Jekyll and Hyde Character Studies

Mr Hyde - Character Study

• Hyde is described as having no nameable malformity, however theres something about him which makes it seem that way. It is possible that his evil acts as something so detestable, it is represented in the physical as well as the mental.
• Hyde is also described as "ape-like". This shows that he is a degenarate, and that he is lower than human form.
• Hyde is also seen to bring out the evil in others. When people look at him, they are described as wanting to strike at him, or even kill him.
• The status surrounding Sir Danvers Carew is intentionally that of good and kindly, as to make his death seem ever more puropseful in the eyes of the reader. OPure evil wishes to strike down pure good.
• Hyde is a successful intertwining of several themees and concepts, and perfectly captures the evil that we often keep locked up. Stevenson finds a character in which he can explore the utmost hatred, yet also find some sort of valid explanation for his existence.

Mr Hyde Quotes

• “If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.”
• “It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it. ”
• “I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.”
• “All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.”
• The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet..."
• “His affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object."
• ‘screech of animal terror’
• ‘not only hellish but inorganic’

Dr Jekyll - Character Study

• We learn that Jekyll is a mild mannered man, who has upheld a strong friendship group as well as achieving a high status (however we must question at what cost these two things came).
• Jekyll discloses in a letter that he was a light hearted youth, however we pick up that he had bad tendencies, which he recognised must be suppressed if he wished to achieve in Victorian society. These suppressions would soon take the form of Hyde.
• We see that Jekyll's desire to conform is what makes Hyde so hard to control. Hyde is a product of Jekyll's surroundings as much as he is a product of Jekyll's inner conflict.
• Jekyll clearly wishes to participate in a world of wrong doing. Despite being respected and loveable as himself, his unwillingness to fix Hyde's mess makes the reader think that he doesn't really regret what he is doing . His evil is an addiction, and this makes Stevenson's message relevant even now.
• From the very start, we see that Jekyll simply isn't built to conform. His cliché parties and circle of friends are the mark of a man who is desperate to fit in. We even see that some of his scientific work is frowned upon by doctors for being too far fetched and mystical, further showing that Jekyll is simply different.
• Jekyll is also seen to be used by Stevenson as a means of showing how a perfect human cannot exist. Despite Stevenson presenting an almost perfect environment (supportive friends, wealthy, nice house, prominent figures), Jekyll is still seen to go "off the rails".

Dr Jekyll Quotes

• "...I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange - a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking".
• "Both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering."
• "...and a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp of lower elements in my soul."
• "At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde."
• "Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll..." - Interestingly, although Jekylls main goal is to become pure good, he already thinks he is pure good. So the intentions of the experiement were flawed from the start, whether intentionally or accidentally, we do not know.
• "I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished."

Mr Utterson

• The protagonist of the story, who clearly wants the best for his friends. He is the definition of a man who has conformed completely. It is to be noted that we no reference to Utterson having any sort of evil repressed thoughts. Pure good goes against evil in the case of Utterson and Hyde. Mr Utterson is the Victorian ideal.
• In Utterson’s devotion to both decorum and reason, Stevenson depicts Victorian society’s general attempt to maintain the authority of civilization over and against humanity’s darker side. Stevenson suggests that just as Utterson prefers the suppression or avoidance of revelations to the scandal or chaos that the truth might unleash, so too does Victorian society prefer to repress and deny the existence of an uncivilized or savage element of humanity, no matter how intrinsic that element may be. Utterson cannot accept the nature of Hyde's formation, and relies solely on reason, as he sees only logic and reason. This is part of his failure in resolving the solution in time.
• Utterson cannot be presented as too imaginative by Stevenson as it would ruin the eerie mood of the book. He allows or the uncanny in the form of Uttersons nightmares or the dark market squares.
• Utterson is perfect as a narrator. His way of telling the story (perfectly detailed), fit in well to his stereotypes as a lawyer. The detail helps to enforce the profession and morals he teaches. He shares little opinion and tells it like it is.

Mr Utterson Quotes

• "But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. "I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way." In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men."
• "This document had long been the lawyer's eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest."
• "His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing yet avoided." - Mr. Utterson’s first conclusion is not that Dr. Jekyll is evil, but that Mr. Hyde must be blackmailing Dr. Jekyll for some past sins. This conclusion is prejudiced by feelings of friendship for Jekyll.
• “a man of rugged countenance, that was never lightened by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backwards in sentiment; lean, long dusty, dreary, and yet somehow loveable”.

Dr Lanyon

• In contrast to Jekyll, the "metaphysical" scientist and his interest in releasing "evil" spirits which become physically alive, taking over the body and soul of their owner and embodying it in their own misshapen representations, Lanyon is a "traditional" scientist — completely uninterested in "the other world." We see that he distances himself from Jekyll when he gets involved in the supernatural. As a Victorian gentleman, he is scared of ideas that present themselves as foreign.
• Lanyon is possibly the only person in the book who accepts Jekylls discovery (reluctantly so). He also is the only person is capable of understanding the true extent of what Jekyll has done, which makes his death at the hands of the revelation even more shocking.
• Lanyon dies from shock as he is scared knowing that men like Hyde reside within us, and he almost becomes frightened of his capablities. This maybe indicates that he has suppressed evil thoughts, and he essentially dies at the hands of evil.
• Lanyon actually completes Jekylls task out of curiosity rather than loyalty.

Dr Lanyon

• “He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have estranged Damon and Pythias."
• "Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan." - Lanyon is given a choice to face evil or take comfort in his own acts