Jekyll and Hyde

Jekyll and Hyde

Character summaries
1. Utterson
  1. Friend of Jekyll and a lawyer
  2. 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.
  3. Tries 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
2. Dr Henry Jekyll
  1. Doctor and scientist
  2. Wealthy and respectable
  3. sociable person in the past, with a circle of friends including the lawyer, Utterson, and another doctor, Lanyon.
  4. During the course of the novel his behaviour becomes increasingly erratic.
  5. He leaves everything to Hyde in his will. 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.
  6. 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.
3. Hyde
  1. Young and small and secretive
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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. Lanyon
  1. Doctor
    1. He and Jekyll were once close friends and went to medical school together.
  2. He is a big contrast with Jekyll, who likes to live dangerously and experiment with the paranormal
    1. 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'.
  3. Jekyll sees him as hidebound in his attitude to medical science
  4. 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.
    1. Not long after he becomes mentally and physically ill, and dies.
5. Enfield
  1. A distant relative of Utterson, Enfield is a well-known man about town and the complete opposite to Utterson.
6. Poole
  1. He is Jekyll's man servant.
  2. Poole appears briefly in the novel from time to time, notably when Utterson goes to visit Jekyll.
  3. 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.
7. Sir Danvers Carew
  1. Sir Danvers is a distinguished elderly gentleman who is beaten to death by Hyde. This is a turning point in the novel.
8. Mr Guest
  1. 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.
plot summary
1. chapter 1 - story of the door
  1. 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.)
    1. 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.
      1. 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.
2. chapter 2 - search for Mr Hyde
  1. 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.
    1. 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.
      1. 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.
3. chapter 3 - Dr Jekyll was quite at ease
  1. Two weeks later, following a dinner party with friends at Jekyll's house, Utterson stays behind to talk to him about the will.
    1. 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.
      1. 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'.
4. chapter 4 - The Carew murder case
  1. 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.
    1. 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.
      1. 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.
5. chapter 5 - Inciedent of the letter
  1. 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.
    1. 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.
6. chapter 6 - The remarkable incident of Dr Lanyon
  1. The police cannot find Hyde. Coincidentally, Jekyll seems happier and, for two months, he socialises again
    1. 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.
      1. 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.
7. chapter 7 - incident at the window
  1. 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'.
    1. 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.
8. chapter 8 - the last night
  1. 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.
    1. 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'.
      1. 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.
9. chapter 9 - Dr Lanyons narrative
  1. 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.
    1. Lanyon says he was curious, especially as the book contained some strange entries.
      1. 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.
10. chapter 10 - Henry Jekyll's full statement of the case
  1. Jekyll tells the story of how he turned into Hyde.
    1. 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.
      1. The novel does not return to Utterson who, at the end of Chapter 8, was going to return to Jekyll's house.

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	Created by willpollard1880 about 9 years ago