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
This chapter of Miss Clack’s narrative summarizes a series of letters between herself and Franklin Blake. After Clack attempts to include some of her religious pamphlets as addenda to her narrative of Julia’s death, Blake sends back the pamphlets because they are irrelevant to her narrative. Clack promises to offer Franklin the same religious material if he falls sick and asks if she can reveal “later discoveries” about the Moonstone. Blake repeats that she must only recount her firsthand experience. Miss Clack asks if she can include her and Blake’s letters in her narrative, to reveal the constraints within which she was forced to write. Blake agrees curtly and asks her not to reply, but Clack replies that she, as a Christian, is not offended (even though that seemed to be Blake’s intention). She “solemnly pledges” to send the pamphlets back to Blake, who does not write back.
This humorous chapter again reminds the reader of Franklin Blake’s editorial hand in the novel as a whole, as well as his continued disdain for Miss Clack, who remains stubbornly unable to follow instructions or focus on the factual elements of her story (which are ultimately the only material relevant for the novel’s plot). Characteristically, she at once picks a fight, exhausts her opponent, and takes the moral high ground, even though she appears to be the only person who cares about any of it at all.
Themes
