Science and religion

Science reaches into the moral self

In Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, science does more than change a body: it becomes an attempt to escape the difficulties of being morally responsible. Jekyll investigates whether the conflicting impulses within a person can be separated. His experiment therefore crosses a boundary between medicine, which treats the body, and religion, which concerns sin, conscience and the soul.

Stevenson does not simply place a scientist on one side and a religious believer on the other. Jekyll and Lanyon are both doctors, but disagree about what science should investigate. Meanwhile, religious language shapes the responses of Jekyll, Lanyon and Utterson. The central question is whether gaining extraordinary knowledge makes people wiser—or gives them powers they cannot understand or control.

Early disagreement: two kinds of science

In Chapter 2, Lanyon dismisses Jekyll’s work as “Such unscientific balderdash”. “Balderdash” means nonsense: this contemptuous noun suggests that Lanyon regards the research as beneath serious consideration. The adjective “unscientific” rejects its method and credibility, not merely its conclusions. His sudden anger makes this a deeply felt dispute rather than a calm professional disagreement.

Lanyon’s approach is material: he looks for explanations in physical substances and observable processes. Jekyll’s studies, as he explains in Chapter 10, lead towards “the mystic and the transcendental”—ideas reaching beyond the physical world into the nature of the spirit. He wants chemistry to alter the relationship between body and moral identity.

There are two useful readings of Lanyon’s rejection. He may represent sensible caution about dangerous, insufficiently understood experiments. Alternatively, he may be too intellectually rigid to consider an unfamiliar discovery. In Chapter 3, Jekyll calls him a “hide-bound pedant”, suggesting someone trapped by narrow rules. Neither man’s insult settles the dispute: Stevenson lets readers weigh scientific openness against responsible restraint.

Structurally, the disagreement appears long before the experiment is explained. It plants a clue that initially seems minor. Utterson assumes that a difference over science is “nothing worse”; the later deaths make this reassurance bitterly mistaken.

Religious language gives Hyde a meaning

After meeting Hyde in Chapter 2, Utterson describes “Satan’s signature upon a face”. Satan is the devil in Christian belief, so the allusion makes Hyde seem marked by evil. The metaphor of a “signature” imagines his face as a document bearing its creator’s identifying mark. It gives Utterson’s disgust an apparently readable, moral meaning.

Yet Utterson reaches this judgement after struggling to explain what he sees. He considers several possibilities, including something “troglodytic”—cave-dwelling or primitive—before choosing the idea of a corrupt soul showing through the body. His language moves between a primitive-human explanation and a religious one. This shows an educated observer trying to fit Hyde into familiar categories.

A religious reading sees Hyde as the embodiment of sin. A psychological reading sees Utterson using the language of the devil to describe human cruelty that he cannot otherwise explain. The second reading is especially disturbing: evil need not come from an outside supernatural force, because Jekyll’s experiment releases something already within him.

Victorian debates about human origins help explain the force of this uncertainty. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, and The Descent of Man in 1871 explicitly addressed human evolution. The idea that humans shared ancestry with other animals challenged some Christian understandings of humanity’s special place in creation. Hyde’s animal imagery can also evoke anxieties about degeneration: the fear that civilisation might decline rather than inevitably progress. These associations enrich the novel’s horror without turning Jekyll’s transformation into a literal demonstration of evolutionary theory.

The middle: religion cannot guarantee safety

In Chapter 6, after Hyde disappears following Carew’s murder, the narrator describes Jekyll as “no less distinguished for religion”. He renews friendships and does good works. This can suggest genuine repentance: religious commitment appears to offer a route back towards responsible life.

However, the peace lasts only temporarily. Jekyll later explains that his better conduct did not remove his capacity for temptation. Stevenson therefore distinguishes outward improvement from secure control of the self. Good intentions do not undo the consequences of the experiment.

In Chapter 8, Utterson discovers a religious book that Jekyll valued, marked in Jekyll’s handwriting with “startling blasphemies”. Blasphemy means speech or writing that insults what is sacred. Chapter 10 explains that Hyde makes these markings. The physical book brings the struggle into a concrete object: the same hand that can express religious respect also attacks it. Rather than keeping science and religion separate, Stevenson makes the experiment invade Jekyll’s spiritual life.

Lanyon’s revelation: knowledge becomes destructive

Chapter 9 finally reveals what caused Lanyon’s collapse earlier in the narrative. Jekyll, speaking while in Hyde’s form, offers him “a new province of knowledge” and access to “fame and power”. Knowledge sounds like territory to be conquered. The offer appeals to scientific curiosity, but its rewards also expose the temptation of personal ambition.

The experiment begins with recognisable laboratory details: a graduated glass, measured liquid, powder, colour changes and vapour. Lanyon’s precise prose makes him sound like a trained observer. This clinical presentation makes the impossible transformation more unsettling, because Gothic terror emerges inside an apparently rational medical account.

As Hyde becomes Jekyll, Lanyon repeatedly screams “O God!” in Chapter 9. Scientific observation gives way to a religious appeal. Afterwards, he writes, “My life is shaken to its roots”. The metaphor imagines a living thing destabilised at its foundation: the experience has damaged not just one belief but the whole basis of his existence. His statement that he will “die incredulous” creates a contradiction between seeing evidence and being unable to accept it.

Lanyon also condemns “the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me” in Chapter 9. “Unveiled” suggests the removal of a covering, revealing hidden corruption. His horror is therefore moral as well as intellectual. He has witnessed an extraordinary discovery, but also learned that his respected colleague is responsible for Hyde’s conduct, including Carew’s murder.

One interpretation is that Lanyon dies because his narrow worldview cannot survive new knowledge. Another is that his reaction expresses a justified recognition of Jekyll’s wrongdoing. The strongest reading can hold both together: the revelation destroys his scientific certainty and his trust in another human being.

The ending: failed control, sin and uncertainty

In Chapter 10, Jekyll describes Hyde through the phrase “the slime of the pit”. “Slime” suggests something repulsive, formless and degraded; “the pit” evokes Hell. This imagery makes Hyde seem both spiritually damned and less than human. Jekyll’s horror comes from the thought that this apparently lifeless substance can act, speak and sin.

But this is Jekyll’s own first-person confession. His description can communicate genuine terror while also distancing him from responsibility: calling Hyde disgusting matter makes it easier to imagine him as something separate. Readers can question that distancing because Jekyll deliberately created the conditions in which Hyde could act.

A moral or religious interpretation sees the catastrophe as the consequence of trying to escape the burdens of conscience. Yet Jekyll also says in Chapter 10 that the drug was “neither diabolical nor divine”. This supports another reading: the substance itself is morally neutral, while the scientist’s motives and choices make its use destructive. The problem may be irresponsible science rather than science itself.

The final failure exposes the limits of Jekyll’s knowledge. He concludes that an unknown impurity in the original salt made the drug effective. His apparent mastery depended on an ingredient he had never identified, so he cannot reliably reproduce the result. This undermines his earlier confidence that he controlled the transformation.

The novel’s form reinforces these limits. The early third-person narrative largely follows Utterson’s incomplete investigation. Only the final two chapters give Lanyon’s eyewitness account and Jekyll’s explanation. These documents answer the central mystery, but their personal perspectives still require judgement. Lanyon struggles to believe his observation; Jekyll mixes explanation, remorse and self-justification. First-person narration does not automatically make either account unreliable, but it gives readers reasons to examine their claims critically.

Turning an interpretation into an essay paragraph

OCR’s nineteenth-century prose question is one essay, chosen from two, worth 40 marks. An extract-based question requires close discussion of the printed passage and developed links to the novel elsewhere. A discursive question requires a sustained response to a view of the novel using at least two moments. AO1, your supported interpretation, and AO2, analysis of language, form and structure, are equally dominant. Relevant context contributes through AO3; 4 marks assess vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation through AO4.

Worked paragraph — discursive question: ‘Jekyll’s scientific ambition is more dangerous than his discovery.’ How far do you agree?

Stevenson suggests that Jekyll’s motives make scientific discovery dangerous. In Chapter 10, Jekyll insists that the drug was “neither diabolical nor divine”. The balanced opposition between these religious adjectives presents the chemical as morally neutral, shifting attention towards the person using it. However, in Chapter 9, Jekyll, speaking as Hyde, tempts Lanyon with “fame and power”, making discovery sound like a means of personal advancement rather than service to others. This offer connects scientific ambition with the Gothic danger of forbidden knowledge. Although Lanyon’s death also demonstrates the terrifying power of the discovery itself, Jekyll’s pursuit of status and freedom makes it especially destructive.

The paragraph makes a judgement, tests it against two moments and explains how particular language supports it. An essay can develop this argument further by considering whether Jekyll’s incomplete understanding of the drug makes the discovery inherently unsafe.

Central argument

Jekyll uses science to alter moral identity and escape responsibility. Stevenson questions both unchecked ambition and the belief that knowledge guarantees control.

Essential moments

• Chapter 2 — Lanyon: “Such unscientific balderdash”. Sensible caution, or a rigid refusal of unfamiliar ideas?
• Chapter 2 — Utterson: “Satan’s signature upon a face”. Religious allusion makes Hyde’s face seem marked by evil; it also reveals Utterson’s attempt to explain his disgust.
• Chapter 6 — narrator: Jekyll is “no less distinguished for religion”. Apparent repentance brings only temporary peace.
• Chapter 9 — Lanyon: “My life is shaken to its roots”. The revelation destroys his foundational beliefs.
• Chapter 9 — Lanyon: “the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me”. His horror concerns Jekyll’s wrongdoing as well as the transformation.
• Chapter 10 — Jekyll: “the slime of the pit”. Hellish, dehumanising imagery; potentially also a way of distancing himself from guilt.