This definitions covers The Vocabulary for Hyde within Hyde (character) for GCSE English Literature. Revise Hyde (character) in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for GCSE English Literature with 12 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. This topic shows up very often in GCSE exams, so students should be able to explain it clearly, not just recognise the term. It is section 11 of 17 in this topic. Make sure you can use the exact wording confidently, because definition marks are often lost through vague language.
📜 The Vocabulary for Hyde
- Frame narrative
- A story told through multiple embedded accounts. The novella uses Enfield's testimony, Lanyon's letter, Jekyll's statement — Hyde is never a narrator.
- Gothic
- A literary mode emphasising horror, the supernatural, secrecy, and the monstrous. Stevenson uses Gothic conventions (fog, locked doors, laboratory) to explore psychological repression.
- Repression
- Suppressing desires or impulses below conscious experience. Jekyll represses his "undignified" pleasures; Hyde is the return of the repressed.
- Atavism
- The reappearance of primitive characteristics. Victorian science feared "going back" — Hyde's ape-like qualities read as evolutionary regression.
- Dramatic irony
- When readers know more than characters. We know Jekyll and Hyde are one; Utterson does not — and spends the novella trying to protect one from the other.
Practice questions for Hyde (character)
Which of the following quotations shows that Enfield cannot describe Hyde's appearance precisely?
How does Stevenson use withheld description in presenting Hyde's appearance? (2 marks)
Quick recall flashcards
Mnemonic for Hyde's 3-stage arc?
EMERGENCE → DOMINANCE → ANNIHILATION. Emergence: small, faceless, defined by others' revulsion — the underdeveloped repressed self, conscience-free. Dominance: Carew murder, involuntary transformations, growing stronger than Jekyll. Annihilation: both selves destroyed — Hyde's death in Jekyll's clothes. Each stage is Stevenson's structural argument about repression: suppress, release, consume.
What are the three stages of Hyde's arc in Jekyll and Hyde?
EMERGENCE (Ch.1-4) → DOMINANCE (Ch.5-9) → ANNIHILATION (Ch.10). Emergence: small, faceless, described only through others' revulsion; conscience belongs to Jekyll so Hyde acts without it. Dominance: Carew murder; involuntary transformations; Hyde grows stronger than Jekyll. Annihilation: found dead in Jekyll's clothes — both selves destroyed. Stevenson's argument: the separated selves cannot survive independently.