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
After a restless night at Hotherstone’s Farm, Franklin meets Betteredge at the Verinder estate. Betteredge complains that he has caught “the detective-fever” again. They meet Mrs. Yolland in Cobb’s Hole, and “a wan, wild, haggard girl”—Limping Lucy—brings Franklin his letter and asks him to follow her down to the beach. There, she stares at him “with the strongest emotions of abhorrence and disgust” and comments to herself that she cannot understand “what [Rosanna] saw in” him. She gives him the letter and yells, “God Almighty forbid I should ever set eyes on you again.” Franklin thinks Lucy is clearly insane, and he turns to the letter.
The return of Rosanna’s letter proves that the novel’s seemingly minor details do serve important purposes in the plot, a technique that would have been particularly powerful with the British reading public that could track and predict the consequences of these clues between Collins’s weekly installments. Again, Lucy appears as a direct and fearless foil to the more reserved Rosanna—but here, she also serves the same function for Rachel, who covers her apparent disdain for Franklin by refusing to “set eyes on” him. Ultimately, Franklin thinks Lucy is mad, but not the same of Rachel (or of Rosanna, whose behavior was arguably the closest to madness). In fact, he simply cannot yet see her perspective—not until he understands Rosanna’s feelings about him.
Themes
Rosanna’s letter implores Franklin to follow the instructions enclosed within, which direct him to go to the South Spit at the Shivering Sand and find a chain leading down to the quicksand. Betteredge follows Franklin out and reads the letter, then exclaims that this is exactly what Sergeant Cuff predicted. They rush to the Shivering Sand and Betteredge recounts how Cuff inferred that Rosanna had hidden her treasure. When the tide is low, they go to the spot Rosanna laid out; but then Betteredge leaves, as Rosanna’s instructions implore Franklin to pull up the mystery item alone.
With Franklin heading to the Shivering Sand, the investigation picks back up right where it left off: with Rosanna’s hidden treasure, which Cuff had no clues or time to find. After all, to nobody’s surprise, Cuff was right about this treasure; although Rosanna is dead, Betteredge seems to fear the potential mystical power of her instructions, and accordingly insists on letting Franklin retrieve the treasure alone.
Themes
Literary Devices
After a few minutes, Franklin finds the chain and begins to follow it toward the quicksand—but finds “a thick growth of seaweed” in his way. He uses a stick to find where the chain continues past the seaweed and is horrified to see the quicksand face-to-face. Soon, he finds the chain, pulls it up, and discovers “the japanned tin case fastened to the end of it.” Inside are a letter and a linen nightgown, with the paint smear from Rachel’s door. Franklin remembers Sergeant Cuff’s promise that the paint smear was connected to the Diamond and realizes that the owner of the nightgown was likely the thief. Realizing that the garment would likely be “marked with its owner’s name,” he looks for the mark and finds: “MY OWN NAME.” He has solved his mystery: he, himself, is the thief he is looking for.
As Franklin comes face-to-face with the quicksand where Rosanna died, he not only confronts the place’s danger and his own eventual mortality, but also forces himself to empathize with her in some way for the first time, to understand the turmoil by which she lived and died. His astonishing discovery of his own guilt is inexplicable, a classic mystery twist designed to shock the reader and force them to reconsider everything they have read so far—Rosanna and Rachel’s suspicious behavior, the circumstances under which Franklin brought the Moonstone to the Verinder estate in the first place, and most of all, the reliability of Franklin’s narration and editing.
Themes
Literary Devices
