Edward Hyde



Edward Hyde, or better known as Mr. Hyde, is the dark side Henry Jekyll, unleashed by use of a potion. He has been the subject of many films. Hyde is described as "pale and dwarfish," and has rough, corded hands. Everyone who sees him describes him as giving an impression of ugliness, although he isn't physically deformed. Essentially, he exudes pure evil.

Biography
Hyde was created out of an experiment by Dr. Henry Jekyll, who wanted to live a wild, carefree existence without losing his respectability. So he decided to unleash his darker side. He created a potion, which allowed this to happen, and he transformed into Edward Hyde, the embodiment of his inner evil. Hyde was shorter than Jekyll because the evil in man is lesser than the good.

For a time after this, Jekyll is the respectable doctor by day, then uses the potion to become Hyde and live a life of debauchery and excess by night. Hyde's truly evil nature first made itself apparent when he trampled a small child who had bumped into him in the street. About a year after that, something worse occurred. Hyde, without provocation, savagely beat an old man named Sir Danvers Carew to death.

After this incident, Jekyll determined never to use the potion again. However, Hyde asserted himself and Jekyll began to transform without taking the potion, and he had to brew more to change back into himself. When Jekyll ran out of his materials, he tried procured more to brew the potion again, but he couldn't reproduce it exactly. Unable to go on, Jekyll brewed a lethal poison and swallowed it, but changed back into Hyde before he died.

Plot of Stevenson'Book
One evening in the late nineteenth century, Richard Enfield is walking through the streets of London with his relative, the lawyer Gabriel John Utterson. Enfield tells Utterson that a few weeks earlier he was in the same part of the city and saw a man knock down a little girl and walk over her. The girl's family and their friends confronted the man, overpowered him and demanded money by way of an apology. The man, who gave his name as Edward Hyde, entered a door in the side of a building and returned with ten pounds in gold and a check for a hundred pounds signed by Dr. Henry Jekyll. Utterson is shocked to hear this because Dr. Jekyll is a client of his and Jekyll has recently changed his will to leave everything that he has to Edward Hyde.

Utterson, out of concern for Dr. Jekyll, decides that he needs to seek out Mr. Hyde. Night after night he waits by the door that Enfield told him about and eventually sees Hyde approach it. Utterson finds Hyde extremely ugly and is instinctively repulsed by him. Nevertheless, he tells Hyde that they have a mutual friend in Dr. Jekyll and asks for Hyde's address. To his surprise, Hyde is perfectly willing to give it to him. Utterson later tells Jekyll of his concerns but Jekyll tells him that he does not need to concern himself over Mr. Hyde.

One year later, a servant girl sees the politician Sir Danvers Carew, another client of Utterson, beaten to death with a heavy walking stick. The police contact Utterson, he suspects that Edward Hyde is involved and leads them to Mr. Hyde's apartment. Hyde is not there but Utterson finds half of the broken walking stick. He recognizes it as one that he gave as a present to Dr. Jekyll.

Utterson visits Jekyll again. Jekyll tells him that he has decided to have no further contact with Mr. Hyde. He shows Utterson a letter, which he says is from Hyde, in which Hyde apologizes for the trouble he has caused and says good-bye. However, when Utterson shows the letter to his clerk, the clerk points out that Hyde's handwriting looks very similar to Dr. Jekyll's.

For a while, Henry Jekyll returns to being the happy and sociable person that he had been before Hyde entered his life but then he suddenly begins to refuse all visitors. One evening, Enfield and Utterson see Dr. Jekyll at the window of his laboratory. The three men talk for a while, until Henry Jekyll suddenly appears scared, slams the window shut and disappears.

Mr. Poole, Dr. Jekyll's butler, goes to visit Utterson. He says that Dr. Jekyll has been locked inside his laboratory for weeks. Poole adds that the voice that comes out of the laboratory does not sound like the doctor's anymore. Utterson accompanies Poole back to Jekyll's house. They find Jekyll's other servants huddled together in fear and decide to break the laboratory door down. Inside the laboratory they find the dead body of Hyde, who appears to have committed suicide, and a letter from Jekyll to Utterson which promises to explain everything.

In the letter, Jekyll tells Utterson about his experiments that he hoped could rid people of evil impulses. He created a formula which separates his good side from his wicked side. The experiment is not a complete success because, as Dr. Jekyll, he is still not completely good. However, Jekyll enjoys taking the formula and changing into Mr. Hyde because Hyde has none of Jekyll's moral constraints.

When Jekyll wakes up and finds that he has transformed into Mr. Hyde in his sleep, without taking the formula, he discovers that he does not have complete control over his creation. He avoids taking the formula for many months but eventually he is not able to control the urge any longer. He transforms into Hyde and murders Sir Danvers Carew.

After the murder, Jekyll resolves never to change into Hyde again. He tries to make up for what he has done by helping the poor. One day he is happily thinking about what a good person he has become, then looks at his hands and finds he has become Hyde. This is the first time that he spontaneously becomes Mr. Hyde, now a wanted murderer, in the daytime.

Jekyll turns into Hyde more and more often and needs larger and larger doses of the formula to change back. The formula starts to run out and Jekyll needs to make some more. Unfortunately, the new batch of formula does not work. Jekyll eventually discovers that there was an impurity in one of the ingredients of his first batch of formula. It is impossible for him to replicate the formula and he realises that he will soon be trapped as Hyde forever.

Having run out of the formula that can change him back, Dr. Jekyll knows that the next time he changes into Hyde he is doomed. Hyde will either be arrested and hanged for murder or he will avoid that fate by committing suicide. Dr Jekyll does not know what Hyde will choose to do but he ends his letter, and the novella, with the words, "I bring the life of the unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end."