Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (character)
Dr. Henry Jekyll and his alter ego, Mr. Edward Hyde, is the central character of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In the story, he is a good friend of main protagonist Gabriel John Utterson.
"Dr. Jekyll" and "Mr. Hyde" redirect here. For the novella he appears in, see Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. For other men with the surname "Hyde", see Hyde (surname).Dr. Henry Jekyll or Mr. Edward Hyde
King Baggot
John Barrymore
Fredric March
Spencer Tracy
Louis Hayward
Philip Van Zandt
Tom Kennedy
Boris Karloff
Michael Rennie
Paul Massie
Jack Palance
Ralph Bates
David Hemmings
John Malkovich
Jason Flemyng
John Hannah
Robbie Coltrane
Tony Todd
Hank Harris
Sam Witwer
Anthony Warlow
Chuck Wagner
Robert Cuccioli
Rob Evan
Joseph Mahowald
Jack Wagner
Sebastian Bach
David Hasselhoff
James Nesbitt
Russell Crowe
Shazad Latif
Eddie Izzard
Michael Caine
Edward Hyde (or Hyde or Mr. Hyde)
Male
Doctor
English
Living in Soho in the West End of London, Jekyll is a kind and respected English doctor struggling with repressed evil urges.[1] As a potential solution, he develops a serum that he believes will effectively compartmentalize his dark side. Instead, Jekyll transforms into Edward Hyde, the physical and mental manifestation of his evil personality.[2] This process happens more regularly until Jekyll becomes unable to control when the transformations occur. Dr. Jekyll roams Soho as Mr. Hyde, and Mr. Hyde inhabits Leicester Square as both himself and Dr. Jekyll.
Fictional character biography[edit]
Dr. Henry Jekyll is a doctor based in Soho who feels that he is battling between the benevolence and malevolence within himself. He spends his life trying to repress evil urges that are not fitting for a man of his stature. Jekyll develops a potion in an attempt to mask this hidden evil. However, in doing so, Jekyll transforms into a hideous creature, which appears much younger than him. Jekyll decides to take advantage of this, naming this transformation of his "Edward Hyde", and uses his new persona to act out his hidden desires free of consequences while keeping his social status as Jekyll. As time goes by, Hyde grows in power and eventually manifests whenever Henry Jekyll shows signs of physical or moral weakness, no longer needing the potion to transform.
Stevenson never says exactly what Hyde does, generally saying that it is something of an evil and lustful nature. Thus, in the context of the times, it is abhorrent to Victorian religious morality. Hyde may have been reeling in activities such as engaging with prostitutes or buggery. However, it is Hyde's violent activities that seem to give him the most thrills, driving him to attack and murder Sir Danvers Carew without apparent reason, making him a hunted outlaw throughout England. Carew was a client of Gabriel Utterson, Jekyll's lawyer and friend, who is concerned by Hyde's history of violence and the fact that Jekyll changed his will, leaving everything to Hyde. Dr. Hastie Lanyon, a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, dies of shock after receiving information relating to Jekyll. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter to be opened after Jekyll's death or disappearance.
When Jekyll refuses to leave his lab for weeks, Utterson and Jekyll's butler Mr. Poole break into the lab. Inside, they find the body of Hyde wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead from suicide. They find also a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain the entire mystery. Utterson takes the document home where he first reads Lanyon's letter and then Jekyll's. The first reveals that Lanyon's deterioration and eventual death resulted from seeing Hyde drinking a serum or potion and subsequently turning into Jekyll. The second letter explains that Jekyll, having previously indulged unstated vices (and with it the fear that discovery would lead to his losing his social position), found a way to transform himself and thereby indulge his vices without fear of detection. But as Jekyll used Hyde to act out his desires more and more, he effectively became a sociopath — evil, violent, self-indulgent, and utterly uncaring to anyone but himself. Initially, Jekyll was able to control the transformations, but later, he became Hyde involuntarily in his sleep.
At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night however, the urge gripped him too strongly. After the transformation, he immediately rushed out and violently killed Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations, as now his scapegoat was no longer safe. For a time, he proved successful by engaging in philanthropic work. One day at a park, he considered how good a person he had become as a result of his deeds (in comparison to others), believing himself redeemed. However, before he completed his line of thought, he looked down at his hands and realized that he had suddenly transformed once again into Hyde. This was the first time that an involuntary metamorphosis had happened in waking hours.
Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed help to avoid being caught. He wrote to Lanyon (in Jekyll's hand) asking his friend to retrieve the contents of a cabinet in his laboratory and to meet him at midnight at Lanyon's home in Cavendish Square. In Lanyon's presence, Hyde mixed the potion and transformed back to Jekyll - ultimately leading to Lanyon's death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home only to find himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse them.
Eventually, the stock of ingredients from which Jekyll had been preparing the potion ran low, and subsequent batches prepared by Dr. Jekyll from renewed stocks failed to produce the transformation. Jekyll speculated that the one essential ingredient that made the original potion work (a chemical salt) must have itself been contaminated. After sending Poole to one chemist after another to purchase the salt that was running low only to find it would not work, he assumed that subsequent supplies all lacked the essential ingredient that made the potion successful for his experiments. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll had slowly vanished in consequence. Jekyll wrote that even as he composed his letter, he knew that he would soon become Hyde permanently, having used the last of this salt and he wondered if Hyde would face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll noted that in either case, the end of his letter marked the end of his life. He ended the letter saying "I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end". With these words, both the document and the novella come to a close.
The original pronunciation of "Jekyll", as used in Stevenson's native Scotland, rhymed with "treacle", thus (/ˈdʒiːkəl/).