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
Betteredge writes that the Diamond was a gift to his “lady’s daughter,” and so an appropriate starting place will be the story of his lady herself. Anyone “of the fashionable world” knows about “the three beautiful Miss Herncastles,” Adelaide, Caroline, and Julia. Betteredge explains that he began by working for their father, whose temper was notorious, and later moved to work with Julia and her husband Sir John Verinder (who has since died). Both John and Julia thought Betteredge indispensable, and Betteredge loved them both. Julia made Betteredge their lands’ bailiff, and with a cottage, interesting work, and Robinson Crusoe, all Betteredge needed in life was a woman. He ended up marrying Selina Goby, who took care of his cottage, chiefly because he would no longer have to pay her room and board. Lady Julia broke out in laughter when Betteredge explained his motives.
Betteredge’s meticulous, loquacious personality allows Collins to offer the reader important background information about the novel’s central characters. As the Verinders’ land manager and then butler, Betteredge virtually worships his employers, and clearly he is beloved by them, too. This illustrates how class relations transform into personal attitudes, but also how Betteredge sits in the middle between his aristocratic employers and the servants over whom he presides. His marriage shows both his utterly practical mindset (with everything except Robinson Crusoe, his one pleasure in life) and his regressive views on gender: he does not bother to include or consider Selina’s perspective on the matter. Indeed, in Victorian Britain marriage was often more about property and class than about love, and these two tendencies remain in tension throughout the book.
Themes
And yet, Betteredge continues, everyone he talked to regretted marrying; he, too, got cold feet and “tried to get out of” the wedding. In accordance with British law, Betteredge offered Goby payment, but she refused. His marriage was neither satisfying nor unhappy—he and Goby just got “in another’s way” all the time. He was glad when she died, Betteredge admits, and Lady Julia raised his only daughter, Penelope, to be the maid to her own only daughter, Miss Rachel.
Strangely, Betteredge begins to question his marriage not out of personal feeling but because others tell him about their own regrets. His practical, emotionless mindset never changes, and so Betteredge’s ability to feel boundless reverence for things he respects (e.g. the Verinders, Robinson Crusoe) contrasts bizarrely with his inability to feel normal human emotions for and about his wife.
Themes
At Christmas in 1847, Betteredge recalls, Lady Julia gifted him a wool waistcoat for his 50 years of service. He was deeply grateful until he realized her offering was a bribe to get him to leave his job and work in the house instead, which he agreed to do after some persuasion. He read Robinson Crusoe to cope.
Again, Beteredge’s personal pride drives him to internal conflict—but Julia clearly knows how to appeal to it in order to get him to take a less strenuous role. As he ages, Betteredge appears unwilling to acknowledge his own limits.
Themes
Betteredge remarks that Penelope read his writings so far; she finds his account “beautifully written,” but complains that it tells his own story, not that of the Diamond. He decides to start over once again.
Betteredge’s apparent self-absorption continues to complicate his outward humility, but also give the reader valuable background information. He evidently trusts his daughter Penelope, unlike his wife.
Themes
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