Jekyll suddenly slams the window and disappears. In late February, during another walk with Enfield, Utterson starts a conversation with Jekyll at a window of his laboratory. Before his death, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter to be opened after Jekyll’s death or disappearance. Dr Hastie Lanyon, a mutual acquaintance of Jekyll and Utterson, dies of shock after receiving information relating to Jekyll. However, Hyde’s handwriting is similar to Jekyll’s own, leading Utterson to conclude that Jekyll forged the note to protect Hyde.įor two months, Jekyll reverts to his former sociable manner, but in early January, he starts refusing visitors. Utterson visits Jekyll, who shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologising for the trouble that he has caused. Utterson recognizes the cane as one he had given to Jekyll. Hyde has vanished, but they find half of a broken cane. The police contact Utterson, who leads officers to Hyde’s apartment. One night in October, a servant sees Hyde beat to death Sir Danvers Carew, another of Utterson’s clients. When Utterson tries to discuss Hyde with Jekyll, Jekyll turns pale and asks that Hyde be left alone. Utterson fears that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll. Utterson is disturbed because Jekyll recently changed his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary. Hyde brought them to this door and provided a cheque signed by a reputable gentleman (later revealed to be Doctor Henry Jekyll, a friend and client of Utterson).
Enfield forced Hyde to pay £100 to avoid a scandal. Enfield tells Utterson that months ago he saw a sinister-looking man named Edward Hyde trample a young girl after accidentally bumping into her. “Gabriel John Utterson and his cousin Richard Enfield reach the door of a large house on their weekly walk. It was his first really successful work and finally allowed Stevenson to become financially independent. Unfortunately, the Christmas 1885 book market was full, so The Strange Case was instead released in January 1886. To this end, Stevenson’s editor urged him to write a “shilling shocker” for Christmas 1885 in order to respond to the popular desire for ghost stories around Christmastime. Embarrassed that he was still living off of his father’s financial support, Stevenson purposely wrote the tale in hopes of success on the commercial market.
Hyde in October 1885 when he was thirty-five and living with his wife Fanny and her son from a previous marriage, Lloyd Osborne.
But his character is so rigid and unmoving, and even impersonal, that one could imagine he too is strenuously repressing a world of darker urges.Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Utterson for example is introduced as a lawyerly, kind man, and seldom seems to stray from that description. Jekyll’s disorder also reflects on the other characters, and raises the question of just how upright, moral, and governed by reason they truly are. Is Jekyll’s theory of good and evil too neat and clean? Hyde's takeover of Jekyll seems to suggest a less clear-cut explanation, in which the human condition is not in fact double but rather one of repression and dark urges, and that once the repression of those dark urges eases or breaks it becomes impossible to put back into place, allowing the "true", dark nature of man to emerge. What does it mean, then, that once Hyde exists that he slowly seems to take over, to destroy Jekyll. Not only are these men two halves of the same person, but Jekyll describes them as polar opposites, one good and the other evil.
Hyde is portrayed as an evil-looking dwarfed man with a violent temper, while Jekyll is a respected man of science, good-natured and leader of his circle of friends. One of the most interesting things about Jekyll’s transformation is its psychological aspect. Even before the climax of the story in which it is revealed that Hyde and Jekyll are the same person, the duality of their personalities creates a tension between the good, social Jekyll and Hyde who seems to revel in causing harm and mayhem, and it looks like it is Jekyll who will be overtaken somehow by Hyde. His obsession with his own darker side gives the novel its plot but also its profound, psychological implications. Jekyll confesses to Utterson that he has for a long time been fascinated by the duality of his own nature and he believes that this is a condition that affects all men.