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
Clack explains that “the foregoing correspondence” forces her to simply move on with her story rather than dwelling on Julia’s death. Clack met Rachel a month after Julia’s death and witnessed an important development in Rachel and Godfrey’s relationship, which is the last event she must recount before her narrative can be done with.
Clack’s original plan was clearly to intersperse her sermons and pamphlets into the narrative, and thereby turn Julia’s death into a teachable moment. The reader should be grateful to Franklin Blake for stopping her.
Themes
Clack decides not to attend Julia’s funeral, both because she is too distraught and because she dislikes the “clerical castaway” in charge of the service. Godfrey Ablewhite’s father becomes Rachel’s new guardian, and Godfrey and Rachel’s engagement soon becomes public knowledge. After some indecision about where they will live, the family settles on moving Rachel and Godfrey with Godfrey’s mother and her ill sister to a house in Brighton.
Clack remains disrespectful to Julia even in death; rather than considering the importance of honoring the dead, she turns Julia’s funeral into a referendum on her own suffering and the particularities of her doctrine. (In fact, perhaps the family is fortunate that Miss Clack decides to stay home.)
Themes
Mrs. Ablewhite, Miss Clack’s aunt, “has never been known to do anything for herself.” She also mirrors the opinions of those around her and therefore becomes spiritually “hopeless.” She enlists Miss Clack to find servants for her new house and explains that Rachel has the list.
Although Mrs. Ablewhite’s idleness and hopelessness might ordinarily make her emblematic of the precise kind of womanhood Miss Clack considers most noble and Christian, her defeating characteristic is simply her lack of faith.
Themes
Rachel, who “looked pitiably small and thin in her deep mourning,” apologizes to Miss Clack for her tone in the past and declares that she hopes they can become friends. Clack sees this as evidence of Rachel lacking a source of “true comfort,” but also as an opportunity to proselytize. To gauge “the extent of the change” in Rachel’s personality, Miss Clack asks her about her engagement—a subject Rachel repeatedly avoids, which makes Miss Clack think she has a chance of convincing Rachel to accept religion by counseling her about marriage.
Tone-deaf as ever, Clack sees Rachel’s apology and attempt to sincerely connect as yet another invitation to heal the “spiritually ill.” Of course, Clack remains uninterested in all else, and ironically thinks she has adequate marriage advice despite being a spinster. She never seems to value Rachel for becoming her beloved Godfrey’s fiancée (and in fact may be jealous).
Themes
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Miss Clack turns to the list of servants. She has Rachel write a letter for Mrs. Ablewhite to sign, which Miss Clack can use to recruit the necessary people. Delighted, Rachel even invites Miss Clack to join them in Brighton, opening “the glorious prospect of interference.” Miss Clack finds the most pious servants possible and stocks the house with religious literature. That Saturday, the family arrives alongside Mr. Bruff, whom Clack calls “the Serpent.” Clack is convinced he has some self-interested reason for accompanying the family (given that Godfrey is busy). He spends the first day chatting casually, but when he leaves he looks at Rachel in a way that convinces Miss Clack he wanted something from her. The next day, Rachel is the only person willing to accompany Miss Clack to church, but Rachel complains that the sermon “has only made my head ache.”
At last, Miss Clack has an actual task to fulfill—but she ignores Rachel and the Ablewhites’ needs in order to fulfill her own plot instead. She compares the nonconfrontational and diplomatic Mr. Bruff to the snake from the Garden of Eden because he is allegedly threatening Godfrey and Rachel’s relationship. And while Rachel again tries to appease Miss Clack by going to church, the message clearly does not catch on, and Miss Clack does not know what to do with someone who thinks so differently from herself.
Themes
After lunch, Mr. Bruff takes Rachel for a walk, which they agree is the best cure for her headache (although Clack is disappointed that this walk makes Rachel miss the afternoon services at church). After their walk, Rachel is lost in thought and Bruff asks if she is “sure of [her] own resolution,” to which she responds in the affirmative. Rachel locks herself in her room instead of coming to dinner, and does not open her door despite Miss Clack’s efforts to get through to her.
For once, Miss Clack was right: Bruff did have some important business with Rachel, whose insistent privacy recalls her reaction to the Diamond’s theft. Of course, Bruff and Rachel have to lie to Miss Clack to get her to leave them alone.
Themes
The next day, Miss Clack visits Rachel first thing in the morning and asks why she has piled the religious books on a corner table. Rachel says she has no interest in the books and rejects Miss Clack’s offer to “read a few passages of the deepest interest.” Miss Clack declares that Mr. Bruff must have been delivering bad news the day before, and Rachel insists it was “quite the contrary.” Miss Clack asks if this news regarded Godfrey, and Rachel replies, astonishingly, “I shall never marry Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite.” Clack seeks an explanation, but Rachel calls for her bath and manages to get Clack out of the room.
After ignoring the terms of her invitation and returning to her attempts to convert Rachel, Miss Clack officially becomes a pariah within the family again: Rachel has to fight her off like a bothersome fly or pet, and it is unclear how Miss Clack thinks her words will suddenly make Rachel receptive to Christianity. Rachel’s sudden revelation suggests that Bruff’s intervention had something to do with her engagement to Godfrey.
Themes
While Clack’s intended path to Rachel’s soul—her engagement and marriage—now appears closed, Clack is delighted to think that the inevitable fallout of her breakup with Godfrey will leave her with “a salutary moral depression” that she, and Christ, might be able to heal.
Like Julia’s illness, Clack sees Rachel’s coming misery as a fantastic positive development, seemingly overlooking the teachings of her religion for the sake of shoving it down Rachel’s throat.
Themes
Rachel refuses breakfast and plays “scandalously profane” piano music, which Miss Clack avoids by leaving the house. When she returns, she is surprised to see Godfrey there earlier than expected, and ready to talk with her. He reveals that Rachel “has taken a sudden resolution to break the engagement,” and that he has accepted this. He does not seem at all distraught, and he brings Miss Clack to a seat so he can explain himself.
Even Rachel’s piano playing offends Miss Clack’s fragile moral sensibilities, and she returns to Godfrey’s even more surprising acceptance of the end of the engagement, which suggests that Miss Clack is seriously missing his true motives—either she is being kept in the dark because of her fringe status in the family, or (as she suspects) someone is being deceptive.
Themes
