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Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Characters

Dr Henry Jekyll
1. Doctor & Experienced Scientist
2. Wealthy & Respectable
3. During the course of the novel, his behaviour becomes increasingly erratic
4. His will states that if he disappears, everything goes to Hyde
5. In last chapter, we learn that Jekyll has been experimenting to separate his personality
Mr Edward Hyde
1. People react with horror and fear when they see him but there is no single thing which makes him extremly unpleasant
2. He is violent and has no sense of guilt about his crimes or neither motive for causing pain
  1. Chapter 1 - Hyde assaults young girl
  2. Chapter 4 - Beats an elderly gentleman to death
3. His appearances in the novel are always brief - people only catch impressions of him before he vanishes into the dark or behind a door
4. Extremely Secretive
Gabriel Utterson
1. An old friend of Jekyll and his lawyer
2. Calm & rational - His approach to life is to weigh up the evidence
3. He is a lover of the same and customary sides of life
  1. Stevenson utilises him to represent attitudes of the average reader at the time
4. His sense of shock and horror when he first meets Hyde is irrational by contrast to his normal reaction to things
5. He spends much of the novel trying to advise and help Jekyll, who recognises that he is a good friend but rejects all his efforts to help
6. At no stage does he suspect that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person but he does make key observations which keep the reader in tune
Dr Hastie Lanyon
1. He was once close friends with Jekyll and attended Medical School together
2. Respectable & Conventional - he follows the rules and obeys the laws of science
3. He believes in science and the world of real, material things
4. Contrasts to Jekyll, who likes to live dangerously and experiment with the paranormal
5. He disagrees with Jekyll's ideas and calls them 'scientific balderdash' - Chapter 2 hadn't seen him since he became 'too fanciful' and 'wrong in mind'
  1. Jekyll refers to him as 'hidebound' - narrow-minded and unadventurous in his attitude to medical science
6. The only person to see Hyde transforming into Jekyll
  1. He cannot cope with the fight between his common sense view of the world and what Jekyll's experiments reveal - not long after he becomes mentally and physically ill, he dies
Minor Characters
1. Richard Enfield - distant relative of Utterson and well known man about town
2. Poole - Jekyll's man-servant who appears briefly in novel, notably when Utterson goes to see Jekyll
  1. In Chapter 11, he goes to Utterson's house to report the strange goings on - helps break down door
3. Sir Danvers Crew - distinguished elderly gentleman beat to death by Hyde - turning point in novel
4. Mr Guest - Utterson's secretary and handwriting expert - In Chapter 5, he comments on similarity in Jekyll and Hyde's handwriting

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Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - Characters

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	Created by Scarlett Kittle almost 9 years ago