Sources and Discussion points, The Moonstone
- Consider how the structure of the novel lends itself to creating suspense
- Consider the effect of different narrators, and find examples that demonstrate how they function in producing those effects.
- Who else partakes in detecting? What are their motivations, how do they imitate the official detective?
- Possessions/Dispossessions
"We arrived here on the 4th of April, 1799, since which time, the siege has continued with uninterrupted success on our part, although not without the loss of blood. The few first days after we came we were employed in collecting the necessary materials, and after that, there were daily skirmishes, taking his outposts, &c. so that our breaching batteries did not open till near the latter end of the month. The breach being at length practicable, on the 4th of May, being exactly one month from the day of our arrival, it was determined to storm; Soon after the storm 300 grenadiers rushed into the place, and were about to plunder it, when they were called off. Those inside immediately shut the gates, and the 33rd Regiment and a Native Corps drew up in front; we then learnt that the Sultan with his wives, sons, treasure, &c., were all in the palace. Soon after Major Allan came up with a flag of truce from General Baird, and after explaining to those who were in the balcony, that no violence should be offered, desired them to call the Sultan; they replied that he was wounded; that they did not know whether he was in the palace or not, but they would go and look for him…. though they did not seem depressed by their situation, yet appeared at the same time to feel it. Being asked what servants should attend them to the camp, they replied, that they had no right to order; and when the General, told them they had only to name the people who should accompany them, they said, that in the morning they could have called for many, but now, they feared, there were very few remaining! General Baird gave them in charge to Major Agnew, who conveyed them in palanquins, to head-quarters.
(‘The Taking of Seringapatam’Britannic Magazine, 1799)
Of the “Indian problem” during the fifty-year span of `Collins’s English plot, and at the time of the 1857 Revolt, when the Moghul Bahadur Shah II was still the titular Emperor, the Badshah, it may be said with Bernard Cohn that the “English could not be incorporated through symbolic acts to a foreign ruler, and perhaps more importantly, could not incorporate Indians into their rulership.” Following crown rule, an important resolution of the problem was to adopt Moghul court procedures involving presentation of objects like precious gems [….] No doubt such conversion was aided by the fact that this wealth was already in British hands, thanks to events like the Sack of Delhi or of Seringapatam.
(Ashish Roy, ‘The Fabulous Imperialist Semiotics of Wilkie Collins’
The Moonstone’)
5. Drug-use, the body, the mind, and ideas of Order
Harrison, James Bower, ‘The Psychology of Opium Eating’,Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology (London, England: 1848)7.26 (1854), 240-252.
6.Diagnosing Hysteric Bodies
It was published just when memory was about to become the object of science [….] Fictional amnesia produced by a fall or a blow followed soon after Collins’s novel, in the wake of new medical enthusiasm for the topic.
(Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul)
Jennings tests the hypothesis that Blake had stolen the diamond in an artificially induced state of aberrance by juxtaposing the two figures [Carpenter and Elliotson] in a way that […] fits completely within the bottom line of physiological psychology that Carpenter and Elliotson share: the basic assertion that there is an unconscious.
(Jenny Bourne Taylor, In the Secret Theatre of Home)
“hysteria in men [….] is frequently a sequela of sudden nervous shocks, such as accidents, explosions […] Marked instances of hysteria…have been frequently observed and recorded as occurring after railway accidents.
(D.H.Tuke ed. A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, 1892)
It is notable that the domestication of insanity, its assimilation by the Victorian institution, coincides with the period in which the predominance of women among the insane becomes a statistically verifiable phenomenon. English folklore reflects in "mad-songs" and ballads an ancient association of madness, confinement, and women; but until the middle of the century, records showed that men were far more likely to be confined as insane.
(Elaine Showalter, ‘Victorian Women and Insanity’,
Victorian Studies, 23:2 (Winter, 1980), pp. 157-181)
7. Crime and the ‘others’
- Note the correspondences with the case of Constance Kent in week one. What are the implications of this on ideas of the law, Truth, history, class, and possession.
- Identify and examine descriptions of Cuff that construct an image of “the detective”. What is the overall suggestion about detectives?
- Find passages that demonstrate, and formulate ideas about Public vs. Private spaces.
In the Moonstone Collins cleverly plays on the recent recollections of newspaper readers […] .Slyly he inserted into his plot details that were bound to revive memories of those newspaper headlines of 1860: the incriminating laundry book; the tellingly stained nightdress; the self-evident ‘innocence’ of the falsely accused of the house; her obstinate silence; and (most sensationally) her astonishing confessions.
(John Sutherland, Introduction)
Turn then to the "middle class" and to their children, for whom no juvenile reformatory is open or is asked. Cut off from the rude and thorny briers of society, they have been grafted upon the trim and cultivated rose-trees that bloom in the parterres of suburban respectability, and grow up, side by side, with modern refinement, modern civilization, modern Christianity. Think of the human hearts that pulsate there; of the human passions that riot there; of. the revelations made in the divorce courts, or unveiled before stipendiary magistrates; of family wrongs, of family conflicts, of family disgraces, covered over only by the miserable tinsel of gentility; flashing out here and there, fitfully, into a sudden, devouring, and inextinguishable flame, that bums up and desolates an English home; and, as the smoke hovers over the ruin and hides the light that shines alike on the evil and the good, consider how all this has come to pass.
(Joseph Whitaker Stapleton, The Great Crime of 1860)
“I am afraid my nerves are a little shaken […] There is something in that police-officer from London which I recoil from – I don’t know why…”
(Lady Verinder, First Period, Chapter 13)
“Look at the household now! Scattered, disunited – the very air of the place poisoned with mystery and suspicion”.
(Franklin Blake, First Period, Chapter 23)
Those men will wait their opportunity with the patience of cats, and will use it with the ferocity of tigers….In the country those men came from, they care just as much about killing a man, as you care about emptying the ashes of your pipe.
(Mr. Murthwaite, First Period, Chapter 10)
Further Selected Readings
Ashish Roy, ‘The Fabulous Imperialist Semiotics of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone’, New Literary History, 24:3, (1993), 657- 681
D.A.Miller, ‘From Roman Policier to Roman-Police: Wilkie Collins’s “The Moonstone”’, NOVEL, 13:2 (1980), 153-170
Mark M.Hennelly, Jr., ‘Detecting Collins’ Diamond: From Serpentstone to Moonstone’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 39:1 (1984), 25-47
Laurence Talairach-Vielmus, Wilkie Collins, Medicine and the Gothic (University of Wales Press, 2009)
Patrick Brantlinger, ‘What is “Sensational” About the “Sensation Novel”?’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 37:1 (1982), 1-28
Caroline Reitz, Detecting the Nation: Fictions of Detection and the Imperial Venture (Ohio State UP, 2004)