Dr Henry Jekyll, along with 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, Dr Jekyll is a good friend of main protagonist Gabriel John Utterson. Living in Leicester Square, in London, west of Covent Garden, Jekyll is a kind and respected English doctor struggling with repressed evil urges.Saposnik, Irving S. "The Anatomy of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 11.4, Nineteenth Century (1971): pp. 715–731. As a potential solution, he develops a serum that he believes will effectively remove his more twisted traits. Instead, Jekyll transforms into Edward Hyde, the physical and mental manifestation of his own misdeeds. This process happens more regularly until Jekyll becomes unable to control when the transformations occur. Dr Jekyll roams Soho as Mr Hyde and Dr Jekyll inhabits Leicester Square as himself.
Fictional character biography
Dr Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L, LL.D., F.R.S., etc. is a doctor based in the fashionable Soho district of London 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 profession. Jekyll develops a potion in an attempt to mask this hidden evil. However, in doing so, Jekyll transforms into a younger and more hideous humanoid. 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 Jekyll continues taking the potion, 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, potentially including 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 only 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 chemical 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 ().
Adaptations
While there are adaptations of the book, this section depicts notable portrayals of the character in different media:
Television Dr Jekyll appeared in some of Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts. Dr Jerkyl's Hide (1954) features Sylvester turning into a Hyde-like cat upon ingesting the formula which he mistook for soda pop where he attacks Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier. Hyde and Hare (1955) depicts Dr Jekyll (voiced by Mel Blanc) bringing Bugs Bunny to his apartment. When Dr Jekyll drinks his formula, he becomes Mr Hyde who is depicted with green skin and red eyes. Toward the end of the short, Bugs Bunny drinks the formula and transforms into a Hyde-like rabbit. In Hyde and Go Tweet (1960), Dr Jekyll drinks a formula that turns himself into Mr Hyde. The commotion wakes Sylvester, who then sees Hyde revert to the form of Jekyll. Tweety later exposes himself to Dr Jekyll's formula and he becomes a Hyde-like canary. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde appear in Climax! episode "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". Hosted by Bill Lundigan, this episode was originally aired on 28 July 1955 (Season 1 Episode 34). The story was adapted for television by Gore Vidal. The Scooby-Doo, Where are You! episode "Nowhere to Hyde" features the Ghost of Mr Hyde (voiced by John Stephenson) who is committing jewelry store robberies and one of the suspects is a descendant of Dr Jekyll. In the Dynomutt, Dog Wonder episode "Everyone Hyde!", the criminal Willie the Weasel (voiced by Henry Corden) creates a similar formula (which is related to Dr Jekyll's formula) that turns him into Mr Hyde. The grandson of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is featured in The Comic Strip segment "The Mini Monsters" voiced by Bob McFadden. He works as the camp physician at Camp Mini-Mon. When Dr Jekyll goes into a room to get something for his patients, Mr Hyde comes out with the item in question. When Mr Hyde goes back into the room, Dr Jekyll comes back out. Dr Jekyll considers Mr Hyde to be his "partner". In the Gravedale High episode "Fear of Flying", there is a medical version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (voiced by Frank Welker) that works as a doctor for Gravedale's monster community. Mr Hyde serves as Dr Jekyll's "partner" where Dr Jekyll would turn into him for any second opinions of anyone's medical problems. He was the one who referred Vinnie Stoker to an ape psychologist when he was unable to fly following an accident. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde appear in the Animaniacs episode "Brain Meets Brawn", voiced by Jeff Bennett. Dr Jekyll was seen taking a serum that turns him into Mr Hyde who is then attacked by the police. They take a break in the conflict when tea time occurs. Afterwards, the police subdue Mr Hyde and take him away to the police station. Dr Jekyll's serum inspires Brain to take it so that he can break Big Ben in this monster form whenever he is angered. The 2007 TV serial Jekyll starred James Nesbitt as Tom Jackman, a modern Jekyll whose Hyde persona wreaks havoc in modern London. In the course of the series, it is revealed that the original Jekyll's transformation into Hyde was a 'natural' process, triggered by Jekyll's love for his maid rather than any kind of potion, and Jackman is the descendant of one of Hyde's bastard sons, while his wife is a clone of Jekyll's maid created by a corporation to try and duplicate the Hyde process. As with most modern adaptations, Hyde is depicted as possessing superhuman strength, able to tear a lion apart with his bare hands, and is depicted as being impulsive and childish rather than explicitly evil, although the physical changes are fairly subtle, such as Hyde having darker eyes and a different hairstyle. At the series' conclusion, Hyde apparently sacrifices himself to save Jackman, "dying" when he is shot but somehow able to stop Jackman "sharing the damage", with the result that the bullets remain in Jackman but he has no injuries to demonstrate where they entered his body. NBC's Do No Harm is a modern retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story featuring a renamed Jekyll-like character named Dr Jason Cole (played by Steven Pasquale) trying to stop his drug-addicted, sociopathic, Hyde-like counterpart named Ian Price from ruining his professional and private life. Unlike the original story, the main character is a highly respected neurosurgeon who is able to keep his alter-ego in check through the use of an experimental sedative. Also, Jason suffers from dissociative identity disorder instead of developing a serum that separates the good and evil in a person. The Phineas and Ferb episode "The Monster of Phineas-n-Ferbenstein" features the villain Dr Jekyll Doofenshmirtz drinking a potion to turn himself into a monster. The Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero episode "Rip-Penn" features Penn as Dr Barzelby (inspired by Dr Jekyll) who accidentally drinks a potion that turns him into a monster version of Penn's nemesis Rippen during a mission to the Gothic Mystery World. SBS's Hyde Jekyll, Me portrays a man, Goo Seo Jin, who is in line as a successor of the conglomerate group his family owns but has dissociative identity disorder. His other personality, Robin, is the opposite of his usual cold, cynical self; Robin is kind, gentle and has a savior complex.