The official textual reason is that Dr Lanyon died from the shock of discovering that Hyde was Jekyll all along, but I’m pretty sure that shock alone doesn’t kill people, and almost definitely not in the way it kills Lanyon.
I know that “dying of shock” is a common trope in Gothic literature, back before we knew what actually killed people, but most cases seem to be more instantaneous than Lanyon’s. “Dying of shock” can be extrapolated as dying from a heart attack or stroke, for example, but they would both kill much faster than Lanyon’s death, which grips him like an illness and kills him over weeks.
And yes, I know that Jekyll and Hyde is far from a perfectly realistic medical picture as is, we kind of crossed that with the whole “magic potion that can radically alter your appearance and take away your inhibitions” thing, but still, I wonder what was the intention behind killing Lanyon more slowly in this way while keeping the reasoning being “shock”. Is it so that Lanyon stays alive long enough to write the letter to Utterson explaining what he saw, which he wouldn’t be able to do if he died on the spot? Is it to show how he still refuses to rat Jekyll out to Utterson or the police, despite knowing the awful truth and cutting his old friend out of his life completely?
I know this is a relatively inconsequential thing in the grand scheme of the story but still, it’s bugging me. What are your thoughts?
by PrinceJustice237