Jekyll and Hyde — Characters and Themes
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a detective story in which the detective solves nothing. Stevenson tells it almost entirely from the outside — through Utterson's bafflement — and withholds the explanation until the final two chapters, so the reader spends the novella in the same state of uneasy suspicion as Victorian London itself.
Key Characters
| Character | Significance |
|---|---|
| Dr Jekyll | Respectable scientist; creates Hyde to separate his "lower" desires from his public persona |
| Mr Hyde | Jekyll's dark alter ego; described as animalistic; represents repressed desires |
| Mr Utterson | Narrator; lawyer; represents Victorian respectability and reluctance to face the truth |
| Dr Lanyon | Traditional scientist; dies after witnessing Hyde transform — the shock of truth kills him |
Why Stevenson chose Utterson
Utterson is a deliberately dull narrator, and that is the point. He is described as "cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse" — a man constitutionally incapable of imagining what Jekyll has done. Filtering the story through him means the reader is always slightly behind, piecing together fragments from letters, servants and second-hand accounts.
It also makes a thematic argument. Utterson's instinct throughout is to avoid scandal, to smooth things over, to let a friend's reputation stand. He embodies the very respectability that made Jekyll's double life necessary in the first place.
The structure is doing the work
Students often write about the characters and forget that the novella's shape carries much of its meaning.
- The story is told out of order, ending with Lanyon's and Jekyll's written confessions
- It is fragmentary — letters, wills, statements — so truth arrives in pieces and never from Jekyll directly until the end
- The transformation scene is placed last, so the reader experiences suspicion, dread and finally explanation in that order
- The narrative perspective never enters Hyde's mind, keeping him unknowable and therefore frightening
Key Themes
- Duality of human nature — every person has both good and evil within them
- Repression and hypocrisy — Victorian society suppresses natural desires; this creates Hyde
- Science and religion — Jekyll's experiments challenge natural order; he "plays God"
- Reputation and respectability — fear of scandal drives Jekyll's secrecy
- Evolution and degeneration — Hyde is described in ape-like terms; Victorians feared regression
Duality, read carefully
The obvious reading is that Jekyll is good and Hyde is evil. Stevenson complicates this, and the better answers say so.
Jekyll is not innocent: he creates Hyde deliberately, enjoys the freedom, and continues long after he understands the danger. He admits he "was slowly losing hold of my original and better self" — but he chose each dose. Hyde is not a separate person imposed on him; Hyde is the part of Jekyll that Victorian respectability required him to hide.
The physical detail supports this. Hyde is smaller and younger, because — as Jekyll explains — that side of him had been less exercised. Evil here is not an invader but an underdeveloped limb.
Key Quotes
- "Man is not truly one, but truly two." — Jekyll's confession; central thesis of the novella
- "An aura of deformity" — Hyde's evil manifests as physical ugliness
- "Something troglodytic" — Hyde described as prehistoric, degenerate, subhuman
- "I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self" — Jekyll's admission of gradual surrender
- "If he be Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr Seek" — Utterson's grim pun, and the novella's detective framing
Notice how often Hyde is described by what witnesses cannot specify: something displeasing, something downright detestable, deformity without a nameable cause. Stevenson keeps him vague so each reader supplies their own idea of the unspeakable.
Context
- Published 1886
- Victorian repression — the strict moral code forced hidden lives
- Darwin's theory of evolution (1859) — raised fears about humanity's animal origins
- Set in a London of fog and doubled façades, where respectable streets back onto squalid ones — the city mirrors Jekyll's own division
- Can be read as addressing homosexuality in Victorian society — the secret, the shame, the double life
Common mistakes
- Treating Jekyll and Hyde as two characters. They are one man, and the essay should say so
- Calling Hyde "evil" and stopping — the interesting question is why Jekyll needed him
- Ignoring the narrative structure, which is where a great deal of the meaning sits
- Listing context — Darwin, fog, Victorian morality — without connecting it to a choice in the text
Exam tips
- Write about Stevenson's choices: the fragmented structure, the withheld explanation, the outsider narrator
- Use the setting as evidence; the doors, fog and back-streets are all doubled, like Jekyll
- Keep quotations short — Stevenson's most useful phrases are three or four words
- If the question is about Hyde, argue about what Hyde represents, not what he does
Key facts to remember
- Jekyll and Hyde are one man; the horror is self-inflicted, not external
- Utterson's dullness is deliberate — he embodies the respectability that makes concealment necessary
- The fragmented, out-of-order structure delays the truth and mirrors the novella's themes
- Hyde is defined by what cannot be described, which is what makes him disturbing
- Context earns marks only when it explains a choice Stevenson made