What happens in Chapter 2 of Jekyll and Hyde?
Mr. Utterson is troubled by the terms of Jekyll's will, which names the enigmatic Hyde as the sole beneficiary. Determined to uncover the truth, he decides to find Hyde himself. He waits by the door on the grimy street that Enfield mentioned and soon sees Hyde approaching. Utterson introduces himself as an old friend of Jekyll and asks to see Hyde's face. Hyde complies but then becomes wary, demanding to know how Utterson knows him. After Hyde retreats inside, a neighbor informs Utterson that Jekyll is not at home. Utterson leaves, feeling deeply disturbed; although he struggles to articulate it, Hyde's face gives off an unsettling aura of deformity and malevolence. He then visits Jekyll's elegant home in a more affluent area of the city, where the butler Poole confirms that the staff has strict instructions to obey Hyde. As Utterson walks home, he becomes increasingly convinced that Jekyll is being blackmailed—possibly over some past misdeed—and resolves to protect his friend, even as he privately admits that the image of Hyde's face haunts his dreams.
Analysis
Stevenson uses Chapter 2 to highlight the novel's central concern: the difficulty of recognizing evil in a person. Utterson's meeting with Hyde is described through what’s missing—Hyde evokes "a strong feeling of deformity," yet Utterson "could not specify the point." This intentional ambiguity is a stylistic choice, not an oversight; by not defining Hyde's wrongness, Stevenson draws the reader into their own fears. The chapter also serves as a reflection on urban spaces as moral landscapes. Jekyll's address in Cavendish Square, with its bright lighting and attentive staff, sharply contrasts with the "sinister" back alleys, and Utterson's nighttime walk between these areas sets up the novel's main dichotomy even before Hyde and Jekyll are connected in the text. Poole's brief appearance introduces the servant class as silent keepers of secrets, a role that will become more complicated. Tonally, Stevenson shifts from the dry legal language of Utterson's professional perspective to something resembling a Gothic nightmare—"Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish…and yet the man inspired disquiet"—indicating that rational explanations will continue to fall short. The chapter ends with Utterson's self-deception: he concocts a blackmail story to justify Jekyll's behavior, a rationalization that safeguards his friend's reputation and, importantly, his own comfort. This tendency to rationalize rather than face reality serves as a subtle moral critique of Victorian respectability.
Key quotes from Chapter 2
“God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say?”
Utterson mutters to himself immediately after his first face-to-face encounter with Hyde, struggling to articulate the visceral revulsion the man provokes.
“If he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek.”
Utterson resolves, alone in his study, to hunt down the man named in Jekyll's will—a rare flash of dark wordplay in an otherwise sober chapter.
“The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude.”
Stevenson closes the street encounter with a tableau of Utterson frozen outside the sinister door, his professional composure visibly shaken for the first time.