Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Identity and Responsibility in 1886

Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde appeared in a London edition published by Longmans in 1886 with only 141 pages of text, divided into ten chapters. A surviving cover lists a price of one shilling. Its compact, clearly priced form was one concrete condition of its entry into the contemporary reading market. It connects a respected physician with a frightening man and gradually reveals the secret of their identities.

The prefatory poem dedicated to Katharine de Mattos also preserves a trace of the author's private relationships. In a letter to her dated January 1, 1886, he said he had placed her name on the little book and was glad she liked the story. The letters' editor identifies the location as Skerryvore, his house in Bournemouth. Balfour's 1901 biography describes how health constraints during the Bournemouth years left Stevenson spending much of his time writing at home.

References: [1] [3] [4]

Stevenson later recalled in “A Chapter on Dreams” that he had long sought a story form for human duality. Financial difficulty once prompted two days of intense plotting, followed by dreams of a window scene and of Hyde, pursued, taking a powder and transforming before his pursuers. He attributed to that dream material later divided into three scenes, along with the central idea of voluntary transformation gradually becoming involuntary.

The recollection also emphasizes that settings, characters, and the rest of the story were organized while awake, and that its moral questions had long occupied him. The work's creation therefore cannot be reduced to a word-for-word record of a dream. His playful account of little spirits telling stories for him explores precisely the relationship between unconscious material and conscious arrangement.

References: [2]

The novel does not begin with the doctor's experiment. Instead, readers follow the lawyer Utterson's investigation. Enfield first recounts Hyde trampling a girl and being surrounded by people demanding compensation. Jekyll's will then appears, providing for Hyde to inherit if Jekyll dies or disappears without explanation for more than three months. Utterson fears his friend is being blackmailed. The strange identity first enters the narrative through a legal document and a threat to reputation.

After Sir Danvers Carew is murdered, the inquiry becomes a criminal pursuit. Even in “The Last Night,” when Utterson and the butler Poole break into the laboratory and find Hyde's body in Jekyll's clothes with documents left behind, the mystery is not fully resolved. Only the last two chapters provide Dr Lanyon's testimony and Jekyll's own statement. Lanyon witnesses Hyde turning back into Jekyll; Jekyll explains the experiment's motives and loss of control. Readers move from external signs to testimony and only finally reach the participant's defense.

References: [1]

Jekyll wants to separate his respectable life from hidden desires. He takes a potion to become Hyde and another dose to regain his original form. To sustain the arrangement, he also supplies Hyde with lodgings, access to the laboratory, and inheritance documents. The potion is embedded in a deliberately managed identity scheme. Danger arises not only from experimental failure but also from his attempt to make another name bear the consequences of his actions.

In his statement, Jekyll admits that Hyde embodies pure evil while Jekyll remains the original person, a mixture of good and evil. The two bodies therefore cannot mechanically be equated with one wholly good and one wholly evil person. Later, transformation no longer obeys his will, and the old powder runs out. He suspects an unknown impurity in the original batch of salt made the experiment work but cannot reproduce it. Indulgence he believed he could end at any time ultimately deprives him of control.

References: [1]

The novel's London consists of streets, homes, laboratories, and secret entrances. The comfortable hall at the front of Jekyll's house contrasts sharply with the old dissecting room behind it. The same residence allows the respectable owner and Hyde to enter separately. Utterson initially interprets this connection as concealment of an old scandal rather than immediately accepting a supernatural explanation. The characters' habit of protecting friends' reputations also delays the truth.

Letters, wills, handwriting, and sealed narratives repeatedly alter judgments. Lanyon's testimony as a physician supplies evidence within the story for bodily transformation. Jekyll's final statement explains its meaning but still carries his shame, speculation, and self-exculpation. This layered progression of evidence keeps horror within ordinary professional life and credible documentary forms.

References: [1]

On January 9, 1886, The Saturday Review published the unsigned “Stevenson's New Story.” Comparing the work with tales of divided identity such as Poe's “William Wilson,” the review argued that the subject had precedents and that Stevenson's originality lay in its treatment, especially the terrifying relationship between Hyde, whose appearance differed from his master's, and his continually increasing power.

The reviewer also praised ordinary, respectable London surroundings and Utterson's characterization, finding the moral significance naturally integrated with the story while criticizing a few early passages as overworked. It even proposed a limited large-format edition, judging the one-shilling format inadequate to convey the work's literary value. This contemporary source shows that the book was read both as a thriller and as a prompt for discussion of style, character, and moral meaning. One review, however, cannot represent every reader's response.

References: [5]