The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Enfield, a “well-known man about town” (48), is a distant cousin and good friend of Utterson. The two men take long walks every Sunday, often passing a good deal of time in companionable silence. Even though they appear outwardly not to enjoy these outings, they pursue them without fail every week. Enfield performs an important function in the narrative as the person who first informs Utterson of Hyde, thus setting the plot in motion. This is occasioned by the pair passing past Hyde’s house on one of their walks. We are not told why Enfield was walking at 3:00 AM, “coming home from some place at the end of the world,” (49) when he witnessed the incident with Hyde and the little girl. Nevertheless, his presence there is crucial to the plot, since he confronts Hyde and forces him to pay reparations. We sense that Enfield, like Utterson, is a person of conscience who feels impelled to right wrongs.

Enfield appears once more, again walking with Utterson when they experience “The Incident at the Window.” There too, he is present at a crucial moment of the story. He provides a sounding board for Utterson as he ponders the mystery of Jekyll and Hyde. Enfield’s presence assures that Utterson is not alone in confronting this mystery.

As finally revealed, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are two personalities inhering in one single person. Dr. Jekyll is a “large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty” with “every mark of capacity and kindness” (65). Jekyll is well-liked by his friends and often hosts parties for them. He is outwardly honorable and respected (except perhaps by Dr. Lanyon, see below). The somewhat “slyish cast” to Jekyll’s features is the only hint of his other personality.

When Jekyll transforms into his alter ego, Hyde, not only his personality but his bodily form changes. Hyde is physically the opposite of Jekyll: “pale and dwarfish,” with a “displeasing smile” and a “murderous mixture of timidity and boldness” in his manner accompanied by a “husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice” (61). His presence inspires “disgust, loathing and fear” (61) in all who meet him. In his final letter, Jekyll surmises that this automatic disgust is due to the absolute and unmixed evil that emanates from Hyde. Hyde is without feeling or conscience. He is crude, impulsive, and barbaric. His murder of Carew seems totally senseless, as does his trampling of the little girl. Hyde’s outer ugliness reflects the inner state of his soul. His surname suggests his hidden, dark and secretive life; Hyde represents a hiding place for Jekyll’s evil impulses.

However, it is not the case that Jekyll is purely good and Hyde pure evil. In Chapter 10, Jekyll explains that he early on felt a war between good and evil in himself. He is born to wealth, of a hardworking nature, and desires honor and respect. At the same time, he feels in himself “a certain impatient gaiety of disposition” (110), which he feels conflicts with his virtuous aspirations. As he reaches adulthood, Jekyll is aware that he embodies a “profound duplicity of life” (110). Yet Jekyll’s moral sensitivity makes him feel keenly this internal contradiction, and impels him to find a solution to it through science. It could be said, then, that Jekyll already has a little bit of Hyde within him, and that this side acquires separateness through his taking the drug.

From then on, Jekyll becomes desperate as he falls under the power of the potion has concocted. Jekyll started out with good intentions, to improve human life by separating man’s evil tendencies from him. However, he discovers that these evil tendencies will run amok, which leads to his ultimate destruction.

Carew is an elderly former member of parliament whom Hyde murders brutally in the street at night. According to the maidservant who witnesses the killing, Carew appears as an “aged beautiful gentleman with white hair” (68), courtly and polite in a quaintly old-fashioned way. These traits form a stark contrast with his assailant, Hyde, whose face is the embodiment of pure evil. Carew’s “innocent and old-world kindness of disposition” (69) intensify the ugliness and tragedy of his senseless murder. Carew is a respected member of the community, and accordingly his death provokes shock and strong public sentiment toward the capture of Hyde. 

Dr. Lanyon, described as “the great doctor Lanyon” (56), is a physician and good friend of both Utterson and Jekyll. The three men form a triumvirate in the story. However, Lanyon falls out with Jekyll because of the latter’s unconventional scientific views. Lanyon is a traditional, rationalist, by-the-book scientist and considers Jekyll’s transcendental theories to be “balderdash” (57). Lanyon serves as an intellectual antagonist and rival to Jekyll, the person he most wants to prove wrong through his experiments. In their final confrontation, Jekyll/Hyde triumphantly and jeeringly bids Lanyon to observe the transformative effects of the potion (108).

Lanyon is described as a “hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman” with a “boisterous and decided manner” and a “geniality” that is “somewhat theatrical to the eye” (56). He is a highly successful doctor who welcomes his “crowding patients” in his home. All these qualities function as a foil to his later predicament as he grows sick and dies as a result of Jekyll’s revelation. Lanyon’s “hair prematurely white” (56) serves also as an eerie premonition of his decline and death. 

Mr. Guest is Utterson’s “head clerk” and a trusted confidant. Accordingly, Utterson visits him in Chapter 5 for advice about the letter, supposedly from Hyde, that Jekyll has entrusted with him. Guest, a handwriting expert, observes that Hyde’s script is very similar to Jekyll’s. Although an incidental character, Guest performs an important function in the story because through this observation he hints at the possibility that Jekyll and Hyde are identical. He performs the same function for Utterson, the “amateur sleuth” of the story, that a forensics expert would perform in a police investigation.