Moonstone, The by Wilkie Collins ~ April/May Book Club Online

[BarbStAubrey]

The Book Club Online is  the oldest  book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone.  We offer cordial discussions of one book a month,  24/7 and  enjoy the company of readers from all over the world.  Everyone is welcome.

The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins

In T.S. Eliot called The Moonstone "the first and greatest English detective novel." Told from the standpoint of several, very different, very British characters, it is the funny, irreverent, dramatic, romantic, very British story of the theft of an Indian jewel taken from the eye of an idol and then stolen again from a very British country house by mysterious Indians. Come and join us: I'll bet you can't guess "whodunit" and what they did!     Discussion Schedule: April 15-21: Through section XI in Gabriel Betteredge's narrativeo April 21-25:   Betteredge's narrative, up to THE END OF THE FIRST PERIOD April 26-May 1: SECOND PERIOD: first two narratives:Miss Clack and Mr. Bruff May 2-6: the first part of Franklin Blake's narrative, through Chapter VII, ending with "I saw her, and heard her, no more". May 7-11: Franklin Blake's narrative, Chapter VIII to end, all of Ezra Jennings' Narrative. Related Links::Gutenberg electronic text

For Your Consideration
May 7-11: The rest of Franklin Blake's narrative, and all of Ezra Jennings' narrative.

1. Events in this section involve several points of medical science, all accepted as true in Collins’ time.  Which ones are still accepted today?  Does this matter for our enjoyment of the story?

2. Even in their first, casual encounters, Ezra Jennings and Franklin Blake each find the other interesting, hard to forget.  Why would there be such an attraction?

3. Jennings is the latest in a series of characters who are wholly or partly not English in their origin or thoughts.  How does Collins use these traits?

4. Has Collins effectively blended suspense, pathos, and humor in this section?

5. Inspector Cuff has been proven wrong. What is Collins' view of the detective? What is yours?

6. We now know who took the moonstone, but the mystery is not solved. Where do you think the moonstone is and how did it get there?  

DISCUSSION LEADERS: JoanK &  PatH

aha - thanks Pat - got it...!

[JoanP]

Bruff is showing his prejudices' here, both to women and to Jesuits (or more likely Catholics in general).

Fry, this is one more instance of Collins anti-catholic feelings.  Of course we all smiled at the zealous Miss Clack, but even she held the "Popery" in a negative light.  I found some information that might explain what was in Wilkie's mind as he wrote...

William Collins, Wilkie's father had hoped Wilkie would attend Oxford and enter the Church. This did not sit well with Wilkie and the two never came to terms about this.  Also, the elder Collins  was "a Tractarian (?), who despised the Italian Catholicism that he encountered owes in Rome. He had hoped that Wilkie would attend Oxford and enter the Church."

Wilkie was not alone with these views - "Wilkie Collins, that most secular and sensational of nineteenth-century writers, is rarely thought of as a novelist of religious polemic. Yet in 1855 and again in 1881, Collins published two fictions that conform closely to the patterns of anti-Catholic narrative."

I'll go find the article in case you are interested in this aspect of the story...

[JoanP]

"Individual Victorian reading experiences were, of course, diverse, but the majority of those readers who consumed Collins's narratives would have shared a history of experience with anti-Catholic discourse. Reinforcing a set of polemical Protestant prejudices in their audience and presenting the Papacy as a cultural, political, and economic force in nineteenth-century Britain, fictions that borrow from anti-Catholic discourse play on readers' fears, arousing their suspense and subsequent speculation. My argument, then, is not simply that the motifs of no-Popery found their way into sensation fiction (although they did), but that sensationalism's narrative structures, forming and formed by the learned associations of its audience, are borrowed in part from anti-Catholicism."  
Wilkie Collins anti-catholic Discourse

[BarbStAubrey]

As I remember reading earlier about what was going on in history in Europe at the time there was the unification of Italy that meant a reduction in the Vatican State which at that time was a land area of about a third of what is Italy now - both France and Austria were in on the fight and where neither were besom buddies with Britain the heads of these nations were all related one way or another to Queen Victoria. And the Catholics were back in the news - and Britain had not handled well the Potato famine in Ireland which was still fresh in the minds of those who believed the Irish Catholic belonged beyond the Irish Pale. When you read Thackeray at least I was taken back to hear the Irish characters being put down reminiscent of Blacks pre-Civil Rights in this country.  

[JudeS]

Frybabe
You stole my post!
How wonderful---Great minds must think alike, right?

It was a bizarre feeling to read your post since I had written one very much like it and then scrapped it since it was late at night and I wasn't sure  it made sense. When reading the posts this morning my brain said,"Did I send it after all?' But no,
it wasn't my post.It was yours!

The use of the word "Cool" at that period of time really caught my attention.
As to Rosanna's letter, I think Collins was trying to show how intelligent, sensitive and disturbed she was. Perhaps he was gilding the lilly.

[PatH]

I don't think "cool" is used in the slang sense now common.  One of my dictionary definitions is "calmly audacious", which fits its use here.

Rosanna's letter--she had shut herself away in Limping Lucy's room for an hour or so to write it, and in my book it's 13 pages of fine print.  I wonder how long it would really take to write?

[BarbStAubrey]

From the way it rambles repeating some things I think she wrote in a frenzy not thinking but simply dumping her feelings - talk about looking through a glass darkly Franklin must feel that bewildered.

[JoanK]

Remwmber. Betteridge didn't let him read the whole thing at the time (he probably couldn't have stood it), although he had read it by the time he wrote his narrative.

[JoanK]

A lot of prejudices show up in this book. Although Collins was ahead of his time in some ways, he was very much of his time in others. Isn't it interesting how easily I can see prejudices from another time, and how blind I am to my own. I can see my grandchildren years hence saying "She believed THAT!".

I wonder what THAT will be.

[Jonathan]

The notes in my Penguin Classics edition has 'cool' meaning 'impudent' or 'presumptuous' for the 19c reader.

Collins' views of women. Very sympathetic I believe. Very understanding and curious. Flattering. Amused. I think he's quite perceptive in searching the female heart and mind. Of course he finds humor in what they say and do, but the truth is much different and grander. Hidden behind the pieties, Miss Clack reveals a very complicated character. She's very foxy. Would no doubt, have loved to be a lawyer...or a preacher! But she could at least be a Tractarian!!

Collins really pays women a great compliment when he has women pursuing their purpses 'as composedly as if they were Jesuits.' I can't see any anti-catholicism in suggesting women are as clever as the Jesuits in their assurance of the rightness of their thoughts and actions.

Some suicide note. In the form of a love letter. Brilliant insight into the mind and heart of a woman. So very jesuitical? No! Straight from the heart.

[Jonathan]

Don't you agree? Rosanna was very composed writing that long note.

[JudeS]

Jonathan
You brought a thought to mind.
Could Collins have been using Rosanna's letter as an example of what falling in love at first sight feels like?
He obviously had that experience at some point in his life.
He respects the fact that falling in love like that can happen to both women and men. Equal passion.
He appeals to the romantic in all of us in that letter.
Yet , writing it in one hour-? The poor woman missed her calling as a writer of romance novels.

I wonder what  happened between Dickens and Collins?
If I can find one fault with Collins , it is his over identification with EACH of his characters. Whereas Dickens, I've always felt , was able to empathise with a character yet keep at least a modicum of distance betweeen himself and the happenings on the page.

[salan]

I am starting VII.  I am finding portions of this section a little tedious and I find myself getting impatient to get on with the story.  I thought Rosanna's letter showed a little "madness" on her part.
Sally

[JoanP]

Does anyone know who fathered Miss Clack?  We're told she had a happy childhood, until her father was ruined, leaving her to make her way in little town of Brittany...possessed  onf the advantage of a Protestant clergyman,  "a Patmos amid the howling ocean of Popery"

Jonathan - "foxy" well describes Miss Clack! -   She finds everyone around her "spiritually weak" - Rachel, Franklin, Lady Verinder, Penelope, Mr. Betteredge...everyone but Geofrey Ablewhite...Love is blind isn't it?  

Godfrey "does everything right.  This dear man, very complete..."  

Unlike Rosanna, I believe Miss Clack will remain blind to Geofrey's  faults and keep him in her sights until she wins him.  Can't wait to see what Wilkie does with this...

I thought Rosanna's letter showed a little "madness" on her part. Sally

More than a little, I agree with you, Sally!  Imagine reading a letter like this - a year after the young lady has sacrificed her own life for you!
The whole idea of falling in love at first sight interests me. It's something that you can't understand unless you've been through it...  

Collins writes "You have heard of beautiful young ladies falling in love at first sight, and have thought it natural enough." The book he was working on when he died was "Blind Love" - "The virtuous Iris is blinded to his faults and insidiously corrupted by her love for him until she discovers the true enormity of his crime."  (He was a murderer, not a diamond thief.)

I have forgotten - were we told when Rosanna first laid eyes on Franklin?  I remember her mother was "on the streets" - but surely that wasn't where Franklin would have met her.  Wasn't there something said about her mother being abandonned by a wealthy man.  I'm wondering if we will learn who that was.  (My very active imagination has it to be someone in the cast...Franklin's father, which would then make Rosanna Franklin's half-sister.  How about that for a plot? Or Mr. Ablewhite or...)

Rosanna sees Franklin "like a prince in a fairy story, like a lover in a dream."  Poor Franklin, he can't even finish her love  letter - hands it to Betteredge and tells him to let him know if there is anything of importance at the end of it.  Yes, it's a long letter - too long, but Wilkie needed it to explain her feelings and to move his plot along.  This is Franklin's nightgown with the paint stain on it!!! 

[Frybabe]

JoanP, I think that Roseanna indicated that she first say FB at the Virender house. It is not exactly as I expected because from the way she reacted to FB when she met him, I got the distinct impression that she had met him before. I kept waiting to see when she would reveal when they had originally met, or when he would remember/acknowledge her.

[PatH]

We do see Rosanna seeing Franklin for the first time.  It's Franklin's first appearance in the book.  Rosanna and Betteredge are sitting and talking at the Shivering Sands when a voice cries out

" 'Betteredge...where are you?' 'Here' I shouted out in return....Rosanna started to her feet and stood looking towards the voice.  I was just thinking of getting on my own legs next, when I was staggered by a sudden change in the girls face.

Her complexion turned a beautiful red, which I had never seen in it before; she brightened all over with a kind of speechless and breathless surprise.  'Who is it?'  I asked.  Rosanna gave me back my own question.'Oh! who is it?' she said softly, more to herself than to me."

It's Franklin Blake, and as he starts to talk,

"Before I could say a word, I saw Mr. Franklin, a little surprised to all appearance, look up from me to Rosanna.  ...I looked at the girl too.  She was blushing a deeper red than ever, seemingly at having caught Mr. Franklin's eye, and she turned and left us suddenly, in a confusion quite unaccountable to my mind, without either making her curtsey to the gentleman or saying a word to me.

'That's an odd girl,' says Mr. Franklin.  'I wonder what she sees in me to surprise her?' "

[BarbStAubrey]

I wonder if we do learn more about Roseanna - seems odd to me that she even contemplated suicide and in the shivering sands at that - I guess I cannot get to that place where death would be preferable - have a sister who tried to kill herself with a knife when she was a little kid and I never could understand - of course I had no idea how to stop her and of course as the oldest one I was blamed but neither here nor there it was so beyond my ability to take it in I lost all respect for this sister and where I continued to care for her I could no longer care how she thought or what she did. I had an uncle who hung himself and to this day I am still at a loss at how you can make this choice.

I guess I am sharing how to this day this behavior bewilders me while revolting me - I cannot see, no matter how bad your life experience, making this choice - takes the concept of and smashes to oblivion, hope and so I do not understand Roseanna and I could care less who or how she may be related to or know Franklin -  

I see her letter as another diversion to slow down the story while giving a bit of astonishing information about the paint stained nightshirt belonging to Franklin - I think I am like Franklin and would give the letter to someone else to read with the same instruction to only let me know if there is something that I need to do or should know. Bah Humbug -

[JoanK]

JUDE: "If I can find one fault with Collins , it is his over identification with EACH of his characters."

That's a fascinating point. Why do you feel he is too close? Do you think he did this on purpose, or was unaware of it?

What do you all think?

[JoanP]

I'll have to think about that, JoanK.  Because he's chosen to tell the story through the different narrators, they are first-person reports.  He's got to get inside their heads, to get close to them to make them believable to the reader.  Because of her letter, her long letter, Rosanna can also be considered a narrator, as she moved the story along.  Would Wilkie have profited from a good editor?  I'm smiling as I remember that his editor was none other than Charles Dickens - who has already mentioned elsewhere that he found Collins' writing "tiresome."  Makes you wonder why he didn't edit the submitted text.  Maybe he found it all essential to the plot...

Barbara...suicide seems to have beem common in the 19th century - or at least in the sensational 19th century literature...

"For the most part, Victorians feared suicide far more than they did murder. Certainly both acts were subversive, contrary to the Ten Commandments and to Victorian secular notions of self-help and the judicious exercise of willpower, but suicide was more easily internalized than murder. A writer for Temple Bar observed of murder and murderers that "there is always something agreeable to us in the misfortunes of our neighbours, It would certainly seem as though a record of their vices is eminently pleasing." (TB 29) Self-murder, on the other hand, could lead survivors toward a painful self examination in the search for motives. Murder might satisfy the Victorian sense of justice, since murderers could be caught and imprisoned or in turn be killed for their crimes — an eye for an eye — but self-murder, was a personal challenge to the will of God in which human justice could never really intervene. Thus if murder caused sensation among the Victorians, suicide was more often a source of anxiety and disgrace.

Middle-class families took pains to conceal self-destruction, not only because suicide was illegal and considered immoral but also because the insanity plea was the only way of preventing the property of a proven suicide from reverting to the Crown. They faced the awful dilemma of choosing the lesser of two evils: hereditary insanity as a future stigma, or poverty as an immediate prospect, that is, if the suicide were a breadwinner. These alternatives — little better than Dickens's choice of a slow death in the workhouse or a quick one out of it for the poor — were to be avoided at all costs. Even clergymen were enlisted in cover-ups since, until the 1880s, proven suicides could not be buried in consecrated ground.

. Most Victorians, whatever their class or education, had stock assumptions about suicide: it was committed by the unhappy, the lonely, the lovelorn, the mad, the ruined — all poor unfortunates at the end of an emotional tether. Most coroners' inquests looked for such motives.  

http://www.victorianweb.org/books/suicide/03.html

[PatH]

By now, everyone has probably read the current section.  Now is the perfect time, before we read on, to speculate.  What is going on? How is Collins going to get around Rachel's eyewitness account?  Or is he?  Where is the Moonstone now, and how did it get there?  How will Collins resolve this?

[BarbStAubrey]

I am remembering how if you commit suicide you could not be buried in a cemetery but it was probably a Christian cemetery they were talking about and if I remember probably it had something to do with any inheritance because I remember everyone helping my aunt and her 6 children who had to leave the house they were living in - too young to know all the details. And so I can see how Roseanna using the shivering sands kept her death to a minimum of secondary problems - and for that I guess you could say she or Collins does the rest of the characters a favor.

I am sure I am thinking how could they just because life is hard and unfair but then I am like as a kid looking at their choice through not only my eyes but from a mental state that is in control and not so seriously depressed - regardless the Victorian explanation - thanks for that - I still do not know what she had to be punished for that the noble thing was self punishment - a planned death is still something that makes me feel like shutting off and not dealing with it - so I am ready for the next section of this story.

[JoanK]

Tomorrow is our last day on this section. Does anyone feel they need more time?

[Jonathan]

It's just too moving. Even in death Rosanna wants to draw Franklin to herself, to the Quivering Sands where she lies entombed. To the place where they first met. Hers was a hopeless love.

[salan]

I can't believe Rachel saw Franklin take the stone.  I keep thinking that it was someone dressed in Franklin's clothes; but Rachel says that she saw his face.  Was one or the other drugged, or did Franklin actually take the moonstone?  Too many questions.....I must read on.
Sally

[waafer]

Well, now, I have finished reading this book- whew a lot of reading - but had to keep going to find out who did  steal the Moonstone.  I know I did not contribute much but enjoyed reading all.  It did help to see that family tree.  I intended to read next The Women in White by the same author but will wait awhile -  Looking forward to The short stories.   Waafer

[Frybabe]

What a turn of events!

I was quite interested in Collins' giving Jennings (in such an out of the way place) an interest in medical-scientific experiments. He also had Jennings observe that fevers seem to increase at night (I thought that was just me) and that the greatest danger of death comes in the period just before dawn. I've heard that the greatest likelihood occurs around 4am.

[JudeS]

JoanK
What did I mean by over identification with every character?

When Collins writes from a specific character's viewpoint , as he does i this book, we are completely immersed in that person's character and what is going on inside that person's head, heart and even soul. First and foremost we are engaged in that person's narrative to the point that we start identifying with that person.

In other words , we forget the rest of the story and the other people's thoughts and actions. This is brought almost ad absurdum to the forefront in Rosanna's long, literary letter. He doesn't quite pull it off in that case . However when we read Miss Clacks version we forget everything else, even the moonstone.

In this book the only "villains" are people we don't know because we have not had their point of view i.e. Mr. Luker and the Indians . In other words the villains are not fleshed out while the "good people" are given to us too fleshed out.
I don't know if I have made this point clear enough. But perhaps I will find examples of it as we continue.

As a contrast, Dickens fleshes out good and evil more or less equally. If we hate someone we have a flesh and blood person to hate and not a cardboard cutout.
Perhaps that is why Moonstone is a mystery and Dickens books are great literature.

[PatH]

First and foremost we are engaged in that person's narrative to the point that we start identifying with that person.

I'm digressing from the point you were making, Judy, but this is one of the reasons Collins has Rosanna speak for herself, though servants didn't figure much as people in the literature of the time. Collins felt strongly about the random injustice that resulted in unearned misery for people who had bad luck--deserted by a father, born ugly, etc.  He wanted us to understand this woman on the fringe of society.

[PatH]

Someone who doesn't get to speak in her own voice is Rachel Verinder.  Has Collins fleshed her out enough for us to see what she's like?  What about her super-fastidiousness?  She feels degraded by associating with anyone who lacks principles, even if she had no way of knowing their true character.  What will happen as she sees more of the real world, where no one is perfect and we all have weaknesses?

What do you think of her?

[Jonathan]

I will start setting my alarm for 4am, check my heartbeat, and say a prayer for all the souls taking flight from life to...what was it Hamlet was wondering about? Then I wonder what Miss Clack would say. Of course she would say, it's not when you die, but how you die.

Thanks, Jude, for telling us more about what you meant with Collins' over identification re his characters. I am still pondering about how to reply. You make some very good points. I've decided that the mystery of the diamond is the least part of the story. I've enjoyed the way the characters are allowed to tell it the way they see it. In fact they themselves become the story. I wish Rachel and Penelope had been given a chance to contribute their versions. What's the moonstone compared to hot button issues like drugs, romance, religion and human nature?  And each character is a foil for the others. Drusella and Rosanna. Can you imagine a greater contrast in lives?

[JoanK]

Jude: " In other words the villains are not fleshed out while the "good people" are given to us too fleshed out. ...

As a contrast, Dickens fleshes out good and evil more or less equally. If we hate someone we have a flesh and blood person to hate and not a cardboard cutout.
Perhaps that is why Moonstone is a mystery and Dickens books are great literature"

That's a GREAT point. I hadn't thought of it, but you're right.

No one asked for more time, so I guess we're moving on tomorrow (We'll have to get busy with the questions)

Sorry you couldn't wait for us, WAAFER. Maybe you could come in at the end, and give us your impressions.

[JoanK]

Well, SALAN is stumped. So was I. Anyone else have ideas?

[JoanK]

OK, who, beside Waafer, went ahead and finished the book. Fess up. If everyone did, we might as well jump to the end.

[PatH]

 And each character is a foil for the others. Drusella and Rosanna. Can you imagine a greater contrast in lives?

Don't forget that thought, Jonathan; we'll see more of it.

[JoanK]

Pat has put the new questions up.

[Zulema]

Well, I did finish the book and besides it was a library book.  But it means I cannot say anything either, except I think Clack and Rosanna too were padding, or as one of you said more elegantly, brought in to lengthen the book.  I wonder if Rosanna was necessary for the nightgown discovery and hiding, otherwise her behavior seems so gratuitous.  Young women in the 19th century may have committed suicide after they were, shall we say, deluded and abandoned, but suddenly developing an insanely desperate attachment to someone she glimpses from afar and then stalks and fantasizes about?  It doesn't make sense to me except as padding.    And a minor aside, Why is Ezra Jennings' name considered to be so ugly?  Jennings to me is normal English, and we are used to having many Ezra's in earlier American centuries.  Well, that's something I can bring up without spoiling anything.

[JoanK]

Good points, ZULEMA. Did you feel sorry for either Rosanna or Exra? Why are they so repugnant to people?

Anyone else read ahead?

[salan]

I find Rachel very shallow and spoiled.  Everyone seemed to tip toe around her, even the constable couldn't question her.  I'm reading on; but haven't finished the book, yet.  When are we supposed to be finished with it?  I'm about ready for it to end.  Just hope the ending is satisfying.
Sally

[JoanK]

We have over 100 pages to go. Pat and I thought that would be too much in one gulp. so we planned about 70 for tomorrow and another 30 next time. But we can finish in one gulp if everyone wants to.

New questions are up!

[PatH]

The next chunk goes through Ezra Jennings' narrative.  It's a good place to pause, since it solves one part of the mystery but not all.