Developing a paragraph about character analysis of Dr Jekyll

Original paragraph:
When the reader is first introduced to Dr Jekyll, he is presented as a respectable and professional man, but also someone who is slightly untrustworthy. He’s described as a ‘well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast’

My addition to the paragraph:
The author uses hyphenated words showing how wide range his character is. It shows that there is no word to specifically describe his character, making him seem unnatural and secretive. This foreshadows his secret. Additionally his unordinary ‘smooth-face’ at the age of fifty adds to the unnatural theme. It also shows that he has access to high quality products suggesting he is rich and takes a lot of time caring for his looks so that he conforms to what a nice reputable man of the Victorian era would look like. It is suspicious of a man to be so ‘well-made, smooth faced’ as Dr Jekyll is. This reflects on his toxic, egoistical character and secrecy presented through the novella.

I’m posting this because I would like to get some feedback on my development paragraph. I have taken some advice from previous posts on trying to link my work back to the main themes of the novel for example secrecy and I tried to use less terminology so I could go in depth with the character analysis. If I am not doing well at what I mentioned, please inform me.

P.S. I’m not sure if what I chose to write about is a good choice since during my class, the other students kept to the theme of the description of the smooth face being a mask. I didn’t mention it specifically but I believe I hinted on this. Does it matter?

You've definitely chosen a difficult aspect to focus on, but it's good that you've thought outside of the box and asked for advice about it to make it better, because in a way you've got the upper hand if you execute it properly!

I'm not too sure if the hyphenated words show how wide range his character is, because it's not necessarily an oxymoron/juxtaposition, as there aren't two adjectives next to each other, therefore I'm not sure if this foreshadows is secret, so you'd have to explain how it does this, so just write 'because...' to show that you've thought about the point you're trying to make in depth.

I like the idea that his unordinary 'smooth face' at the age of fifty adds to the unnatural theme, that's a good point, but again you need to explain 'why?' every time you make a point, because we can't just make assumptions about an author's work if we didn't write it ourselves.

Do we know that he has access to 'high quality products'? I almost think this contradicts the interesting point you made about him being fresh faced because he's supernatural, rather than using anti-wrinkle cream or whatever haha So yeah, my advice for this one is to just be sure to make one point and stick with it to make a solid argument as to why you think this is how he is portrayed.

I would say 'it is therefore suspicious of a man to be...', because it seems like you're making a new point when you're essentially summarising just the one point in your paragraph, sorry that's pretty picky of me to say haha! Also, why does him being supernatural and well-made and smooth-faced make him toxic, egotistical and secretive?

I really hope these questions help you out, I would suggest answering these as part of your paragraph and then post it back on here if you would like any more advice on it?

Loved studying this book for A-Level!

I think I was going more along the lines of Dr Jekyll experimenting on himself when taking about his smooth face, do you think I should scrap that idea? Or did I just phrase it wrong?