THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

PLOT

This story began in London when, during one of their usual walk, Mr. Utterson, a famous lawyer, and Richard Enfield, his friend and cousin, went trough a small street where there was a small and strange house. Seeing it, Enfield remembered a fact that happened there to him and told it to the lawyer: one night he saw an awful, sinister character who, walking rapidly trough that street, collided with a child scaring her a lot. Enfield seized him and obliged him to pay for the damage some money to her family and he accepted, but the cheque he brought to them (from the house the lawyer and his friend were watching) was signed by an important and well-known personality of the city who lived in that house and who obviously wasn't him. After having heard this, Utterson, who knew the famous inhabitant of that house, asked Richard the name of the strange person: his name was Hyde.

The same evening Utterson went into his study and took a document: it was the "Will of Dr. Jekyll" that said that in case of Henry Jekyll's death or disappearance, all his possessions had to pass to "his friend and benefactor Edward Hyde". Utterson couldn't understand how his friend Jekyll could have something in common with a man like Hyde then he decided to go to Lanyon, a famous doctor who was a friend of Dr. Jekyll too, to tell him about his worry. Lanyon said that he didn't see Jekyll very often because they had a difference of opinion about science and that he didn't know Mr. Hyde.

After a nightmare in which there were Jekyll and Hyde, Utterson wanted to see the last one live, and after having lain in wait for him many times, one evening he finally succeeded in meeting him and then also in seeing his face for the first time. This event shocked the lawyer.

Fifteen days later Dr. Jekyll organized a dinner for some friends of his; among them there was also Mr. Utterson, who took advantage of this to talk with the doctor about Mr. Hyde. Jekyll said that there was no need to worry about it and made him promise that he would have taken care of Hyde in case of Jekyll's death.

Nearly a year later Sir Danvers Carew, a Member of Parliament, was killed and a servant, witness of the cruel crime, told that the responsible was Hyde, who murdered the politician with a stick. The inspector of the police went to Utterson, whom a letter found on the corpse was addressed to, to ask him for assistance to find the killer. The lawyer wanted to see the dead body and recognized the stick: it was the walking stick Utterson gave Jekyll as a present and this fact in his opinion proved Hyde's guilt. Then he decided to bring the police to Hyde's house to arrest him but he wasn't at home.

That afternoon Utterson went to Jekyll's house to speak about the Carew's murder and the doctor told that he would never met Hyde anymore and that he was extremely sure that the killer couldn't be found by the police. Dr. Jekyll told also that he had received a letter signed by Mr. Hyde and he didn't know what to do with it to not compromise himself and asked his friend to keep it and to decide for him. On his way out Utterson asked Poole (Jekyll's butler) how the man who brought the letter looked like but the servant answered that nobody had handled any letter that day. This made the lawyer suspect, then he decided to show the letter to his best clerk Mr. Guest, who was a good  handwriting expert: comparing it with an invitation written by Jekyll he saw that the two calligraphies were very similar then Utterson thought that Dr. Jekyll was protecting Mr. Hyde.

Time ran on and the police hadn't been able to find Mr. Hyde, but Dr. Jekyll returned to his old occupations and to his two old friends: Mr. Utterson and Dr. Lanyon. But suddenly Jekyll didn't want to see anyone, Utterson included. Then the lawyer decided to visit Lanyon and when he saw him, he was shocked by the doctor's appearance, who seemed near to death. Lanyon told him that he wouldn't have wanted to see Jekyll anymore without explaining the reason. Some days later Dr. Lanyon died and Utterson received a letter by him which he hadn't to open and read till the death or the disappearance of Henry Jekyll.

One evening Utterson received a visit from Poole, who was very troubled and upset. He asked the lawyer to go to Jekyll's house with him because he and the rest of the servants were afraid of the last doctor's behaviours. They went to Jekyll's and Poole told Utterson that in the last few days Dr. Jekyll had lived closed in his laboratory crying night and day for some sort of medicine. The butler told also that the voice of that came out from that room wasn't his master's one, then he thought that Jekyll had been murdered and that his killer was living there. Both Utterson and Poole were sure that the murderer was Mr. Hyde then they decided to force the door of the cabinet, they went on and they found Mr. Hyde in the throes of death. He had committed suicide. They immediately looked for Dr. Jekyll but they couldn't find him; they found only a new will by which the doctor left all his heritage to his friend Utterson and a booklet. Utterson came back home to read the two documents that should have solved the mystery.

Utterson opened the letter Lanyon gave him. Lanyon told that Jekyll asked him a favour: he had to go to Jekyll's cabinet, to take a drawer with all its contents and to carry it back home. At midnight he should have had to stay alone in his consulting room and a man would have come to take the drawer for Jekyll. Lanyon thought the doctor was insane but anyway he did what he had been asked. At midnight a strange man arrived wearing some Jekyll's clothes; he was Mr. Hyde. This one made a poison with the chemical elements which were in the drawer, he drank it and finally Mr. Hyde has turned into Dr. Jekyll. Lanyon was shocked by this and died because of this.

The mystery was partly solved and Utterson read also the file let by Jekyll. Jekyll explained that since he was a young man he discovered a profound duplicity of life and recognized the thorough and primitive duality of man. After having worked many years he succeeded in creating a poison which could transform a person in one of the two characters of his personality. So he tested it and Mr Hyde was born. Hyde was Jekyll's bad side, little and deformed but also younger, happier and faster than the doctor. At the beginning the metamorphosis had been difficult but it became easier and easier until it happened spontaneously, without Jekyll's control. Mr. Hyde became the main personality of Jekyll, who made a lot of cruel crimes which caused a big satisfaction in Jekyll's bad personality but in the same time also a big remorse in his good one. Suddenly Jekyll finished the component of the poison and was condemned to be Mr. Hyde forever, thus he decided to commit suicide.

CHARACTERS

The men of this novel are all bachelors and belong to a high and respectable world (a lawyer, two doctors): this show the male patriarchal world of Victorianism. This is shown also by the absence of male characters.

DOCTOR HENRY JEKYLL: He is a man of fifty, handsome, large and well-made, smooth faced and proportioned. He's smart, intelligent and kind. Most of his life has been devoted to "effort, virtue, control"

MISTER EDWARD HYDE: He has got an abnormal aspect, he's little (almost dwarf), pale, deformed. Everyone dislikes him because he is repugnant. He's young and quick. He's dressed in Jekyll's fine clothes which are too large for him. Hyde is the alter ego of Dr. Jekyll. He's selfish, cruel, violent, vile and surrounded by hatred. He plunges in the "sea of liberty" and erodes his good twin: he gradually grows in stature rebalancing, in the same time, good and evil in Jekyll's Nature until the permanence of the evil.

MISTER GABRIEL JOHN UTTERSON: He has got a rude appearance, he's always serious, shy, slim and tall. He is a lawyer and he likes his habits, like the usual walk on Sundays with Enfield or his meetings with his two best friend Lanyon and Jekyll. He has the role of a detective in this novel, in line with Sherlock Holmes because he tries and succeeds in solving the mystery.

DOCTOR LANYON: He's superficially a good man. He's also a hearty, dapper red-faced. His geniality is also theatrical and he has decided manner. His curiosity at the end prevails on him and drives him to death; this characteristic shows him as a mirror of Jekyll.

SETTING

This novel is set in London during the Victorian Age. The main place is the Black Mail House where Dr. Jekyll lived with its laboratory and dissecting rooms. The most important scenes take place at night with darkness and fog.

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has a multi-narrational structure in which a complex series of points of view is presented. There are four narrators through whom the story is shown: Enfield (at the beginning with the episode of the child trampled by Hyde), Utterson (the main narrator), Lanyon (who tells the episode of Jekyll-Hyde metamorphosis) and Jekyll himself (in the last chapter with his final confession)

THEMES

The main theme is the DOUBLE: this one has become very important in the literature of the last two centuries and was anticipated by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Double is a person with two personalities which represent the obstinate dualism of the human soul between good and evil, the basic theme of the existence. In this novel Stevenson has externalised good and evil to make his ideas and his feelings clearer. Dr Jekyll invents his poison to set free the mankind from the hostility between good and evil that tires him a lot but he discovers that it's impossible. Everything is double in this novel: London reflects the hypocrisy of Victorian society with the respectable West End and the appealing poverty of the East End. The ambivalence is reinforced by Jekyll's house whose two facades are symbolically the faces of the two opposed sides of the same man: the front of this house, used by the Doctor, is well-kept and respectable; the rear, used by Hyde, is part of a sinister block of buildings.

Stevenson created Mr. Hyde with an inspiration from Darwin's studies: Hyde is primitive and the symbol of repressed psychological drives. Jekyll has, in fact, projected his hidden pleasures in Hyde, so Dr Jekyll is as guilty as Mr. Hyde.

This novel may also be considered a reflection on art itself, as a kind of psychological search, and Jekyll's discovery may symbolise the artist's journey into the unexplored regions of the human psyche.