The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde recap

London lawyer Gabriel Utterson becomes concerned when his friend Dr. Henry Jekyll names the repellent Edward Hyde as heir and grants him access to his home. Hyde's violence escalates from trampling a child to murdering Sir Danvers Carew. Jekyll claims to have ended the association, but later withdraws from society, while their mutual friend Dr. Lanyon dies after a devastating shock. When Jekyll's butler fears someone has replaced his master, he and Utterson force their way into the laboratory and find Hyde dead. Letters disclose that Jekyll developed a drug that transformed him into Hyde, allowing him to act without his ordinary conscience. The transformations became involuntary, and the original drug could not be reproduced. Unable to prevent Hyde from taking over permanently, Jekyll records the truth before the shared life of Jekyll and Hyde ends.

During one of their Sunday walks through London, lawyer Gabriel Utterson and his relative Richard Enfield pass a neglected door. Enfield recalls seeing a small, disturbing man named Edward Hyde trample a child there, then avoid scandal by paying the family with a cheque bearing the respected Dr. Henry Jekyll's name. Utterson is alarmed because Jekyll's will leaves everything to Hyde if Jekyll dies or disappears. Dr. Lanyon, another old friend, knows nothing useful and says he has fallen out with Jekyll over his strange scientific interests. Utterson watches the doorway until he meets Hyde, whose presence produces powerful dislike. Hyde gives him an address in Soho. Utterson then learns from Jekyll's butler, Poole, that Hyde has a key and that the servants have orders to obey him. Utterson fears Hyde has learned a secret with which to blackmail Jekyll.

Utterson questions Jekyll, who will not explain his bond with Hyde but insists he can end it whenever he chooses and asks Utterson to honor the will. Nearly a year later, a maid witnesses Hyde encounter the elderly Sir Danvers Carew in the street. Carew addresses him courteously, but Hyde erupts into violence and beats him to death with a cane. A letter on the body brings the police to Utterson, who identifies the murder weapon as part of a cane he once gave Jekyll. Inspector Newcomen and Utterson search Hyde's disordered Soho rooms and find the other half of the cane, but Hyde has disappeared. His accounts remain untouched, and the police have difficulty tracing a man whose appearance no witness can describe consistently.

After Carew's murder, Jekyll assures Utterson that he has finished with Hyde and produces a letter apparently written by Hyde promising to vanish. Utterson's clerk, Mr. Guest, observes that its handwriting strongly resembles Jekyll's, though with a different slant, deepening the suspicion that Jekyll forged it. For a time Jekyll returns to his friends and charitable life. He then abruptly isolates himself. Lanyon, visibly shaken and gravely ill, refuses to discuss Jekyll and leaves Utterson a sealed narrative to be opened only after Jekyll's death or disappearance. Lanyon soon dies. Bound by the instructions, Utterson stores the document unread and continues trying unsuccessfully to see Jekyll.

Utterson and Enfield glimpse Jekyll at an upstairs window. Their conversation ends when terror suddenly crosses Jekyll's face and he shuts the window. Later Poole comes to Utterson in distress, convinced that something terrible has happened in Jekyll's locked laboratory. The servants have heard weeping and received written demands for a particular chemical, while the figure briefly seen inside seems too small to be Jekyll. Utterson and Poole force the door. They find Hyde dying from poison and dressed in clothes much too large for him, but there is no trace of Jekyll. The room contains a new will naming Utterson, a note directing him to Lanyon's sealed account, and Jekyll's own confession. The mystery now depends on those documents.

Lanyon's account says Jekyll sent him urgent instructions to retrieve a drawer of chemicals from the laboratory and give it to a visitor at midnight. Hyde arrived, mixed a drug, drank it, and transformed before Lanyon's eyes into Jekyll. The sight destroyed Lanyon's health and ended his confidence in the limits of nature. Jekyll's confession then supplies the full history. Hoping to divide the moral conflict within himself, Jekyll made a drug that changed him physically into Hyde, a younger identity able to pursue forbidden desires without Jekyll's reputation bearing the cost. Hyde grew more powerful and violent, eventually murdering Carew. Jekyll tried to stop, but began transforming involuntarily. His remaining chemical depended on an impurity in the original batch and every replacement failed. Knowing he would soon become Hyde permanently, Jekyll wrote the confession. Utterson and Poole have therefore found the end of a single shared life: Hyde dead, Jekyll gone, and the truth preserved in the papers.

Jekyll's confession explains that he created a drug to separate the conflicting sides of his nature. Taking it changed him into Hyde, a younger figure free of Jekyll's conscience and social restraints. Jekyll initially treated the transformation as secret liberty, but Hyde grew stronger and committed increasingly brutal acts, including Carew's murder. Eventually Jekyll began changing without the drug. After his supply failed, repeated attempts to reproduce it did not work because the original ingredient had contained an unknown impurity. Trapped in the laboratory and facing permanent transformation, Jekyll completed his account. When Utterson and Poole break in, they find Hyde dead in Jekyll's oversized clothes; Jekyll himself has vanished. Lanyon is already dead after witnessing the transformation, and the documents he and Jekyll leave reveal the truth. Jekyll expects his own life to end with Hyde's and closes his statement uncertain which identity will meet death.