Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Moonstone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Detective Methods and Genre Standards
Intention, Identity, and Personality
Science and Religion
Gender and Victorian Morality
Class, Wealth, and Nobility
British Imperialism
Summary
Analysis
As the story’s first narrator, Betteredge explains, he is also assigned to be its last. He has nothing to say about the Moonstone, but only about Rachel and Franklin’s marriage, which took place in Yorkshire only a few months after their reconciliation. Apologetically, Betteredge admits that he had “a drop too much” during the ceremony, and then turned to Robinson Crusoe, which prophetically opened to a passage about the narrator’s wife and child. A year later, in November, 1850 (at which time Betteredge writes), the family finally receives news of Rachel’s pregnancy. Of course, when Franklin comes to inform him, Betteredge already knows what he will say, thanks to Robinson Crusoe. He asks if Franklin finally “believe[s] in Robinson Crusoe,” and Franklin declares that he is “convinced at last.” Betteredge asks the reader to take Robinson Crusoe seriously and declares he “make[s his] bow, and shut[s] up the story.”
As with everything else in his life, Betteredge writes the novel’s final narrative out of a sense of duty and focuses his attention on the integrity and status of his family (i.e. the Verinders). While the lives of nearly everyone else in the novel have drastically transformed because of the events surrounding the Moonstone, Betteredge remains quite the same, living the same life in the same place. And so the novel ends as it began: with an accurate prophecy from Robinson Crusoe, one which Betteredge latches onto and would have considered fulfilled no matter how long it took for Rachel to get pregnant.
Themes
