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
Franklin Blake is stunned and confused on his way back to the estate with Betteredge. When they arrive, Franklin begins to face the undeniable evidence of his own guilt. Betteredge insists that the nightgown is “a liar,” and that someone else must have used it—Franklin remembers that “Rosanna Spearman had once been a thief” and determines that she must have “smeared [his] nightgown purposely with the paint.”
Franklin’s personality splits as he discovers his guilt; his realization that he must have committed the crime clashes with his knowledge that he did not, and this split speaks to Collins’s notion of the inevitable contradictions within an individual’s character. Franklin’s absolute faith in the evidence leaves him little recourse (whereas Betteredge easily rewrites the story to satisfy his intuition that Franklin cannot be guilty, and certainly someone like Miss Clack would eagerly ignore the facts altogether).
Themes
Franklin Blake looks at the letter Rosanna has left in the tin: it begins with a declaration of her love. Franklin is astonished but Betteredge implores him to continue reading. Rosanna writes that she will “be dead and gone” when Franklin receives the letter, so can boldly “own the truth.” She says her love was the motive for all her actions. She finds her early life not worth mentioning in detail and explains that, when Franklin arrived at the Verinder estate, he was “like a prince in a fairy-story.” She did everything possible to win his attention and cried endlessly when he never did look at her. Rosanna hated Rachel because of Franklin’s love for her, and always replaced the roses Rachel gave Franklin with her own. She writes that she found Rachel ugly, but that she knows she cannot continue writing in such a spiteful tone.
Despite Rosanna’s endless attempts to get Franklin’s attention, he seems to have never noticed her, whether because of his fixation on Rachel, his unwillingness to even recognize the possibility of loving someone who did not share his upper-class background, or some combination of the two. On the other hand, Rosanna’s audacity—her willingness to seek out a relationship she knew, on some level, to be impossible—also points to her ability to see past these class boundaries, to claim a right to the normal life that her employers took for granted but would have likely denied her.
Themes
Literary Devices
Rosanna next writes that she plans to turn to the story of the Moonstone, but first she insists on explaining something else. She writes about how ashamed and lonely she felt after going through the reformatory, taking responsibility for her crimes, and moving to work at the Verinder estate. And she writes that, to cope with these feelings, she used to visit the Shivering Sand, where she felt that her life would come to an end. During the process of writing this letter, she explains, she realized she could actually use the quicksand to “end all [her] troubles […] and hide [herself] for ever afterwards.”
Rosanna recalls her initial conversation with Betteredge at the Sands, and then explicitly ties her suicide back to this prophetic moment, pointing to how the novel’s twists and turns are often embedded in the details of earlier chapters and reminding the reader of the interpretive task—attending to and interpreting clues—central to both reading and police investigations. While Rosanna presents her eventual suicide as a product of guilt over her criminal past, she also makes it clear that her apparently “reformed” life working for the Verinders was by no means a dignified or fulfilling existence.
Themes
Rosanna then reaches the day of the Diamond’s theft. She tried to avoid “the foolish talk among the women servants” as well as Franklin, whom she hated for calling the police. When Seegrave came, she followed his orders; after he asked about the paint smear, Rosanna checked her own nightgowns, but Penelope assured her that the smear could not be her fault, since it must have happened late the night before. It could not have been any of the ladies’ faults, Penelope assured—but Penelope also had no interest in telling this to Seegrave.
In her final communication to the living, Rosanna confirms that—contrary to Cuff’s suspicions and Betteredge’s fears—she had no connection to the theft. Her momentary antagonism toward Franklin again exemplifies the contradictory feelings that give Collins’s characters their depth, as does her insistence on checking her own nightgowns—perhaps like Franklin should have, she was not certain whether she could trust her conscious knowledge that she did not steal the Diamond.
Themes
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Rosanna went on with her work, arranging Franklin’s room—and noticed the stain on his nightgown, which he had left on the bed. In astonishment, she hid the nightgown in her own room and told Penelope about it. She decided not to mention what she suspected Franklin was doing in Rachel’s room so late at night; but she also wonders if Rachel might not have been prudent enough to warn Franklin about the paint. She decided to keep the nightgown, but never suspected Franklin Blake might have stolen the Diamond.
It is unclear whether Rosanna takes Franklin’s gown out of panic, a desire to protect him from the investigation, or an attempt to steal a piece of him for herself. Additionally, Rosanna’s decision to tell Penelope about the nightgown is an important twist, since it both reveals why Penelope was under so much scrutiny and suggests that Betteredge’s narrative might have been far more complete had he simply asked his beloved daughter’s opinion about the investigation (rather than ridiculing whatever opinions she offered).
Themes
At this point, Franklin Blake again interrupts the letter and recognizes that his initial shock about and sympathy for Rosanna have now turned into bitterness. He asks Betteredge to finish reading the letter, which continues below.
Ironically, while Franklin is bitter at Rosanna for her obsession and interference with him, she in fact saved him from being quickly identified as the criminal.
Themes
Rosanna next determined to make an identical nightgown to replace Franklin’s stained one, although first she carefully combed his room for paint stains and erased the small one she found inside the dressing-gown he likely put on over his nightgown. Seegrave then questioned the rest of the servants, and accused Penelope because—in Penelope’s own words, she was “the last person in the sitting-room at night.” Upon hearing this, Rosanna remembered that Franklin Blake was in the sitting-room even later—and immediately decided he must have been the thief, because this allowed her to construe stealing his night-gown as a “means of shielding [him] from being discovered.”
Rosanna has no qualms about the possibility of her beloved Franklin actually being the thief; perhaps this is because of her own past, or because this fact will threaten his chances with Rachel. There is something uneasy about the way she carefully searches Franklin’s room looking for information about him (even though it is her job to clean up after him). This destabilizes the usual boundaries of public and private space, which is particularly uncomfortable for the British aristocracy.
Themes
To get closer to Franklin, Rosanna writes, she then approached him in the library under the pretense of his leaving a ring upstairs—but she is so put off by his “cruel distance” that she decides to provoke him by insisting “they will never find the Diamond” (her way of accusing Franklin of the theft to his face). She feigned illness that night to buy the linen for Franklin’s new nightgown, which she added to his clothing the next day. But then Sergeant Cuff arrived, and she was devastated to be seen as guilty precisely when she thought she was covering for Franklin.
In fact, Franklin and those around him took Rosanna’s bold statement as evidence of her alleged madness and potential guilt—both of which the reader (not to mention Betteredge and Franklin) is forced to reinterpret as rational behavior after reading her account. As she transforms from a sinister to a sympathetic character, Rosanna forces the reader to challenge their assumptions about guilt and innocence—not only because she is revealed to have had purely good intentions, but also because those good intentions contributed to the failure of the investigation and thus Franklin’s ability to get away with the crime.
Themes
Betteredge and Franklin take a break from Rosanna’s letter to talk—Franklin does not want to discuss his reaction until the end of the letter, and he tells Betteredge that Mr. Bruff and Sergeant Cuff are the only other people he can consult about the case. At that moment, “the most remarkable-looking man that [Franklin] had ever seen” walks in. He is old and wrinkled, with unevenly grayed hair and “soft brown eyes.” He offers Betteredge a piece of paper, “the list for next week,” and walks out. Betteredge explains that the man is the assistant to Mr. Candy, who “lost his memory” during his previous illness and can no longer practice medicine. “Nobody likes” this assistant, whose “list” includes the names of poor patients who need wine from the Verinders’ surplus. And he has “as ugly a name as need be,” in Betteredge’s words: “Ezra Jennings.”
Like Limping Lucy’s address to Betteredge at the end of his narrative, this odd scene appears completely out of place in the context of the narrative, but in fact is Collins’s means of dropping a huge, important clue about the direction of the novel in the near future—and the men who can truly help Franklin out. (In fact, so was Mr. Candy’s illness on the night of Rachel’s birthday, which seemed inconsequential until now.) And just like Rosanna and Lucy, Ezra Jennings is outwardly ugly and off-putting—which, in the context of Collins’s other characters, suggests that his personality may be just the opposite.
Themes
Literary Devices
