At the opening of the Chapter, when the police are investigating Hyde's life and deeds, and we hear about the numerous vile practices he has committed, we now realize that during the year that elapses between Chapters 3 and 4, Hyde had apparently practiced every type of vile and violent deed and "had collected a multitude of enemies." This causes Utterson to utter "the death of Sir Danvers was . . . more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde." This is not a callous statement when we realize the extreme extent of the evil practiced by Hyde. Utterson is the type who would gladly sacrifice a single life if it insured the riddance of a universal evil which Hyde now appears to be.
It is also symbolic that once Dr. Jekyll has rejected Hyde, Jekyll changes completely. In medical terms, he has purged himself of some deep disease that was eating away at him. With Hyde gone, for some time (Sir Danvers was murdered by Hyde in October, and it is now early January), Jekyll has changed back into his old social self and has been a delightful host. Thus, it is even more puzzling when Jekyll suddenly reverts to his old secretive self. The explanation for this episode is not given until Chapter 10, when Jekyll explains that he was sitting in Regent's Park, when suddenly, to his horror, he became Edward Hyde and found himself clad in the over-sized clothes of Dr. Jekyll. The shock of this transformation occurring without the use of his potion causes the doctor to totally isolate himself.
During Utterson's visit to Dr. Lanyon, he discovers the man to be the victim of some unknown terror which has literally announced his doom--he will be dead in three weeks. What Utterson or the reader does not know is that by the chronological time of Utterson's conversation with Lanyon, Dr. Lanyon has already been exposed to the events narrated in his document that we will read in Chapter 9. That is, on the 8th of January, Utterson had dined with Dr. Jekyll and yet it is only two days later when Lanyon received the letter from Jekyll, dated January 10th, begging for help, and it was then that Lanyon was exposed to the fact that Jekyll and Hyde are the same. We do not know this until later, but the novel is already looking forward to that knowledge, and we can now understand Dr. Lanyon's total collapse.
The cause of Lanyon's death--the horror--is not fully clear until the entire novel is considered. It must be remembered that both men had once been very close friends and that both men are eminent in their professions. Likewise, we ultimately know that Dr. Lanyon has disapproved of Dr. Jekyll on professional grounds--that Jekyll's metaphysical speculations about human behavior transcend the true limits of physical medicine, that Dr. Jekyll's ideas are "too fanciful" for him, and thus they broke company. However, no matter how metaphysical or fanciful Dr. Jekyll's ideas are, when Dr. Lanyon was exposed to the reality of the speculations in the person of Hyde, who before Lanyon's eyes became Jekyll, it horrifies him. The actual horror of the discovery that Jekyll and Hyde are one person lies not in the discovery
itself, but in the full realization concerning the nature of evil in all men. The effect of Lanyon's being exposed directly to EVIL INCARNATE is simply too monstrous for Dr. Lanyon to absorb, admit, or handle because this would mean that every person, including Dr. Lanyon, is partly evil. The shock of this realization therefore kills him. A similar type of idea is found earlier in the century in Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "Young Goodman Brown"; Brown went forth into the forest, where he had a vision of evil, in which he saw all of the good ministers and goodwomen and even his wife, Faith, in secret conspiracy with the Devil. After that night, Young Goodman Brown was forever a changed and gloomy man. A direct confrontation with the personification of evil in the person of Edward Hyde and his transformation back into Jekyll was simply more than the good Dr. Lanyon could handle.
Utterson's character is put to a test in this Chapter. Upon Dr. Lanyon's death and the receipt of the envelope with the instructions "not to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll," Utterson is sore put not to obey his friend's request.
Having lost one friend, Dr. Lanyon, and fearing the loss of Dr. Jekyll because of the strange wording "death or disappearance"--the same words Jekyll used in his will--all of these things combine to tempt Utterson to violate Lanyon's trust and open the envelope, especially since it might contain some information which might help save Dr. Jekyll. But "professional honor and faith to his dead friend" restrain him from opening the envelope, which he locks away in his safe.
