Dr. Henry Jekyll A prominent middle-aged doctor described as both tall and handsome.

He is also extremely wealthy with a fortune well over two million dollars. All that know him describe him as respected and proper. However, as the novel progresses, we subtly witness his hypocritical behavior, which Stevenson claimed was Jekyll's fatal flaw. The doctor's belief that within each human being there exist forces of good and evil leads to his experiments that try to separate the two. Although presented as a scientific experiment, Jekyll undertook this task to allow himself a release from the respectable guise of Dr. Jekyll. In the book, Jekyll's voice is only heard in the concluding chapter, only after being described through the lens of Utterson, Lanyon, Poole, and Enfield.

Edward Hyde A small, deformed, disgusting man somewhat younger than Dr. Jekyll who is apparently devoid of a profession. Lanyon, Utterson and Enfield all describe witnessing something indefinably evil and horrific in Edward Hyde's face. He is often compared to animals, implying that he is not a fully evolved human being. Despite these descriptions, Hyde is generally civilized in his interactions with others, most notably Utterson and Lanyon. Dr. Jekyll describes Hyde as "pure evil," who menaces society at night, trampling a girl in the street and murdering Sir Danvers Carew. We learn at the end of the story that Edward Hyde and Dr. Henry Jekyll are in fact the same person.