At the start of the novel jekyll is presented as a calm and respectable man. They also describe Utterson as “cold, long, dusty, dreary and somehow loveable.”

Edward Hyde is not a separate personality living in the same body as Henry Jekyll “Hyde” is just Jekyll, having transformer his body into something unrecognisable, acting on unspecified urges that would be unseemly for someone his age and his social standing in Victoria London ( i.e some combination of violence and sex. Torture is especially mentioned.

Jekyll did not create a potion to remove the evil parts of nature. He made a potion that allowed him to express his urges without feeling guilty and without any consequences following his actions that will effect his good name. That’s also why his name is alter ego “Hyde” because Hyde is a disguise, to be worn and discarded like a thick cloak. He might as well called Edward his second name “Mr second” or “Mr mask.”

It is Important that if Dr Jekyll and mister Hyde. Dr Jekyll is a well respected Professor. Where as Hyde is a Lower class shlub. Hyde is also much younger then jekyll. It’s just the Hyde gets away with a lot of worse behaviour

Crucially, we never get Hydes point of view. Because it does not exist. Even when he looks like Hyde, Jekyll still thinks of himself as Jekyll in his testament that ends as the “strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Jekyll always talks about himself in Hydes body using “I” statements: I looked in the mirror and saw Hyde. The pleasures I sought in my disguise, I woke to see I had the hand of Hyde even when describing the murder of Sir Danvers. The worst thing he done as Hyde, Jekyll says “I mauled the unresisting body” and then “I saw my life to be forfeit”

But Jekyll’s an extremely unreliable narrator in this respect, because his own account belies this conclusion. Not just specifically when recounting the times that he was disguised as Hyde and he still refers to himself as Jekyll, but because “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case” is written by Jekyll when he’s stuck in the body of Hyde. If there were ever a time for Hyde to exert himself, talk about himself as an autonomous being, it would be then. But he does not. Because he can’t. Because he does not exist.

The fundamental mistake most versions of Jekyll and Hyde make is not understanding that Jekyllwants to do all the things he does as Hyde. He loves being Hyde. He revels in the freedom of being Hyde and it’s only when the consequences catch up to him anyway that his duel personality becomes a problem for him.

This fundamental mistake leads to further misunderstandings. First, Jekyll is not good. He’s not bad, either, so much as Jekyll is a deeply repressed man who has hidden his violent and sexual urges. His biggest sin is that he wants to face no consequences for anything he does.

Second, Hyde is not the accidental result of an unrelated experiment. Hyde is the absolutely intended result of Jekyll’s experiment. Hyde is not Jekyll’s punishment for playing God. Hyde is Jekyll’s reward.

Third, Jekyll is not unaware or out of control when he’s Hyde. He does not wake up with no memory of what happened the night before. He remembers perfectly everything he does as Hyde, because he was in control the whole time.

And finally, Hyde is not a monster. He’s not the grotesque pink giant Hulk of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or the super-fast, super-strong, super- handsome superhuman of Jekyll. He’s a nasty, brutish, and short ape-like man whose great advantage over Jekyll is that he’s young and seemingly lower class, and therefore can get away with a lot of shit.

Obviously, this rant is one hundred years too late to change the popular perception of this classic of horror. To most people, Jekyll and Hyde is the story of two completely separate personalities, one good and one evil, that share a body and are at war with each other, and that’s not going to change.

That said, I think the original is a much more complicated take on the nature of evil, society, shame, and repression than any that have followed it, and I’d love to see a version that really explored the appeal of Hyde to Jekyll. What would you do if you could be someone else for a night, do whatever you wanted to do, commit whatever sins you wanted to commit, without fear of consequences of any kind? Are we good because we want to be good, or are we good because we just don’t want to be punished?

The idea of evil as “that guy, over there, who takes over my body sometimes against my will” is too simple, and dissociative, and irresponsible. It’s the mistake Jekyll himself makes. Hyde is not someone else who commits Jekyll’s sins for him. Hyde does not exist. Jekyll commits all of his sins on his own.