Content Synopsis

Perhaps one of literature's most pervasive stories, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is the tale of one man who finds a way to release the dark side of his nature. By drinking a potion of his own making, the respectable Dr. Henry Jekyll is able to transform into the evil Mr. Edward Hyde and so indulge his most base desires. However, the strong cautionary tone of the story teaches us that such indulgence can only lead to tragedy, and so it is for Dr. Jekyll.

Initially, the book does not follow the Doctor and his alter ego, but instead is told in the third person, through the eyes of one of Dr. Jekyll's old friends and colleagues, a lawyer named Gabriel Utterson. As his name suggests, Utterson is the mouthpiece through which the story is told, he is our everyman providing a rational viewpoint to such a fantastical story. Stevenson gives him a rather non-descript nature describing him as “undemonstrative at best” (29) and as the “last reputable acquaintance and last good influence in the lives of down-going men” (29). As such, we are made aware that we are traveling through this story in the company of a trustworthy, if slightly dull, man who will show us the truth of the story. In this way, Stevenson grounds what comes after and uses Utterson to lend truthfulness to what unfolds.

As the book opens, Mr. Utterson is taking one of his customary Sunday walks with his cousin, Richard Enfield. They pass by a lone door upon which Enfield comments, “‘Did you ever mark that door?’…’It is connected in my mind…with a very odd story'” (30–31). Therefore, we are told the ‘Story of the Door' that gives the first chapter its name. In this story, Enfield tells us of witnessing an appalling event in which, late one night, he saw a man trample a young girl “like some dammed Juggernaut” (31). He apprehended this man and sought some reparations for the injuries caused to the girl. This resulted in the man leading Enfield and an assembled crowd of onlookers and family to the door in question, whereupon he disappeared inside and re-emerged with a check for the requested amount. Not trusting this man—for he had taken an immediate dislike to him, as had all of the others who had gathered—they waited until dawn for the man to cash the check. Enfield refuses to disclose the name on the check—a man who “is the very pink of proprieties [and] celebrated too” (33) but names the man who trampled the girl as Mr. Hyde (34).

Through his story, Enfield informs Utterson of more than he intends, for Utterson knows that the door in question is a back door to Dr. Jekyll's property. He also provides us, the reader, with our first intimation that not all is as grounded in reality as it might seem. His initial revulsion at seeing Hyde—something that could easily have been caused by seeing him trample the girl with so little concern—does not dissipate and seems to be a product of Hyde himself. This is borne out by the reactions of the others in the crowd which gathers, including those of the doctor whom Enfield describes as being “about as emotional as a bagpipe” (31). This is our first intimation of Hyde's nature and the reaction he provokes in others continues throughout the story with character after character feeling angered or sickened by nothing more than his physical presence. This is not to suggest that he is ugly, but he exudes some evilness that affects the people he meets.

Returning from his walk with Enfield, Utterson removes a document from his safe that is revealed to be Jekyll's will. The terms of this will cover the transfer of all of Dr. Jekyll's possessions to Edward Hyde should the former die, or in the case of his “disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months” (35). Utterson re-reads this will with disquiet, especially following the story he has heard of Mr. Hyde. He pays a visit to a mutual friend of his and Jekyll's, Dr. Hastie Lanyon. There he seeks more information about Mr. Hyde, but Lanyon has never heard of the man. In fact, he tells Utterson, he has had little to do with Jekyll at all since they fell out over Jekyll's “unscientific balderdash” (36). This is our first major clue to the reality of the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde.

In response, Utterson decides to spend his time watching the door that initially prompted Enfield's story, in the hope of meeting this Mr. Hyde. Eventually, the meeting takes place and Utterson feels the same disquiet previously reported by the onlookers in Enfield's story. Utterson starts to believe that Jekyll is in trouble and being blackmailed by Hyde.

Some weeks later, following a dinner at Jekyll's, Utterson raises the subject of Mr. Hyde. Jekyll assures Utterson that there is no problem and asks for his forbearance. Utterson reluctantly agrees.

A year later, Utterson is called to assist the police after the brutal murder of Sir Danvers Carew is attributed to Mr. Hyde. He helps the police search the man's lodgings and all the indications are of a man who has taken flight. He says nothing to the police about Hyde's connection to Dr. Jekyll, but pays a visit to the doctor later that day. Jekyll is huddled in his room, looking sick. He and Utterson talk and Jekyll confesses that Mr. Hyde had a hold over him, but is now gone and will not return. Jekyll gives Utterson a letter purporting to be from Mr. Hyde to this effect. Utterson leaves with it in his possession after discovering from the butler that the letter did not come via the usual route, leading Utterson to believe that Hyde had been to the house that day and had written the letter in Jekyll's presence. Utterson returns home where his clerk compares the handwriting of this letter with the handwriting on a dinner invitation from Dr. Jekyll. Utterson is appalled to discover that they were written by the same hand and that it is his interpretation that Jekyll has been covering up for his protégé Again, we are given clues to Hyde's real nature.

From this point, things turn to the worse very quickly. Following an evening dinner at Jekyll's with Lanyon, both doctors are taken ill. Utterson tries to visit Jekyll but is denied admittance. He visits with Lanyon who tells him he has received a shock that will kill him. He refuses to say more and refuses to talk about Jekyll at all. Shortly thereafter, Lanyon dies. Again, Utterson's attempts to visit Jekyll are met with refusal. Shortly after this, during another Sunday walk with Enfield, the two men are in the square that Jekyll's house overlooks. They see the doctor at the window and speak to him, but he quickly changes in manner and slams the window, retreating from view.

Finally, some time later, Utterson is called from his house by Poole, Jekyll's butler, to attend to his master. He fears that his master has been murdered and replaced by Hyde. Utterson accompanies him back to Jekyll's house where they break down the door to Jekyll's room only to find Mr. Hyde dying on the floor, a bottle of poison still in his hand.

All that is left for Utterson are two letters; one bequeathed him by Dr. Lanyon and one left in his room by Dr. Jekyll. These two letters form the rest of the book.

‘Doctor Lanyon's Narrative’ tells the story of the night after the dinner at Dr. Jekyll's. He receives a message from Jekyll asking him to retrieve a drawer from his workshop and to await a messenger at midnight. The messenger is Mr. Hyde who concocts a potion from the contents of the drawer and drinks it. Following convulsions and contortions, he transforms into Dr. Jekyll. The shock of this is what killed Dr. Lanyon. This is our great moment of revelation at which Hyde is revealed to be part of Jekyll. In turn, Jekyll's narrative provides the explanation behind the revelation, working in much the same way as a mystery story.

‘Henry Jekyll's Statement of the Case’ tells how Dr. Jekyll had dark and base passions that he could not indulge as a reputable member of society. As a result, he found a chemical way to transform those passions into the physical form of Mr. Hyde. He tells of adventures undertaken in the guise of his ‘protégé’ and of the dreadful murder he committed in a fit of rage. Finally, he tells how, despite having foresworn his evil side, the change from Jekyll to Hyde started to come upon him without the help of the potion. He eventually found himself in a public place needing to take the potion in order to change back. This is why he sent the message to Lanyon requesting the chemicals he needed. Following this, the change came over him with more and more frequency.

The end came when one of the chemicals required for the potion ran short and none of the trial replacements were effective. Jekyll could only conclude that it was an “unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught” (96). And so, with no chemical left, Jekyll wrote his statement and waited for his final change to take him. He wonders, as his statement draws to a close, whether Hyde will wait to be arrested and hanged for the murder of Sir Danvers, or whether he will take his own life. This, of course, has already been revealed to us, and lends truthfulness to Jekyll's account, bringing “the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end” (97).

Historical Context

This novella was written at the end of 1885 and published in 1886. This was a period before Sigmund Freud and his analysis of the human psyche, but the story foreshadows these ideas. Lettice Cooper's comment is that “Stevenson's ego feared his id” (55), that he was worried about his own capacity for unconscious evil. The fact that the story came to him in a dream, and all twenty five thousand words were written in only three days (by hand, this was a time before typewriters were common) bears this out. In a letter in early March 1886, he confided that “‘Jekyll [& Hyde]’ is a dreadful thing” (310) a feeling he seems to have continued to hold for this story for the rest of his life.

Likewise, despite being published too early to be considered part of the traditional modernist canon, this tale is often included in studies of that movement. With its attention to the city, rather than the countryside, and with dealings of the lower classes and the inner workings of the mind, it examines many of the areas which modernism sought to uncover. Perhaps most apparent is the low level of respect which Stevenson obviously felt for the overtly middle-class protagonists of his story. The only character who emerges well is the butler, Poole.

This was also a period when arguments were still raging about Charles Darwin's book on evolution: “The Origin of Species.” Stevenson's attempt to enter these arguments can be seen in the way in which Jekyll's potion (representing science) can be seen to show how modern man's civilized presentation is just a facade to hide his primitive side.

Societal Context

One of Stevenson's concerns in this book was the double standards adopted by the middle-classes. All of the main characters are middle-class, middle-aged professional men in positions of responsibility: Utterson is lawyer; Jekyll and Lanyon are both doctors. Even Utterson's cousin, Richard Enfield, is described as a ‘well-known man about town,’ (29) thus providing him with an elevated status. As such, the story can be seen as much as a critique of these men in their high positions as it is of Hyde and his degenerate nature. These men meet for dinners and sit over drinks in front of fires discussing their work while the rest of London continues around them. The only glimpses we get of life outside this polite enclave come from the occasional interruptions of the servants and, of course, Hyde's excursions into the seedier side of London. These, however, are mostly alluded to rather than shown so we are forced to imagine them based purely on Stevenson's treatment of the more bourgeois characters.

Having seen the life of these characters so clearly displayed, the degeneracy of Hyde comes to act as a commentary on them. Although ultimately a part of the very middle-class Jekyll, Hyde decides to take his lodgings in the lower-class area of Soho, thereby associating himself with this other section of society. In this way we can see Stevenson commenting that it is at least as likely for higher members of society to succumb to perversion and degeneracy as for the lower members. And this commentary is emphasized when Hyde's rooms in Soho are found to contain wine, silver plates and other fineries, marking him as a gentleman with base tastes rather than the lower-class figure that might have been presumed. This is a figure who would have been quite familiar to readers of the time thanks to other characters such as Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes (“A Rebours” by J.K. Huysmans, 1884) and Dorian Gray (“The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde, 1890), both also rich and decadent.

The criticism of the social isolation of the characters is confirmed during the final stages of Mr. Utterson's portion of the story when a maid is shushed after crying out in fear. Poole, the butler, seeks to protect Utterson from the fears and worries of those he would see as lower than him.

Religious Context

The religious connections are all too clear in a story which seems to suggest that evil is more powerful than good. Stevenson was fascinated by the portrayal of evil in the Calvinism that had informed his upbringing. In this religion, the presence of evil was always disguised in ‘the shape of devils and spirits’ (Calder 10). Stevenson's fascination concerned what happened when evil adopted a human face. This is the concept that Calvinism is so set against, with its doctrine of abstinence and self-control being in place to prevent such an occurrence from happening.

It is clear that Stevenson was interested in these principles of self-denial so prominent in Calvinism, but also in the reverse: the attractive power of what is forbidden purely because of its disallowed status. While Jekyll's narrative imparts to us the horror he feels on discovering how much of a monster Hyde is and the fear of losing himself, which eventually comes true, it also shows us the joy he feels in letting go of that part of himself. This sums up the battle that religions like Calvinism have to wage when faced by human nature. The fact that Utterson, Lanyon, and Jekyll himself are shown as religious, church-going folk, merely makes the latter's slide into the darkness all the more stark a criticism.

Scientific & Technological Context

The late 19th Century was a time of vast growth in medical areas with the likes of Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister making great strides in anti-bacterial protection and making operations much more likely to succeed. In addition, recent discoveries had shown living beings to be made up of small building blocks, cells, organized into larger organs and then organisms. Add to this Darwin's book on evolution, “The Origin of Species,” and the time seemed to hold almost limitless potential. The medical profession was just starting the process of splitting into specialties, and it seemed that the possibilities for medicine and scientific advancement were infinite.

This was the period that gave us the first real works of science fiction, of which “Jekyll and Hyde” can be seen as just one. Jules Verne was a contemporary of Stevenson's and writers such as H. G. Wells came soon after. It was a time when the possibilities of science were being grasped for the first time, which powered the imaginative faculties of scientist and writer alike.

It is, of course, unlikely that a potion such as that taken by Dr. Jekyll could have the effects described to change him physically. However, in an age where people were still coming to grips with the concept of being descended from apes, it must have seemed at least reasonable. It is certain that Stevenson would have seen the way in which alcohol, laudanum, and opium would have acted on the human personality to effect dramatic changes.

Biographical Context

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh to Thomas Stevenson, a successful lighthouse engineer, and Margaret Balfour. They were both devoutly religious and brought their son up to be the same. However, he later decided to renounce his religion while he was studying at Edinburgh University. This was also the time when he changed his middle names to become Robert Louis Stevenson.

Having contracted tuberculosis as a child, he had poor health for most of his life, finding problems with breathing which eventually led to his moving to Samoa, where the air better agreed with his lungs.

His first major literary success—“Treasure Island”—was published in 1883 as his second book. His first had been the story collection, “The New Arabian Nights” published in 1882. These were followed by “The Black Arrow” in 1884 and “The Body Snatcher” in 1885. His next books, “Kidnapped” and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” were both published in 1886. These were followed by “The Wrong Box,” (1892), and “The Master of Ballantrae” (1888). His final book, “Weir of Hermiston” was left unfinished by his death in 1894.

Despite spending his final years in the South Sea Islands, his writing was still grounded in Scotland and he always considered himself a Scottish writer. In true Stevenson fashion, his final, unfinished, book, “Weir of Hermiston,” was about the strong-willed Scottish Lord of Hermiston and his son, and once again dealt with the duality of human nature.

Works Cited