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= The_Moonstone =
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Introduction
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'The Moonstone: A Romance' by Wilkie Collins is an 1868 British
epistolary novel. It is an early example of the modern detective
novel, and established many of the ground rules of the modern genre.
Its publication was started on 4 January 1868 and was completed on 8
August 1868. The story was serialised in Charles Dickens's magazine
'All the Year Round.' Collins adapted 'The Moonstone' for the stage in
1877.
Etymology
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The Moonstone of the title is a diamond (not to be confused with the
semi-precious moonstone gem). It has gained its name from its
association with the Hindu god of the Moon, Chandra. It is protected
by three hereditary guardians on the orders of Vishnu, and waxes and
wanes in brilliance along with the light of the Moon.
Plot outline
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Rachel Verinder, a young English woman, inherits a large Indian
diamond on her eighteenth birthday. It is a legacy from her uncle, a
corrupt British army officer who served in India. The diamond is of
great religious significance and extremely valuable, and three Hindu
priests have dedicated their lives to recovering it. The story
incorporates elements of the legendary origins of the Hope Diamond (or
perhaps the Orloff Diamond or the Koh-i-Noor). Rachel's eighteenth
birthday is celebrated with a large party at which the guests include
her cousin Franklin Blake. She wears the Moonstone on her dress that
evening for all to see, including some Indian jugglers who have called
at the house. Later that night the diamond is stolen from Rachel's
bedroom, and a period of turmoil, unhappiness, misunderstandings and
ill luck ensues. Told by a series of narratives from some of the main
characters, the complex plot traces the subsequent efforts to explain
the theft, identify the thief, trace the stone and recover it.
Plot summary
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Colonel Herncastle, an unpleasant former soldier, brings the Moonstone
back with him from India where he acquired it by theft and murder
during the Siege of Seringapatam. Angry at his family, who shun him,
he leaves it in his will as a birthday gift to his niece Rachel, thus
exposing her to attack by the stone's hereditary guardians, who will
stop at nothing to retrieve it.
Rachel wears the stone to her birthday party, but that night it
disappears from her room. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who
have been near the house; on Rosanna Spearman, a maidservant who
begins to act oddly and who then drowns herself in a local quicksand;
and on Rachel herself, who also behaves suspiciously and is suddenly
furious with Franklin Blake, with whom she has previously appeared to
be enamoured, when he directs attempts to find it. Despite the efforts
of Sergeant Cuff, a renowned Scotland Yard detective, the house party
ends with the mystery unsolved, and the protagonists disperse.
During the ensuing year there are hints that the diamond was removed
from the house and may be in a London bank vault, having been pledged
as surety to a moneylender. The Indian jugglers are still nearby,
watching and waiting. Rachel's grief and isolation increase,
especially after her mother dies, and she first accepts and then
rejects a marriage proposal from her cousin Godfrey Ablewhite, a
philanthropist who was also present at the birthday dinner and whose
father owns the bank near Rachel's old family home. Finally Franklin
Blake returns from travelling abroad and determines to solve the
mystery. He first discovers that Rosanna Spearman's behaviour was due
to her having fallen in love with him. She found evidence (a paint
smear on his nightclothes) that convinced her that he was the thief
and concealed it to save him, confusing the trail of evidence and
throwing suspicion on herself. In despair at her inability to make him
acknowledge her despite all she had done for him, she killed herself,
leaving behind the smeared gown and a letter he did not receive at the
time because of his hasty departure abroad.
Now believing that Rachel suspects him of the theft on Rosanna's
evidence, Franklin engineers a meeting and asks her. To his
astonishment she tells him she actually saw him steal the diamond and
has been protecting his reputation at the cost of her own even though
she believes him to be a thief and a hypocrite. With hope of redeeming
himself he returns to Yorkshire to the scene of the crime and is
befriended by Mr. Ezra Jennings, the assistant of Dr. Candy, the
doctor. They join to continue the investigations and learn that
Franklin was secretly given laudanum during the night of the party (by
Mr. Candy, who wanted to exact vengeance on Franklin for criticising
medicine); it appears that this, in addition to his anxiety about
Rachel and the diamond and other nervous irritations, caused him to
take the diamond in a narcotic trance, to move it to a safe place. A
re-enactment of the evening's events confirms this, but how the stone
ended up in a London bank remains a mystery solved only a year after
the birthday party when the stone is redeemed.
Franklin and his allies trace the claimant to a seedy waterside inn,
only to discover that the Indians have got there first: the claimant
is dead and the stone is gone. Under the dead man's disguise is none
other than Godfrey Ablewhite, who is found to have embezzled the
contents of a trust fund in his care and to have been facing exposure
soon after the birthday party. The mystery of what Blake did while in
his drugged state is solved: he encountered Ablewhite in the
passageway outside Rachel's room and gave the Moonstone to him to be
put back in his father's bank, from which it had been withdrawn on the
morning of the party to be given to Rachel. Seeing his salvation,
Ablewhite pocketed the stone instead, and pledged it as surety for a
loan to save himself temporarily from insolvency. When he was
murdered, he was on his way to Amsterdam to have the stone cut; it
would then have been sold to replenish the plundered trust fund before
the beneficiary inherited. The mystery is solved, Rachel and Franklin
marry, and in an epilogue from Mr. Murthwaite, a noted adventurer, the
reader learns of the restoration of the Moonstone to the place where
it should be, in the forehead of the statue of the god in India.
Characters
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* Rachel Verinder is the fiery and independent daughter of the
Verinder family. Throughout much of the book, she believes that her
lover Franklin Blake stole the diamond
* Julia, Lady Verinder (née Herncastle) is her mother, a wealthy
widow. She is devoted to her daughter, and summons Sergeant Cuff to
investigate the theft of the Moonstone
* Colonel John Herncastle is a professional soldier and the brother of
Lady Verinder. He is suspected of foul deeds during the Siege of
Seringapatem in India; he gained the Moonstone by unlawful means
(namely murder and theft)
* Gabriel Betteredge is a venerable man and the Verinders' head
servant. He bases his personal philosophy around the book 'Robinson
Crusoe', and frequently uses quotes from it to apply to different
situations. He narrates the first section of the novel, and assists
Sergeant Cuff in his investigations
* Penelope Betteredge is the daughter of Gabriel, and is also a
servant in the household
* Rosanna Spearman is the second housemaid of the Verinders. A lonely
figure, she was once placed in a penitentiary for theft, and so
suspected of the theft of the diamond. She is infatuated with Franklin
Blake and attempts to protect him; she eventually commits suicide in
the Shivering Sands
* Drusilla Clack is a poor cousin of Rachel Verinder and the second
narrator of the novel. A comical character, she is an unpleasant,
hypocritical meddler who attempts to distribute religious tracts that
she does not actually believe in. She idolizes Godfrey Ablewhite
* Franklin Blake is an adventurer and amateur detective. He is also a
cousin and suitor of Rachel. It is established that he stole the
Moonstone unwittingly under the influence of opium. At the end of the
novel, Rachel and Franklin are married
* Godfrey Ablewhite is a philanthropist and lay preacher. He is a
cousin of Rachel Verinder who becomes engaged to her in order to steal
her fortune; he is the true thief of the Moonstone, and is eventually
murdered by Hindu priests anxious to recover it
* Mathew Bruff is the family solicitor and the third narrator of the
book. He reveals Godfrey Ablewhite's true motives to Rachel Verinder
* Sergeant Cuff is a famous detective with a penchant for roses. He is
commissioned by Lady Verinder to solve the theft of the diamond, and
despite being later discharged he is able to find the true culprit. He
is an early example of the police detective in English crime fiction
* Dr Thomas Candy is the family physician, who loses the ability to
speak coherently after recovering from a fever. Offended by Franklin
Blake's comments on the profession of medicine, he doses him with
laudanum as a jest, setting the events of the plot in motion
* Ezra Jennings is Dr Candy's unpopular and odd-looking assistant. He
suffers from an incurable illness and uses opium to control the pain.
His knowledge of this allows him to use opium to reveal the memories
of Franklin Blake, solving the mystery. He is the fourth narrator in
the book
* Superintendent Seegrave is an ineffective police officer who
accidentally insults several members of the Verinder household before
Sergeant Cuff is able to take over
* Mr Murthwaite is a noted adventurer who has travelled frequently in
India. He provides the epilogue to the story, in which he sees the
Moonstone restored to its rightful place
* Septimus Luker is a moneylender. He has at one point possession of
the Moonstone, before passing it on to Godfrey Ablewhite
* Lucy Yolland is a neighbour of the Verinders who is the confidential
friend of Rosanna Spearman
* The Indian jugglers are three disguised Hindu Brahmins who are
determined to recover the diamond.
Background
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In researching the novel, Collins primarily drew on texts such as
Charles William King's 'The Natural History of Precious Stones and
Gems and of the Precious Metals' (1865), Sir David Baird's
autobiography and James Talboys Wheeler's 'The History of India'
(1867). As well as this, he consulted various explorers to provide him
first-hand information about Indian culture in order to increase the
veracity of his book. At this early stage, the book's title was 'The
Serpent's Eye'.
The final novel was serialised in the periodical 'All the Year Round'
from 4 January to 8 August 1868, as well as simultaneously in the
American publication 'Harper's Magazine'. This period was affected by
several difficulties in Collins' life. His mother, Harriet Collins,
died on 19 March 1868, and his presence at her bedside caused the
novel to fall behind schedule. He also began to suffer a painful
attack of gout, which he described in a preface to the 1871 edition as
"the bitterest affliction of my life and the severest illness from
which I have ever suffered". To dull the pain, Collins took large
amounts of laudanum, resulting in portions of the novel to be written
in a drug-induced haze. He would later comment that he did not recall
writing these passages. Considering the substantial role the
memory-altering effects of opium have in the plot of the novel, this
seems significant. 'The Moonstone' was eventually published in book
form by William Tinsley on 16 July 1868; it was dedicated to his
mother.
Themes
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A major theme of the novel is the intrusion of imperialism on everyday
English life. Lynn Pykett argues that "the main narrative of 'The
Moonstone' concerns the disruption of the tranquility and order of
genteel English life by a colonial legacy." The events of the plot are
set into motion by Colonel John Herncastle's unlawful theft of the
Moonstone in India, and, in leaving the diamond to Rachel Verinder in
his will, he is perpetuating his crime. It is only when the diamond is
returned to its rightful owners that the 'curse' can be lifted. Pykett
also comments that the contradictory forces of feminine passion and
silence provide the conflict of the novel, "[Sergeant] Cuff is
defeated by the silence of women (Rachel and Rosanna), by feminine
reticence (Lady Verinder), and the failure of individual women to
conform to dominant stereotypes of femininity".
Literary significance
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The book is regarded by some as the forerunner of the modern mystery
novel and the suspense novel. T. S. Eliot called it "the first, the
longest, and the best of modern English detective novels in a genre
invented by Collins and not by Poe," and Dorothy L. Sayers praised it
as "probably the very finest detective story ever written". G. K.
Chesterton calls it "probably the best detective tale in the world".
Graham Greene argues that 'The Sign of Four' is derived "a little too
closely" from it. It was published in 1868, later than Poe's short
story mysteries "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) (which
introduced the famous locked-room paradigm), "The Mystery of Marie
Rogêt" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1845). The plot also shows
some parallels with 'The Hermitage' (1839), an earlier murder mystery
story by the English novelist Sarah Burney: for example, the return of
a childhood companion, the sexual symbolism of defloration implied in
the crime, and the almost catatonic reactions of the heroine to it.
'The Moonstone' introduced a number of the elements that became
classic attributes of the twentieth-century detective story in novel
form, as opposed to Poe's short story form. These include:
* an English country house robbery
* an "inside job"
* red herrings
* a celebrated, skilled, professional investigator
* a bungling local constabulary
* detective enquiries
* a large number of false suspects
* the "least likely suspect"
* a reconstruction of the crime
* a final twist in the plot.
Franklin Blake, the gifted amateur, is an early example of the
gentleman detective. The highly competent Sergeant Cuff, the policeman
called in from Scotland Yard (whom Collins based on the real-life
Inspector Jonathan Whicher who solved the murder committed by
Constance Kent), is not a member of the gentry and is unable to break
Rachel Verinder's reticence about what Cuff knows is an inside job.
'The Moonstone' has also been described as perhaps the earliest police
procedural, due to the portrayal of Cuff. The social difference
between Collins's two detectives is shown by their relationships with
the Verinder family: Sergeant Cuff befriends Gabriel Betteredge, Lady
Verinder's steward (chief servant), whereas Franklin Blake eventually
marries her daughter Rachel.
A number of critics have suggested that Charles Felix (pseudonym for
Charles Warren Adams), in his 'Notting Hill Mystery' (1862-1863),
first used techniques that came to define the genre.
'The Moonstone' represents Collins's only complete reprisal of the
popular "multi-narration" method that he had previously used to great
effect in 'The Woman in White'. The sections by Gabriel Betteredge
(steward to the Verinder household) and Miss Clack (a poor relative
and religious crank) offer both humour and pathos through their
contrast with the testimony of other narrators, at the same time
constructing and advancing the novel's plot.
The novel was Collins's last great success, coming at the end of an
extraordinarily productive period in which four successive novels
became bestsellers. After 'The Moonstone' Collins wrote novels
containing more overt social commentary that did not achieve the same
audience.
A fictionalised account of Collins's life while writing 'The
Moonstone' forms much of the plot of Dan Simmons's novel 'Drood'
(2009).
Adaptations
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'The Moonstone' had a great influence on other authors of the time,
and books inspired by Collins' work quickly began appearing. Charles
Dickens' 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' (1870) also features the theme
of opium addiction, as well as several Anglo-Indian characters.
Anthony Trollope's 'The Eustace Diamonds' (1873) was written to tap
into the thread of popular interest that Collins' novel caused, with
the central plot revolving around the investigation of stolen jewels.
A later book inspired by Wilkie Collins is Philip Pullman's 'The Ruby
in the Smoke' (1985).
The novel was made into several silent films during the first few
decades of the twentieth century. A 1909 film version, 'The
Moonstone', was produced by William Nicholas Selig, although no copies
have since survived. Another silent film, 'The Moonstone', was
directed in 1915 by Frank Hall Crane.
In 1934, the book was made into a film, 'The Moonstone' by Monogram
Pictures Corporation. Adapted to the screen by Adele S. Buffington, it
was directed by Reginald Barker, and starred David Manners, Charles
Irwin and Phyllis Barry.
On 11 March 1945, "The Moonstone" was episode number 67 of the U.S.
radio series 'The Weird Circle'.
In 1946, 'Classic Comics', the predecessor of 'Classics Illustrated',
published in comic book format the novel in issue #30, with cover and
artwork by Don Rico. The adaptation was re-published in 1960 with
cover and artwork by L.B. Cole.
On 15 April 1947, an adaptation of "The Moonstone" was episode #47 of
the NBC radio series 'Favorite Story' hosted by Ronald Colman. On 16
November and 23 November 1953, "The Moonstone", starring Peter
Lawford, was broadcast as a two-part episode of the U.S. radio drama
"Suspense".
In 1959, the BBC adapted the novel as a television serial starring
James Hayter.
In 1972, a further BBC adaptation was made, featuring Robin Ellis.
This second version was aired in the United States on PBS's
'Masterpiece Theatre'.
In 1972, an Italian TV version of the novel, entitled "La pietra di
luna" was broadcast on the RAI, the Italian National Network. It was
directed by Anton Giulio Majano, who had already directed adaptations
from Dickens, Thackeray, and Stevenson.
In 1974, a German version, ', was produced by Westdeutscher Rundfunk
for television.
In November 1977, Marvel Comics released a comic-book adaptation of
the book in issue #23 of the "Marvel Classics Comics" series.
A radio adaptation aired in seven thirty minute episodes on BBC Radio
4 in 1979.
In 1996, 'The Moonstone' was made for television by the BBC and
Carlton Television in partnership with WGBH of Boston, Massachusetts,
airing again on 'Masterpiece Theatre'. It starred Greg Wise as
Franklin Blake and Keeley Hawes as Rachel Verinder.
In 1998, a fifteen episode radio dramatization, with each episode
lasting fifteen minutes, aired on the BBC World Service. This was
written by Micheline Wandor.
In 2011, BBC Radio 4 serialised the story in four hour-long episodes
in the 'Classic Serial' slot with Eleanor Bron as Lady Verinder, Paul
Rhys as Franklin Blake, Jasmine Hyde as Rachel Verinder and Kenneth
Cranham as Sergeant Cuff.
In 2016, the BBC adapted the novel for a five-part afternoon TV series
'The Moonstone' starting 31 October 2016.
In December 2018, Screen14 Pictures, a team that produces fictional
stories' adaption for the web, created a serialised web series of the
novel on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
In April 2020, the novel was read in serialized fashion by Phoebe
Judge of 'Criminal' on her 'Phoebe Reads a Mystery' podcast.
External links
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*
* [
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL176092W/The_moonstone The
Moonstone] on Open Library
*
*
License
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moonstone
