explain what Stevenson’s shift from Utterson’s third-person narration to Lanyon’s letter and Jekyll’s confession conceals and forces, and punctuate an introduced quotation with a colon correctly.
Workbook: page 10 of your Unit 2 Student Workbook. Draft on paper first; anything scored is submitted online in this lesson.
Instruction
Stevenson was a Scot writing about London, and that outsider’s position matters to this lesson. The novella’s target is a specifically English form of respectability — the professional gentleman’s world of clubs, wills and discreet silence — and Stevenson chooses a narrative structure that reproduces that world’s own habit of not looking directly at anything.
The frame. For eight of ten chapters the reader is limited to Utterson: a third-person narrator who follows only what a cautious lawyer sees, hears and is told. He is not unreliable in the sense of lying. He is constrained. He will not read a letter he has been asked not to read. He will not press a friend. Every fact reaches the reader through a man whose professional virtue is discretion — which means the novella’s central fact cannot reach the reader at all while he is narrating it.
Then the perspective changes twice, and both times it changes into documents. Chapter 9 is Dr. Lanyon’s letter, written to be opened after his death. Chapter 10 is “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case,” a confession the man is not alive to be questioned about. Both are first-person, posthumous, and unanswerable.
Ask why an author would give up his mystery in that particular form. Three consequences follow.
First, each layer authenticates the next. Utterson’s dogged normality makes Lanyon’s horror credible; Lanyon’s credibility makes Jekyll’s confession bearable as fact rather than raving.
Second, nobody can be cross-examined. Jekyll’s account of himself is the last word because there is no one left to contradict it — and it is an account in which he is consistently the victim of Hyde. A reader who notices the form will hold that self-portrait more loosely than a reader who does not.
Third, the structure enacts the theme. A novella about a man who partitions himself is told in partitioned narratives, each sealed from the others, none able to see the whole. Form and content say the same thing.
Now the mechanics, because you will need them to write about this. Unit 1 gave you the semicolon for balancing two independent clauses. The colon does something different: it announces that what follows will deliver on what came before.
- Colon before a list: The novella reaches the reader through three narrators: a lawyer, a physician and a confessing chemist.
- Colon before an explanation: Jekyll’s statement has one structural advantage over every other account: no one can question it.
- Colon before a quotation — and this is the essay rule — when your introduction is itself a complete sentence: Lanyon frames what he saw as a violation of his whole discipline: “my life is shaken to its roots” (ch. 9).
The error to avoid: a colon after an incomplete introduction. Lanyon says that: “my life is shaken” is wrong — “Lanyon says that” is not a sentence. Either drop the colon and the that, or complete the clause. Test it the same way you tested the semicolon: cover everything after the mark. Is what remains a sentence?
📖 Before this lesson, read: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Chapters 1-4
The reading opens over the lesson; close it to come back to exactly where you were.
Reading: Mentor sentences on the colon, the three narrative layers in their own words, and a worked key
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Standard Ebooks (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-louis-stevenson/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/text/single-page); Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series (1841), Project Gutenberg 2944; all retrieved 26 Sept. 2026 · SLS original; quoted passages are public domain (Stevenson, 1886; Emerson, 1841)
Study the mentors, complete the structure map from the passages, then write your five introductions.
Sources. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Project Gutenberg #43, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43, and Emerson, Essays: First Series (1841), Project Gutenberg #2944, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2944; both retrieved 2026-09-26. Chapter numbers follow the ten chapters of the first edition (Utterson’s story runs Chapters 1 to 8, Lanyon’s letter is Chapter 9, Jekyll’s statement is Chapter 10). The explanations, model sentences and key are SLS original.
Part 1. Mentor sentences: the colon
A colon announces that what follows will deliver on what came before: a quotation, an explanation, a definition. The words before the colon must be a complete sentence. Mark that point in each mentor.
“I incline to Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.”
Stevenson, Jekyll and Hyde (1886), ch. 1, on Utterson
“They have only differed on some point of science,” he thought; and being a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of conveyancing), he even added: “It is nothing worse than that!”
Stevenson, Jekyll and Hyde, ch. 2, Utterson thinking of Jekyll and Lanyon
“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctor solemnly: “I have had a lesson—O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have had!”
Stevenson, Jekyll and Hyde, ch. 5, Jekyll to Utterson
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1841), Project Gutenberg #2944
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.
Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1841)
Reading the mentors. In the first three, the words before the colon (“he used to say quaintly,” “he even added,” “returned the doctor solemnly”) are complete clauses, and a quotation follows. In the two Emerson sentences the second half explains or defines the first: Trust thyself is followed by the reason. Now the rule for essays: when you introduce a quotation with a full sentence, use a colon. When the quoted words finish your own sentence grammatically, use no punctuation at all: Lanyon says he will “die incredulous.
Part 2. The three layers, in the narrators’ own words
Use these passages to complete the structure map. Each layer is a different way of knowing.
Layer 1. Utterson’s story: a narrator who follows what a discreet lawyer sees and is told (Chapters 1 to 8)
“I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.”
“PRIVATE: for the hands of G. J. Utterson ALONE, and in case of his predecease to be destroyed unread,” so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents. “I have buried one friend to-day,” he thought: “what if this should cost me another?” And then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and broke the seal. Within there was another enclosure, likewise sealed, and marked upon the cover as “not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll.”
Layer 2. Lanyon’s narrative: a first-person letter written to be opened only after his death (Chapter 9)
What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was, on Jekyll’s own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.
Layer 3. Jekyll’s statement: the last word (Chapter 10)
Should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.
A model structure map (SLS original)
| Layer | Who narrates | What that narrator can know | What the shift forces the reader to accept |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A third-person narrator who follows Utterson | Only what Utterson sees, hears and is told; he will not ask (“the less I ask”) or open a sealed envelope until its date | That the central fact cannot reach us while he narrates, and that this discretion is the world the novella is examining |
| 2 | Lanyon, first person | What he saw: Jekyll drinking and changing. He cannot say why it happens | That the impossible was witnessed, on the word of a dying man who says “I shall die incredulous” |
| 3 | Jekyll, first person | Everything, and he alone is the source | His account of himself as a victim of Hyde, with no one left alive to contradict it |
Why the form matters. The last two layers are both first-person and both written to be read after their authors can be questioned. The envelope in Q2 says so: the inner packet is “not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll.” The reader who notices the form holds Jekyll’s self-portrait more loosely than the reader who does not.
Part 3. Model quotation introductions and a worked key (SLS original)
- Lanyon refuses to describe what Jekyll told him: “What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper.” (Complete sentence, then a colon, then a quotation.)
- Jekyll admits that the split was there before the drug: “I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life.” (Colon after a complete clause.)
- Lanyon says he will “die incredulous,” a phrase that shows how he holds his own testimony. (No colon: the quotation is part of the grammar.)
- Jekyll closes his account with a sentence that ends the only voice that could correct it: “I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.” (Colon.)
- Wrong: Lanyon writes that: “there stood Henry Jekyll!” Right: Lanyon says he saw the change: “there stood Henry Jekyll!” or Lanyon writes that “there stood Henry Jekyll!” The wrong version puts a colon after words that cannot stand alone.
Key to the checks. Utterson’s narration matters to the argument, not just to suspense, because his refusal to look, ask or read is the same respectability the novella is examining, so the form reproduces its target. “Lanyon writes that:” is not correct, for the reason in item 5. In the fill-in, the first gap takes a colon (what follows explains the “structural advantage”) and the second takes a semicolon (two equal clauses).
Your paragraph. Map the three layers in the order above: who narrates, what that narrator can know, what the shift forces you to accept. Then write one sentence that introduces a quotation from Chapter 9 or 10 with a colon, and check that the words before the colon could stand alone.
Formative check
Work through these before moving on. They are not graded — they tell you, and your teacher, whether the standard below has landed yet.
Stevenson gives the last two chapters to a dead man’s letter and a dead man’s confession. Before reading the explanation — what does that buy him?
Why does limiting eight chapters to Utterson’s perspective matter to the novella’s argument, rather than only to its suspense?
Jekyll’s statement has one structural advantage over every other account no one can question it; Lanyon’s letter reaches the same threshold from the other side it is written to be opened only after his death.
“Lanyon writes that:” is a correct way to introduce a quotation with a colon.
Map the novella’s three layers in a short paragraph: who narrates, what that narrator can know, and what the shift into the next layer forces the reader to accept. Then write one sentence using a colon to introduce a quotation from Chapter 9 or 10 — your introduction must be a complete sentence.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Chapters 1-4
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Chapters 1-4 so far Bridge summary — not the primary text
A recap of what you have already read, written for this course, so the reading check below does not require re-opening every earlier popover.
Mr. Hyde is introduced through Enfield’s account of him trampling a child and, with chilling calm, paying off the family (Chapter 1); Utterson, disturbed, reviews Jekyll’s will, which leaves everything to Hyde, and fails to get Jekyll to discuss him (Chapter 2); Jekyll assures Utterson at a dinner that he can rid himself of Hyde whenever he chooses (Chapter 3); and Hyde beats the respectable Sir Danvers Carew to death in the street, watched by a maid, leaving behind a broken cane that Utterson recognizes (Chapter 4).