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 and Betteredge turn from Ezra Jennings back to the end of Rosanna’s letter, which Franklin hopes to use to generate a fruitful conversation with Mr. Bruff and score a meeting with Rachel.
Franklin begins wondering what the letter can do for him—and, in doing so, appears to give up on empathizing with Rosanna.
Themes
Rosanna’s letter continues with her attempts to hide Franklin’s nightgown just as Sergeant Cuff—whom she knew from her days as a petty criminal—begins to look for it in the servants’ quarters. Rosanna’s few attempts to speak with Franklin proved unsuccessful, and she began to consider suicide a better alternative to “bear[ing] Mr. Franklin Blake’s indifference to me.” And she also cannot explain why she never simply brought up her belief that Franklin Blake had the jewel—she could have promised to defend him or help him sell it. Indeed, in her criminal days she took far steeper risks and far greater measures. She can only attribute her weakness in this moment to her love for Franklin.
While her story is a stereotypical tragedy about a woman unable to control or withstand her emotions, Rosanna is far from a standard hopeless woman—rather, her downfall comes from the tension between her deep romantic love (which she cannot achieve) and her practical, logical sensibilities (which would deprive her of a full life, leaving her as an obedient servant forever, if she were to follow them completely). These are not only competing forces in her psyche, but also competing images of what a female character can be in Victorian literature; Rosanna’s struggle to bridge the sexless, plain, practical, lower-class woman and the idealized girl in love (usually a wealthy protagonist) is what drives her to destruction.
Themes
Literary Devices
Penelope eventually came to talk with Rosanna and promise her that Rachel would be leaving soon, and that Franklin Blake would follow soon after her. Rosanna is distraught to know that she and Franklin will be driven apart, and even more so to hear that Rachel was angry with Franklin but not vice-versa.
Rosanna sees that her plan has backfired: she realizes once and for all that Franklin’s only interest is in Rachel, and that he will never recognize what she does for him (not to mention fall in love with her).
Themes
Sergeant Cuff then began questioning the servants, and insinuated strongly to Rosanna that he thought her responsible for the theft (although not its mastermind). He “was miles away from knowing the whole truth,” but Rosanna was still in danger, and so she decided to hide Franklin’s nightgown in the Shivering Sand (for destroying it would mean doing away with “the only thing [she] had which proved [she] had saved [him]”).
Rosanna’s decision to hide rather than destroy Franklin’s nightgown not only left the story with an essential plot twist, but also allowed her to make a definitive record and proof of her actions and motivations, which were invisible to everyone else during her life because of her status in the family and the others’ suspicion toward her.
Themes
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This is how Rosanna ended up in the Yollands’ house in Cobb’s Hole, writing such a lengthy letter to Franklin. She planned to speak her love and reveal her knowledge of his apparent crime in case he decided to leave the estate. If Franklin rejected her again, the letter explained, Rosanna planned to kill herself. She closes the letter by noting that she has begun to cry and writing that she is hopeful about Franklin’s response in the future.
As Rosanna grows increasingly obsessed with Franklin, everything else in her life—like her plans to leave Yorkshire and move to London with Limping Lucy—fly out the window. Rosanna becomes desperate and willing to take a final stand because she sees that Franklin does not even understand what he is to her.
Themes
When Betteredge finishes this letter the first day Franklin encounters it, he reveals that “there is nothing to guide you” within it and encourages Franklin not to read it yet. In retrospect, Franklin understands that Betteredge also knew about Rosanna’s two final attempts to talk with him, both of which he rejected without realizing Rosanna’s true motives. While the thought of Rosanna’s fate still pains him, Franklin writes, he has no more to say about it and so he continues narrating his resumed search for the Moonstone.
Franklin is caught between his genuine pity for Rosanna and sense of personal responsibility for her death, on the one side, and his continued desire for Rachel and refusal to accept responsibility for the Diamond’s theft he knows he did not commit (but seems quite undeniably to have committed), on the other. Ultimately, even after Rosanna’s death and confession, Franklin never takes her seriously or even considers thinking of her as an equal.
Themes
