Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Grades 9–1) York Notes

Secrecy is a very important theme in 'Jekyll and Hyde’. The central secret is Jekyll’s use of the potion that turns him into Mr Hyde. But secrecy appears elsewhere in smaller ways and Stevenson explores it as an idea.

He was ashamed of some of his behaviour and wanted to keep it secret but carried on doing it. This suggests Stevenson wants to show us secrecy is dangerous, as it has a very bad outcome for Jekyll. Jekyll never says what his bad behaviour was; Jekyll’s experiment began with his desire for secrecy. this lets readers think of whatever they personally believe would be bad enough to hide.

Because Jekyll is secretive about the person he has named in his will, Utterson is curious. He is worried by Stevenson uses the central secret to create narrative tension and suspense. When Jekyll won’t tell him anything about Hyde, Utterson starts trying to hunt out the secret. This starts off the whole novel, as we follow Utterson’s point of view. Jekyll’s alter ego is called Hyde, so even his name makes us think of hidden secrets. Enfield’s story of Hyde crushing a girl and buying the crowd’s silence, so keeping the event secret. Perhaps Jekyll chose it as a joke.

When Utterson worries about what hold Hyde has over Jekyll, he imagines Hyde is blackmailing him about Secrecy seeps into other parts of the novel, so the whole story seems steeped in it. Utterson scares himself by imagining how bad Hyde’s secrets might be. This leads him to think of blackmailing Hyde in turn, which is uncharacteristic. He is a lawyer and generally honest. ‘some concealed disgrace’. He guesses that Hyde ‘must have secrets of his own: black secrets’ that Utterson might exploit. There’s lots of secrecy about what Jekyll/Hyde does. Poole says that Hyde is not seen in the main house, he’s kept secret in the laboratory. The police can discover nothing about him, and his landlady was chosen because she would keep quiet. Stevenson shows secrecy to be corrupting. At the end, Hyde/Jekyll is hiding in the laboratory and wearing a mask to keep his identity secret. This makes us think he is probably a clever criminal who can cover his tracks. This adds to the sense of menace around the laboratory. Stevenson first makes the laboratory seem threatening when we learn it was previously used for dissections.

keeps what is going on hidden by not giving us Jekyll’s point of view until the end. Stevenson Lanyon also keeps Jekyll’s terrible secret. He won’t talk about the ‘accursed topic’ or explain his own bad health, even though the secret is killing him. The idea that some knowledge is deadly reminds us of the Bible story of Adam and Eve gaining hidden knowledge by eating the apple. If it came earlier, it would be a spoiler and the story wouldn’t be as exciting. Stevenson was brought up a Christian and would have known this story.

Even in his testament, Jekyll doesn’t say what’s in his potion. Stevenson couldn’t give details as it doesn’t really exist. But it also suggests Jekyll is taking his secret to the grave as it’s so dangerous he doesn’t want other people to know. Stevenson shows secrecy itself is dangerous, as well as Jekyll’s specific secret knowledge. Once Jekyll has discovered the secret potion, revealing it and concealing it are both dangerous choices, so he’s really stuck. He would have been better not to try to keep his bad behaviour secret in the first place.