature not only of one man but also of society in general. Throughout the story, respectability is doubled with degradation; abandon with restraint; honesty with duplicity. Even London itself has a dual nature, with its respectable streets existing side-by-side with areas notorious for their squalor and violence.

Evolution and degeneration

Viewed on a simple level, Dr Jekyll is a good man, much admired in his profession. Mr Hyde, meanwhile, is evil. He is a murderer; a monster who tramples upon a small girl simply because she happens to be in his way. On a deeper level, however, the comparison is not merely between good and evil but between evolution and degeneration. Throughout the narrative Mr Hyde’s physical appearance provokes disgust. He is described as ‘ape-like’, ‘troglodytic’ and ‘hardly human’ (ch. 2). As Mr Enfield, a well-known man about town and distant relative of Jekyll’s friend Mr Utterson, observes ‘There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable’ (ch. 1). Some 15 years before Jekyll and Hyde, Charles Darwin had published The Descent of Man (1871), a book in which he concluded that humankind had ‘descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped’ which was itself ‘probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal’.^[1] Going back even further, Darwin hypothesised that these stages of evolution had been preceded, in a direct line, by ‘some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal’. Such a nightmarish biological lineage that denied the specialness of humans, feeds into many late-Victorian Gothic novels. Dracula’s ability to transform into the shape of a wolf or a bat is one example, while Dr Moreau’s experiments upon the hapless animals on his island as he attempts a barbaric form of accelerated evolution is another. Stevenson’s portrayal of Hyde works in a similar fashion. Mr Hyde is regarded as physically detestable but perhaps only because he subconsciously reminds those he encounters of their own distant evolutionary inheritance. When Dr Jekyll’s medical colleague, Dr Lanyon, witnesses Hyde transform back into Jekyll, the knowledge that the ugly, murderous beast exists within the respectable Victorian scientist sends him first to his sick-bed, and then to an early grave.

 Double lives and misleading appearances

The depiction of Dr Jekyll’s house was possibly based on the residence of famous surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793), whose respectable and renowned house in Leicester Square in the late 18th century also had a secret. In order to teach and to gain knowledge about human anatomy, Hunter required human cadavers, many of them supplied by ‘resurrection men’ who robbed fresh graves. These were brought, usually at night, to the back entrance of the house, which had a drawbridge leading to the preparation rooms and lecture-theatre

The front aspect of Dr Jekyll’s house presents a ‘great air of wealth and comfort’ (ch. 2). Meanwhile Mr Hyde, soon after we first encounter him, is seen entering a building which displays an air of ‘prolonged and sordid negligence’ (ch.1). The twist is that the reputable front and the rundown rear form two sides of the same property. Stevenson is not only making the point that the respectable and the disreputable frequently exist in close proximity, but also that a respectable façade is no guarantee against dark secrets lurking within. In a similar fashion, the seemingly decent Mr Enfield, a friend of the lawyer Mr Utterson, first encounters Hyde while ‘coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning’ (ch. 1). Exactly where Mr Enfield has been, and what he has been up to, are never made clear but it sounds far from innocent. Throughout the book the people and events that initially seem innocent and straightforward become dark and sinister when viewed more closely.

Double-consciousness

Just as the differing appearances of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde play upon the theories emerging from Charles Darwin’s work, so their differing personalities explore contemporary debates about moral behaviour and the possible plurality of human consciousness. By literally splitting the consciousness of Dr Jekyll into two – the decent side that attempts, and largely succeeds, in suppressing desires that run contrary to the dictates of society; and the amoral side that runs riot in an attempt to gratify animal desire – Stevenson explores in a heightened fashion the battles played out in every one of us. As Dr Jekyll observes ‘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’ (ch. 10). Through Hyde, the respectable Dr Jekyll is freed from the restraints imposed by society – ‘my devil had been long caged, he came out roaring’ (ch. 10). In his confession at the end of the book, Jekyll observes that, ultimately, he will have to choose between being Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde. To become the latter would mean giving up on noble aspirations and being ‘forever despised and friendless’. (ch. 10) To become Jekyll, however, means giving up the sensual and disreputable appetites he can indulge as Hyde. In spite of the curious circumstances of his own case it is, as the melancholy Jekyll observes, a struggle and debate ‘as old and commonplace as man’ (ch. 10).

Homosexuality

In an early draft of the book, Stevenson has Dr Jekyll confess ‘From an early age…I became in secret the slave of certain appetites’. Such an observation inevitably leads us to wonder what such ‘appetites’ could have been. For some as the book’s other characters – as well as the first readers of the book – unaware that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, the relationship between the two must have appeared puzzling. Why would the respectable Jekyll grant the vile Hyde free access to his house, let alone alter his will so that in the event of his death or disappearance Hyde will inherit. For Mr Enfield there can only be one answer: ‘Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth’ (ch. 1). Stevenson, because of the era in which he was writing, could not make specific references to homosexuality, but much of the plot initially hints at Hyde blackmailing Jekyll because of the doctor’s unorthodox sexual preferences.

Homosexuality and blackmail were frequently linked in this period. Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885 (the year in which Stevenson was writing his tale), made ‘gross indecency’ – a nebulous term that was not precisely defined – a criminal activity. In practice, the Act was primarily used to prosecute homosexuals on the flimsiest of evidence and was dubbed a ‘Blackmailer’s Charter’. Dr Jekyll is a bachelor – indeed the entire story is played out amongst a small circle of unmarried men.  As implied by comments such as Mr Utterson’s ‘It turns me cold to think of this creature [Hyde] stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside’, homosexuality (either as a secret from the doctor’s past, or else as a current relationship between the youthful Hyde and the lonely Jekyll) is a thinly-veiled theme throughout (ch. 2). Even the behaviour of the elderly MP Sir Danvers Carew, who meets his death at Edward Hyde’s hands after ‘accosting’ Hyde ‘with a very pretty manner’ late one night down by the river, takes on a new light once the reader becomes aware of homosexuality as an undercurrent in the story (ch. 3). In this tale of double-lives nobody is quite what they initially appear to be.

The fascinating instances of doubling in Stevenson’s tale did not come to an end upon the book’s publication. In a macabre twist, events from real life began to overlay themselves upon the narrative. The Whitechapel Murders occurred in the autumn of 1888, two years after the publication of Jekyll and Hyde, and the real murderer and the fictitious Mr Hyde were swiftly paired in the public imagination. Indeed, the murders became so entangled with the story, Richard Mansfield who famously played Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the stage adaptation produced a year after the publication of the novel, was accused of being the Ripper murderer by a member of the public.

When Hyde attacks Sir Danvers Carew he beats him to death with his walking stick, commenting afterwards ‘With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow’ (ch. 10). The ferocity of the attack mirrors the intensity of the Ripper murders. Jekyll and Hyde pointed towards an unpalatable truth. Mr Hyde, with his ‘ape-like’ appearance conformed to contemporary criminological theory in which delinquents displayed visible traits indicative of their unpalatable natures. Dr Jekyll, however, a ‘large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty’ would not conform to such a theory and yet, as we know, Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same; two faces of a single personality (ch. 3). This leads to the uncomfortable possibility that one could pass a monster such as Jack the Ripper in the street and yet only see a respectable, civilised gentleman exhibiting absolutely no trace of the depraved killer lurking within Jekyll and Hyde and Jack the Ripper.

©  Sourced from the British Newspaper Archive

Footnotes

[1] Charles Darwin, The Origins of Species and The Descent of Man (New York: The Modern Library, 1936), p. 911.

Written by Greg Buzwell

Greg Buzwell is Curator of Contemporary Literary Archives at the British Library. He has co-curated three major exhibitions for the Library – Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination; Shakespeare in Ten Acts and Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty. His research focuses primarily on the Gothic literature of the Victorian fin de siècle. He has also edited and introduced collections of supernatural tales by authors including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edgar Allan Poe and Walter de la Mare.

Our final batch of revision sessions which were cancelled last term are being repeated tomorrow. Make sure you don’s miss them.