Edward Hyde

Dr. Henry Jekyll, also known as Edward Hyde, is the eponymous main antagonist of the 1886 gothic novella Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by the late Robert Louis Stevenson. He is the dark side of Henry Jekyll, unleashed by use of a potion. Over the course of the novel, Jekyll transforms into Hyde in order to keep his good and evil personalities separate, only to find himself addicted to the potion as Hyde slowly overtakes him. He has been the subject of many films, and was prominently featured in the first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, a graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.

Personality
Unlike in many adaptations of the novel, Hyde is originally portrayed as just an extension of Henry Jekyll. Jekyll is largely aware of his actions as Hyde, and Hyde is merely Jekyll relieved of consequence and responsibility and thus acting out compulsively after years of repression in a high-society life. Jekyll alludes to having to repress certain base desires all his life, and so as Hyde - no longer being bound to them he acts on even his slightest whims as a form of ego cleansing/stress-relief. Because of Jekyll's repressed life, what he is repressing has often been debated among academics and has ranged from toxic masculinity, to homosexuality, to deep-seeded psychosis; The actual text is ambiguous, only stating Jekyll has some in-born preferences he knew he could never act on. Whatever Jekyll's issues, he has been repressing them so long, Hyde almost seems like another person to him who he can live an escapist life through. Hyde is anti-social, dislikes children, has a short-temper, and is prone to sadism. The final days of his life are not Hyde trying to assert himself over Jekyll but rather Jekyll becoming so prone to indulging himself through Hyde he can no long subconsciously form a distinction between himself and his alter-ego. The point of the book is that despite someone like Jekyll's best efforts, Hyde could never be an alternate personality, just his true self coming out more and more once indulged until Jekyll suffers a major identity crisis in losing the veneer of respectability Hyde hid behind.