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
Julia quickly signs the will and Clack scares Bruff out of the room with her bag of religious tracts. As Julia proclaims she plans to give Clack her own “little legacy” on the spot, Clack pulls out a book concerning the pernicious threat of the Devil in people’s everyday actions (namely, the section on “Satan among the Sofa Cushions”). Julia rejects the literature, explaining that her doctor has asked her to avoid stress—Clack includes a tirade against the “notoriously infidel profession of Medicine” as an aside in her narrative. Clack hides the book between the sofa cushions, hoping that when Julia accidentally touches it, “the book might touch her.” She also hides another book among Julia’s flowers and, on her way out, hides the other dozen she has brought throughout the house, including in Julia’s bedroom and bathroom.
Collins’s sense of irony cannot be clearer: Clack hides “Satan among the Sofa Cushions” among the sofa cushions, accidentally announcing her nefarious intent. In fact, when Julia is about to give her some form of payment, Clack distracts her by interrupting with her own “legacy”—her ridiculous books, which would be of no use to the dying Julia even if she wanted to save her own soul through Christianity and not medical science. (Clack never ends up getting her “legacy” from Julia.) Clack violates Julia’s privacy, both by harassing her in her last days and by disrupting the normal order of the house, including going to places where she was never invited.
Themes
Having deposited all her books, Clack feels an “exquisite sense of duty done” and is ecstatic through the next morning. At lunchtime, the Verinders’ servant Samuel visits Clack with a letter. She sits him down and asks when she may see the family again—he insists they are busy for now, but runs to get her a ticket to the ball they will attend in the evening. Clack is horrified that Godfrey will be at these festivities instead of their charity meetings.
Clack’s “exquisite sense of duty done” reveals her true motivation for evangelizing: her sense of elation at making an impact on others—even if others see this impact as negative, Clack reassures herself it is benevolent. Samuel’s arrival indicates that the Verinders are not willing to deal with Miss Clack personally anymore, now that she has fulfilled her function as a witness to Julia’s will. And Clack’s reaction to Godfrey’s plans proves how unrealistic her expectations and portrayals of him continue to be.
Themes
Miss Clack opens the parcel Samuel has brought and finds her “twelve precious publications […] all returned to me by the doctor’s orders!” Knowing that “the true Christian never yields […] irrespective of every human consideration […] for we are the only people who are always right,” she decides to pursue “Preparation by Little Notes,” mailing quotes from her books as letters and hiding others throughout the house. She prepares a dozen letters that day, sends six by mail, and keeps six “for personal distribution in the house.”
In an attempt to get through to the aunt who has squarely rejected her, Clack decides to become as annoying as possible. Her speech plainly lays out her disregard for other peoples’ interests, boundaries, and beliefs, and lets Collins effectively mock his contemporary Christians who would never be as bold as Miss Clack: to admit that they think “we are the only people who are always right.” In fact, Clack’s attitude toward Christianizing her resistant family directly echoes the strategies of British colonialism in India, a forceful “conversion” to Western ways of being (and, of course, to economic servitude on Britain’s behalf).
Themes
The next day, Clack returns to the Verinders’ London house and learns that Julia, in her illness, is at home while the rest of the family is supposedly at the concert. Samuel sends her to wait in the library, and she secretly scatters the remaining six letters around the house before watching in astonishment as Samuel lets an unfamiliar man go straight up to speak with Julia. Clack realizes he must be the doctor and waits for a few minutes behind a curtain, so that she can confront him on his way out from Julia’s room into the drawing-room. However, she listens through the door and realizes, to her astonishment, that the visitor is Godfrey Ablewhite. He says, “I’ll do it to-day!”
When Clack returns for her next attempt to “save” Julia, she is astonished to learn that the family has deceived her and prioritizes Godfrey’s visit over hers—even though she is presently deceiving the Verinders both by again leaving her literature throughout the house and by eavesdropping on a private conversation. She continues to think that her religious mandate justifies her violating the family’s explicit wishes and creating unnecessary drama in Julia’s last days.
Themes
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