Plot
While searching for an elixir of life, Dr. Henry Jekyll begins using female hormones taken from fresh cadavers supplied by Burke and Hare, reasoning that these hormones will help him to extend his life since women traditionally live for longer than men. These have the effect of not only altering his character (for the worse) but also of changing his gender, transforming him into a beautiful but evil woman. To explain the sudden appearance of his female half around the house, he calls himself Mrs. Hyde, saying she is Jekyll's widowed sister. Dr. Jekyll soon falls in love with Susan Spencer, the upstairs tenant, but Sister Hyde develops a lust for her brother.
Dr. Jekyll soon finds that his serum requires a regular supply of female hormones to maintain its effect, necessitating the killing of young girls. Burke and Hare supply his needs but their criminal activities are uncovered. Burke is lynched by a mob and Hare blinded. The doctor decides to take the matters into his own hands and commits the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper. Dr. Jekyll abhors this, but Sister Hyde relishes the killings as she begins to take control, even killing Jekyll's friend Professor Robertson when he attempts to question Hyde about the murders.
As the two personalities begin to struggle for dominance, Dr. Jekyll only just manages to thwart Sister Hyde's attempt to kill Susan. He then commits one last murder to find a way to stabilize his condition, but he is interrupted by the police after a comment by Hare leads them to realize the similarity between Jekyll's earlier experiments on cadavers and the Ripper murders. As Dr. Jekyll tries to escape by climbing along the outside of a building, he transforms into Sister Hyde, who, lacking his strength, falls to the ground, dying as a twisted amalgamation of male and female.
Read more about this topic: Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)