The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Summary (Chapters 10 – 13)

 

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Summary (Chapters 10 – 13)

 

Dr Jekyll’s butler, Poole, visits Mr Utterson one night after dinner and asks him to come to Dr Jekyll’s house. Poole brings Mr Utterson to the door of Dr Jekyll’s laboratory and insists that the voice they heard from the laboratory does not belong to his master. Mr Utterson wonders why the murderer would remain in the laboratory if he had killed  Dr Jekyll. Poole describes how the man in the laboratory seems desperate for some ingredient that no drugstore in London sells. He reveals that the person inside the laboratory looks nothing like Dr Jekyll. 

Mr Utterson suggests that Dr Jekyll may have some disease that changes his voice and deforms his features, making them unrecognisable, but Poole declares that the person he saw looked like Mr Hyde. Mr Utterson calls inside the laboratory, demanding admittance. The voice begs to have mercy and to leave him alone. The lawyer recognises the voice as Mr Hyde’s and orders Poole to smash the door. Once inside, the men find Mr Hyde’s body lying on the floor with a crushed vial in his hand. He appears to have poisoned himself. Mr Utterson notes that Mr Hyde is wearing a suit that belongs to Dr Jekyll and that is too large for him. The men search the entire laboratory but do not find Dr Jekyll or his corpse. They find a large mirror and note it strange to find it in a laboratory. 

On Dr Jekyll’s business table, they find a large envelope addressed to Mr Utterson that contains three items. The first is a will, much like the previous one, except that it replaces Mr Hyde’s name with Mr Utterson’s. The second is a note to Utterson, with the present day’s date on it. The note instructs Mr Utterson to read the letter that Dr Lanyon gave him earlier. It adds that if he desires to learn more, Mr Utterson can read the confession letter of Dr Henry Jekyll – the third item.

Mr Utterson opens Dr Lanyon’s letter. He writes that he had received a strange letter from Dr Jekyll, the night after the dinner. The letter instructed Dr Lanyon to break into Dr Jekyll’s laboratory and remove a specific drawer with its contents and wait for a man until midnight. Dr Lanyon goes to Dr Jekyll’s home and finds several vials inside a drawer. As promised, at the stroke of midnight, a small, evil-looking man appears, dressed in clothes much too large for him. Dr Lanyon does not recognise Mr Hyde as he has never seen him. Dr Lanyon directs him to the contents of the drawer, and Mr Hyde asks for a measuring glass. In it, he mixes the ingredients from the drawer to form a purple liquid, which then turns green. In front of Dr Lanyon’s eyes, Mr Hyde drinks the glass in one gulp and then seems to swell – his body expanding, his face melting and shifting, until, shockingly, Mr Hyde is gone and Dr Jekyll stands in his place. Dr Lanyon ends his letter, stating that the horror of the event has wrecked him and that he will soon die.

Mr Utterson, then, reads Dr Jekyll’s confession letter. Dr Jekyll traces his life since his birth and how he possessed a large inheritance, a healthy body, and a hardworking, decent nature. He maintained good nature in public while hiding his indecent side. By the time he was an adult, he realised that he was leading a dual life, in which his better side constantly felt guilt for the mistakes of his darker side. Dr Jekyll insists that, “man is not truly one, but truly two”, and he how he dreamed of separating the good and evil natures.

Dr Jekyll reports that, after much research, he eventually found a chemical solution that might serve his purpose. Buying a large quantity of salt as the required ingredient, he took the potion with the knowledge that he was risking his life, but he remained driven by the hopes of making a great discovery. At first, he experienced incredible pain. But as these symptoms subsided, he felt vigorous and was filled with recklessness and sensuality. He transformed into the shrunken, deformed Mr Edward Hyde. He believes that Mr Hyde’s small stature was because of his repressed evil side. Dr Jekyll delighted in living as Mr Hyde as he was becoming too old to act upon his more embarrassing impulses. He furnished a home and set up a bank account for his alter ego, Mr Hyde. But each time he transformed back into Dr Jekyll, he felt no guilt for Mr Hyde’s evil actions; yet, he tried to right the wrongs that had been done.

While asleep one night, he involuntarily transformed into Mr Hyde, without the help of the potion. This incident convinced him that he must cease with his transformations or risk being trapped in Mr Hyde’s form forever. But after two months as Dr Jekyll, he took the potion again. Mr Hyde who had been repressed for long, emerged wild and vengefully savage, and beat Carew, the Member of Parliament to death, delighting in his crime. Mr Hyde showed no remorse for the murder, but Dr Jekyll knelt and prayed to God for forgiveness even before his transformation back was complete. The horrifying nature of the murder convinced Dr Jekyll never to transform himself again.

Eventually, Dr Jekyll spontaneously transformed into Mr Hyde while sitting in a park. Hence, he sent word to Dr Lanyon to break into his laboratory and get his potions for him. After that night, he had to take a double dose of the potion every six hours to avoid transformation into Mr Hyde. As soon as the drug began to wear off, the transformation process would begin. Mr Hyde grew stronger and Dr Jekyll grew weaker. Moreover, the salt necessary for the potion began to run out. Dr Jekyll ordered for more but realised that the original salt must have contained an impurity that made the potion work. Hence he used the last of the potion to compose the final letter to Mr Utterson and ended his life.