The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Enfield’s sighting of Hyde’s door while on a walk with Utterson instigates the story of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The two friends are in a “busy quarter of London” that has a “general cleanliness and gaiety of note” (48) that is pleasing to the eye. Just beyond this, the terrain changes and a “sinister block of building” appears, with a solitary door in front. It is “blistered and distained” (49), without a bell or knocker; poor people slouch around it and abuse it. This shabby door leads to Hyde’s lodgings and in fact serves as an apt symbol of him. It is private and secretive; Enfield notes that the building “seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure” (52). The door bears “the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence” (49)—a symbol for Jekyll and his unhealthy isolation. Enfield is not even sure if anyone lives there because “the buildings are so packed together about the court, that it’s hard to say where one ends and another begins” (53). In this way, the building serves as a powerful