What Exactly is Mr. Hyde?

After reading the first half of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the character of Mr. Hyde appears to be more supernatural than anything. It isn’t really fair for us today because we all know the secret of who/what Mr. Hyde is, but for someone who read this story when it was first published, the scenes within the story probably made no logical sense within the material world.

In chapter 2, “Search for Mr. Hyde,” Utterson has a nightmare regarding Mr. Hyde. “He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor’s; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming, and smiling at his dreams; then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, and the sleeper recalled, and lo! There would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding” (838). The nightmare makes Mr. Hyde out to be not a single evil man, but a symbol of all of the evil within England. The beginning of the story makes it clear that a person’s reputation is something that is taken into consideration above all else in this society, but Hyde appears to be someone who cares very little about how he is viewed. This makes him an anomaly, and raises questions of who he is and why he acts in such a way.

The mysterious nature of Mr. Hyde becomes even more so later in the story when the police begin to look for him. No relatives or friends (aside from Dr. Jekyll, who refuses to give Utterson any information about him) of Hyde can be located. Utterson has Hyde’s address, but when they arrive, the landlady states that he 1) is not home, 2) he was there that night, but left in an hour, and 3) he was often absent, as it was two months since she had seen him since that night. Within a few weeks, no leads or descriptions of Hyde are found, and the people who could describe him only agreed on the point that there was “the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders” (845). This raises even more questions regarding Hyde, to the point where, to the reader, it seems as if the only explanation for Mr. Hyde's existence is that he's some kind of devil. The only person who knows anything about Hyde is Dr. Jekyll, who is unwilling to share anything for unknown purposes.

If you were reading this story without already knowing the secret of Mr. Hyde, what would you think the answer would be? Utterson acts as a sort-of detective, but so far everything in regards to Mr. Hyde seems to be other-wordly and incapable of explanation, despite Jekyll clearly knowing a great deal that he refuses to explain.