Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

• Context


  The book's release came at a time when many people saw science and a belief in religion and the supernatural as being at odds with each another. A lot felt they had to choose between the two. And many believed that science had become dangerous and was meddling in matters which only God had control over. This is what Jekyll does in the novel.Closely linked to the Victorians' increasing sense of the conflict between science and religion was the idea that humans have a dual nature. On the one hand, they saw the calm, rational, everyday normality of family life and employment; on the other, fantasies, nightmares, anger and violence. It was the explainable versus the inexplicable; the natural versus the supernatural; good versus evil.
• Chapter 1(Plot)


  Utterson and Enfield are out for a walk when they pass a strange-looking door (the entrance to Dr Jekyll's laboratory). Enfield recalls a story involving the door. In the early hours of one winter morning, he says, he saw a man trampling on a young girl. He pursued the man and brought him back to the scene of the crime. (The reader later learns that the man is Mr Hyde.)

  A crowd gathered and, to avoid a scene, the man offered to pay the girl compensation. This was accepted, and he opened the door with a key and re-emerged with some money and a large cheque.

  Utterson is very interested in the case and asks whether Enfield is certain Hyde used a key to open the door. Enfield is sure he did.
• Chapter 2(Plot)


  That evening the lawyer, Utterson, is troubled by what he has heard. He takes the will of his friend Dr Jekyll from his safe. It contains a worrying instruction: in the event of Dr Jekyll's disappearance, all his possessions are to go to Mr Hyde.

  Utterson decides to visit Dr Lanyon, an old friend of his and Dr Jekyll's. Lanyon has never heard of Hyde, and not seen Jekyll for ten years. That night Utterson has terrible nightmares.

  He starts watching the door (which belongs to Dr Jekyll's old laboratory) at all hours, and eventually sees Hyde unlocking it. Utterson is shocked by the sense of evil coming from him.

  Utterson goes next door to warn his friend, Jekyll, against Hyde, but is told by the servant, Poole, that Jekyll is out and the servants have all been instructed by Jekyll to obey Hyde.

  Utterson is worried that Hyde may kill Jekyll to benefit from the will.
• Chapter 3(Plot)


  Two weeks later, following a dinner party with friends at Jekyll's house, Utterson stays behind to talk to him about the will.

  Jekyll laughs off Utterson's worries, comparing them to Lanyon's 'hidebound' (conventional and unadventurous) attitude to medical science. The reader now sees why Lanyon and Jekyll have fallen out, and starts to understand that Jekyll's behaviour has become unusual.

  Utterson persists with the subject of the will. Jekyll hints at a strange relationship between himself and Hyde. Although he trusts Utterson, Jekyll refuses to reveal the details. He asks him, as his lawyer not his friend, to make sure the will is carried out. He reassures him that 'the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr Hyde'.
• Chapter 4(Plot)


  Nearly a year later, an elderly gentleman is brutally clubbed to death in the street by Hyde. The murder is witnessed by a maid who recognises Hyde.

  A letter addressed to Utterson is found on the body and the police contact him. He recognises the murder weapon as the broken half of a walking cane he gave to Jekyll years earlier. When he hears that the murderer is Hyde, he offers to lead the police to his house.

  They are told that Hyde has not been at home for two months. But when they search the house they find the other half of the murder weapon and signs of a hasty exit.
• Chapter 5(Plot)


  Utterson goes to Jekyll's house and finds him 'looking deadly sick'. He asks whether he is hiding Hyde. Jekyll assures him he will never see or hear of Hyde again. He shows Utterson a letter from Hyde that indicates this.

  Utterson asks Guest, his head clerk, to compare the handwriting on the letter to that on an invitation from Jekyll. There is a resemblance between the two, though with a different slope. Utterson believes Jekyll has forged the letter in Hyde's handwriting to cover his escape.
• Chapter 6(Plot)


  The police cannot find Hyde. Coincidentally, Jekyll seems happier and, for two months, he socialises again.

  Suddenly, however, he appears depressed and will not see Utterson. Utterson visits Dr Lanyon to discuss their friend's health, but finds Lanyon on his death-bed.

  Lanyon refuses to discuss Jekyll who, he hints, is the cause of his illness.

  Trying to find out what has happened, Utterson writes to Jekyll. He receives a reply which suggests Jekyll has fallen into a very disturbed state and talks of being 'under a dark influence'.

  Lanyon dies and leaves a letter for Utterson in an envelope marked 'not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr Henry Jekyll'. Utterson, being a good lawyer, locks it away unopened in his safe.

  Utterson tries to revisit Jekyll several times, but his servant, Poole, says he is living in isolation and will not see anyone.
• Chapter 7(Plot)


  Utterson and Enfield are taking one of their walks, as at the opening of the book. They pass Jekyll's window and see him looking like a prisoner in solitary confinement. Utterson calls out to him and Jekyll replies, but his face suddenly freezes in an expression of 'abject terror and despair'.

  The change in Jekyll's expression is so sudden and horrible it 'froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below', and they depart in silence.
• Chapter 8(Plot)


  One evening, Jekyll's servant comes to Utterson and asks him to come to Jekyll's house. They go to the laboratory, but the door is locked. The voice from inside does not sound like Jekyll's and both men believe it is Hyde.

  Poole says the voice has for days been crying out for a particular chemical to be brought, but the chemicals given have been rejected as 'not pure'.

  Poole says that earlier he caught a glimpse of a person in the lab who looked scarcely human.

  They break down the door and inside find a body, twitching. In its hand are the remains of a test tube (or vial). The body is smaller than Jekyll's but wearing clothes that would fit him.

  On the table is a will dated that day which leaves everything to Utterson, with Hyde's name crossed out. There is also a package containing Jekyll's 'confession' and a letter asking Utterson to read Dr Lanyon's letter which he left after his death (see Chapter 6) and is now in Utterson's safe.

  Utterson tells Poole he will return before midnight, when he has read all the documents.
• Chapter 9(Plot)


  Chapter 9 lists the contents of Dr Lanyon's letter. It tells of how Lanyon received a letter from Jekyll asking him to collect a drawer containing chemicals, a vial and a notebook from Jekyll's laboratory and to give it to a man who would call at midnight.

  Lanyon says he was curious, especially as the book contained some strange entries.

  At midnight a man appears. He is small and grotesque, wearing clothes that are too large for him.

  The man offers to take the chemicals away, or to drink the potion.

  Lanyon accepts and, before his very eyes, Hyde transforms into none other than Dr Jekyll.

  In horror at what he has witnessed, Lanyon becomes seriously ill.
• Chapter 10(Plot)


  Jekyll tells the story of how he turned into Hyde.

  It began as scientific curiosity in the duality of human nature (or the good and evil), and his attempt to destroy the 'darker self'. Eventually, however, he became addicted to the character of Hyde, who increasingly took over and destroyed him.

  The novel does not return to Utterson who, at the end of Chapter 8, was going to return to Jekyll's house.
• Dr Henry Jekyll(Character)


  Jekyll is a doctor and experimental scientist.

  He is wealthy and respectable.

  He has been a sociable person in the past, with a circle of friends including the lawyer, Utterson, and another doctor, Lanyon.

  During the course of the novel his behaviour becomes increasingly erratic.

  His will states that if he disappears he leaves everything to Hyde. His oldest friend, Utterson, knows nothing of Hyde and urges Jekyll to change his will. He fears Hyde has a mysterious, perhaps criminal, hold over Jekyll, and that Hyde might murder him to benefit from the will.

  In the last chapter we learn that Jekyll has been carrying out experiments to separate his personality (the 'evil' part embodied in Hyde) from his higher nature. Hyde eventually becomes more powerful and takes over.
• Mr Edward Hyde(Character)


  He is described as small ('dwarfish') and young.

  People react with horror and fear when they see him. But there is no single thing about him that is especially unpleasant; it is as if his spirit affects people.

  He is violent, and has no sense of guilt about his crimes. In Chapter 1, Hyde assaults a young girl, and in Chapter 4 he beats an elderly gentleman to death. He has no motive for either of these attacks.

  His appearances in the novel are always brief. People only catch impressions of him, before he vanishes into the dark or behind a door.

  Hyde is very secretive.
• Gabriel Utterson(Character)


  Utterson is an old friend of Jekyll, and his lawyer.

  He is calm and rational, just as lawyers are supposed to be. Rather like a scientist, his approach in life is to weigh up the evidence.

  Utterson is 'a lover of the sane and customary sides of life'. Stevenson probably uses him to represent the attitudes of the average reader of his time.

  His sense of shock and horror when he first meets Hyde is, by contrast to his normal reaction to things, irrational: 'not all these points together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr Utterson regarded him.'

  He spends much of the novel trying to advise and help Jekyll, giving advice about his will and avoiding Hyde, and trying to help him when he shuts himself in his room. Jekyll recognises that he is a good friend, but rejects all his offers of help.

  At no stage does he suspect Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. However, he makes observations whereby the reader can, looking back, see the evidence. For instance, he asks his chief clerk, Mr Guest, to look at Hyde's handwriting. When Guest sees that Hyde's and Jekyll's writing is strangely similar, though with different directions of slope, Utterson draws the wrong conclusion: that Jekyll has forged Hyde's handwriting to protect him.

  In Chapter 8, Utterson goes home to read the documents found in Jekyll's laboratory and promises Jekyll's servant he will return before midnight. The novel ends with two chapters containing the two documents he goes home to read. The reader never discovers Utterson's reaction to them, or what action he takes. He is left as an uncompleted character. This is perhaps Stevenson's way of showing that sensible, rational people do not always have all the answers.
• Dr Hastie Lanyon(Character)


  Lanyon is, like Jekyll, a doctor.

  He and Jekyll were once close friends and went to medical school together.

  Lanyon is respectable and conventional. He follows all the rules and obeys the law.

  He believes in science and the world of real, material things.

  He is a big contrast with Jekyll, who likes to live dangerously and experiment with the paranormal (what Jekyll calls 'transcendental medicine').

  He disagrees with Jekyll's ideas and calls them 'scientific balderdash'. In Chapter 2, Lanyon has not seen Jekyll since he started to become 'too fanciful' and 'wrong in mind'.

  Dr Jekyll, on the other hand, regards him as 'hidebound' (conventional and unadventurous) in his attitude to medical science.

  Lanyon is the only person to actually see Hyde transforming into Jekyll, something that does not fit the laws of science. When he sees the change, he cannot cope with the fight between his common-sense view of the world and what Jekyll's experiments reveal. "I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots." Not long after he becomes mentally and physically ill, and dies.
• Richard Enfield(Character)


  A distant relative of Utterson, Enfield is a well-known man about town and the complete opposite to Utterson.
• Poole(Character)


  He is Jekyll's man servant.

  Poole appears briefly in the novel from time to time, notably when Utterson goes to visit Jekyll.

  In Chapter 8, he goes to Utterson's house to report the strange goings on in Jekyll's house. He helps Utterson to break down the door.
• Sir Danvers Carew(Character)


  Sir Danvers is a distinguished elderly gentleman who is beaten to death by Hyde. This is a turning point in the novel.
• Mr Guest(Character)


  Mr Guest is Utterson's secretary and a handwriting expert. In Chapter 5, he comments on the remarkable similarity between Jekyll and Hyde's handwriting.
• The Duality of Human Nature(Theme)


  In Chapter 10, Jekyll writes clearly about the dual nature of human beings. He says that, as a young, educated man from a respectable family, he maintained an appearance of good behaviour at all times. But he says this was a fraud - no one suspected his true nature, which was at times extremely immoral.

  Jekyll's experiments began in an attempt to separate the two sides of human nature and destroy the evil one. He discovered that the evil part of his nature was, indeed, part of himself, and therefore, in some sense, natural and part of the whole.
• Science and the unexplained(Theme)


  Jekyll and Lanyon are both scientists. Science traditionally explains the real world by means of experiment and observation. Scientists are usually dismissive of the supernatural, and Lanyon has avoided Jekyll for ten years because of his 'fanciful' and 'wrong minded' ideas and investigations.

  By contrast, in his final 'confession', Jekyll says his investigations "led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental". He is fascinated by the mystery of human nature - and such investigations could be seen as closer to religion and psychology than traditional 19th-century science.

  There is a 'war of attitudes' between Jekyll and Lanyon, and both men are destroyed by their beliefs. Lanyon by his inability to imagine or accept a world beyond the rational and scientific; Jekyll by accepting and unleashing the dark powers that lie beyond.

  Stevenson asks the reader to examine for themselves which man comes closer to the truth.
• The Law and the Unexplained(Theme)


  Utterson represents the standards of conventional society and the law. Like Lanyon, he does not have the imagination to understand what Jekyll is doing.

  utterson deep in thought, the image title is 'ignorance'

  Enlarge image

  That is why Jekyll cannot confide in him about what is happening, even though they are old friends. It is also why, throughout the novel, Stevenson makes Utterson come to all the wrong conclusions. The law blinds him to the truth. It is because Utterson is a lawyer that he constantly suspects Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll or has some other criminal purpose.

  The ultimate failure of Utterson (and therefore the law) is built into the structure of the novel. At the end of Chapter 8, The Last Night, Utterson promises the servant, Poole: "I shall be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police." But neither he nor the police (the other arm of the law) are heard of again. Their silence is like the death of Lanyon; they have no power to deal with the unexplained that Jekyll has unleashed.
• The Names Jekyll and Hyde(Theme)


  The two names seem to have a double meaning. The two syllables of Jekyll's name (Je and kyll) perhaps mean 'I kill' ( Je is the French for I). In the last chapter, Jekyll describes how he tried to get rid of (kill) the Hyde in him.

  Hyde spelled as 'hide' suggests something hidden from view, or the rough skin of an animal. Jekyll is in some way trying to kill the hidden Hyde and his animal nature.
• The Size and Age of Jekyll and Hyde(Theme)


  Jekyll is much bigger than Hyde. This is seen particularly when Hyde's small body is found in the much larger clothes of Dr Jekyll. The author is perhaps suggesting Hyde is a smaller part of Jekyll, but that if people repress the bad in them it will take over and destroy them.

  Hyde is younger and more energetic than Jekyll. This suggests evil is something that develops later in life, after a period of childhood innocence. It also suggests Stevenson felt there is something primitively energetic and exciting about mankind's baser nature; that the 'higher', respectable nature of social humans is repressed and tame.
• The man trampled calmly over the child's body and left her screaming on the ground
• It was hellish to see
• It wasn't like some man; it was like some damned juggernaut
• But gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running
• I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight
• Turn sick and white with the desire to kill him
• A kind of black, sneering coolness
• Really like satan
• That was never lighted by a smile
• He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone
• Though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years
• His affections, like ivy, were the growth of time
• The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained
• I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why
• He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point
• Mr Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath