Jekyll and Hyde: Full Plot Summary

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Before turning to our analysis of this classic novella, it’s worth getting to grips with the plot of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson and noting its interesting narrative structure.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: plot summary

But anyway, on to the plot summary. We begin in the first chapter, ‘Story of the Door’, with a conventional third-person narrator, telling us about Mr Utterson, a lawyer, and his friend and distant cousin, Mr Richard Enfield, who often drink and take walks together around London.

On one of their rambles around the city, as they pass the door to a ‘sinister block of building’, Enfield tells Utterson about something that he witnessed one night concerning that door and that building: a man and a girl running through the street. The man promptly trampled the girl underfoot, and then ran off; Enfield and others then chased after the man and detained him.

To avoid a scene, the man – who has something detestable about him – agrees to pay money to the family of the girl he trampled. To get the money, he went through the door in the sinister building and got a cheque, which he (accompanied by his captors) then went to the bank first thing in the morning to cash.

The man who had written the cheque was a respected gentleman, leading Enfield to wonder what sort of hold this ugly trampling fiend has over such a well-regarded man. (‘Black mail, I suppose,’ Enfield suggests.)

In the next chapter, ‘Search for Mr Hyde’, Utterson goes home and has dinner, but he’s troubled by a will he keeps in a safe, for a man named Dr Henry Jekyll. The will, which has recently been altered, now states that in the event of Jekyll’s death, a man named Mr Edward Hyde should be the sole beneficiary.

This leads Utterson to suspect that this mysterious Mr Hyde is blackmailing Dr Jekyll over something. He visits his friend Dr Lanyon, who is also a friend of Henry Jekyll’s, hoping to find out more. Lanyon tells Utterson that he and Dr Jekyll fell out some time ago, and that he’s never heard of Mr Hyde.

Utterson passes a troubled night of horrific dreams, and takes to walking the streets at all hours, hoping to find some clue to the mystery of Mr Hyde. He goes to the sinister building Enfield had shown him and, after waiting outside for some time, sees a small, plainly dressed man take out a key ready to go inside Jekyll’s house. Utterson approaches him and asks to see his face.

Hyde tells him that Jekyll is away, but gives Utterson his – Hyde’s – address in Soho. When Utterson departs, he is troubled by the appearance of Mr Hyde: there is something ‘dwarfish’, something almost inhuman, about him.

In ‘Dr Jekyll Was Quite at Ease’, Utterson goes to visit Dr Jekyll and asks him about Mr Hyde. Jekyll grows pale when Hyde’s name is mentioned and refuses to discuss him. He tells Utterson to leave Hyde alone.

In ‘The Carew Murder Case’, the narrator relates how a maid servant witnessed the appalling murder of an MP, Sir Danvers Carew, one night. Mr Hyde clubbed the elderly politician to death in the street, using his cane as a weapon. A letter addressed to Mr Utterson was found on the body of the dead MP, who was Utterson’s client.

The letter is brought to Utterson, who goes to identify Carew’s body and then takes the police detective to Mr Hyde’s address, so they can apprehend the criminal. However, when they arrive at the Soho address Mr Hyde gave to Utterson, they find only an old maid, who tells them Hyde is not at home. They examine the house and find it in a state of disarray.

In ‘Incident of the Letter’, Utterson visits Dr Jekyll, who has heard the news about the murder and Mr Hyde’s involvement in it. Jekyll swears to Utterson that he is done with Hyde, and will not associate with him any more. He shows Utterson a letter he received from Hyde, telling Jekyll not to fear for his safety. Utterson tells Jekyll he thinks the doctor has had a lucky escape, and that Hyde meant to murder him.

Utterson’s head clerk, Mr Guest, notices the letter from Hyde and spots a resemblance between Jekyll’s handwriting and Hyde’s: they’re identical, but differently sloped. This leads Utterson to believe Jekyll forged the letter from Hyde, which shocks him.

In ‘Remarkable Incident of Doctor Lanyon’, we learn that Hyde has completely disappeared. Jekyll seems to have returned to normal, but then in early January, he confines himself to his house and refuses to see anyone. Dr Hastie Lanyon, friend of both Jekyll and Utterson, reveals to Utterson that he knows something about Jekyll, but refuses to say more. He gives Utterson a letter – to be opened only after Jekyll’s disappearance or death – and, shortly after, dies of shock, after receiving information relating to Jekyll.

‘Incident at the Window’ is a short chapter in which Utterson, while out for one of his Sunday walks with Enfield, starts up a conversation with Dr Jekyll at the window of his laboratory. But Jekyll’s face is suddenly overcome with a look of abject terror, and the doctor slams the window and disappears indoors.

‘The Last Night’ is the final chapter narrated by the third-person narrator. Jekyll’s butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson and says Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory. Utterson and Poole go to Dr Jekyll’s house, but Jekyll refuses to open up and see them. They break into the laboratory, where they find the still twitching body of Mr Hyde, wearing Jekyll’s clothes, dead from apparent suicide. They find a letter Jekyll wrote to Utterson.

The final two chapters are letters: the first from Dr Lanyon, the last from Dr Jekyll himself. Lanyon’s letter informs Utterson that his mental and physical decline resulted from the shock of seeing Hyde drink a serum and turn into Jekyll. Jekyll’s letter then explains that he had developed a taste for certain vices, and feared that he would be found out, and his reputation as a doctor ruined.

He found a way to transform himself into another, unrecognisable figure, using a special tincture he prepared in his laboratory, enabling him to indulge his vices without fear of detection.

Initially, to keep Hyde in check, Jekyll controlled the transformations using the serum, but one night in August, he became Hyde involuntarily in his sleep and knew things had got out of hand.

Like an addict, Jekyll resolved to stop transforming himself into Mr Hyde. However, during a moment of weakness, he relapsed, and took the serum, unleashing Hyde. Hyde was so furious at having been locked away for so long, went on his rampage and killed the MP, Danvers Carew. Horrified by what Hyde had done, Jekyll tried harder to stop the transformations from occurring, but once again, he transformed into Hyde involuntarily.

Far from his laboratory and so unable to do anything about it, and being hounded by the police, he wrote to Lanyon in Jekyll’s handwriting, asking Lanyon to bring him chemicals from his laboratory. In Lanyon’s presence, Hyde mixed the chemicals and then drank the serum, turning back into Jekyll before Lanyon’s very eyes. The shock of the sight prompted Lanyon’s decline which we’ve already witnessed, culminating in his death.

As Jekyll had to keep increasing the dose of serum to prevent himself from turning into Hyde, the stock of serum began to run out.

Then, eventually, it ceased to work. Resigned to the fact that he will eventually transform into Hyde permanently and be unable to become Jekyll again, he writes this letter as his last confession, and the novella ends with him bringing the life of Jekyll to a close: a hint that he is going to kill himself to prevent Hyde from causing any more damage. This is why Utterson walked in on the twitching corpse of Mr Hyde.

This concludes a summary of the plot of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. One of the things it’s most easy for modern readers to overlook is that, for Stevenson’s original readers in 1886 (those who had avoided spoilers, in any case), the fact that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person would have been a surprise twist, one we take for granted now. So how should be analyse this classic story of duality?