The Moonstone

The same object has been kept in view, in the handling of the other characters which appear in these pages. […] Right, or wrong, their conduct, in either event, equally directs the course of those portions of the story in which they are concerned.

––Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, preface

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Object consciousness is central to the story of The Moonstone. The diamond that Wilkie Collins describes in his 1862 preface as being constantly “kept in view” is the sole focus of the narrative as it is relayed in the written accounts of the novel’s characters. (3) Only through this “view” of the Moonstone is the audience granted a glimpse into the personal sentiments and interactions of the characters who create these accounts. This focus of the gem is primarily mental. It occupies space within the conscience of the narrators and remains persistent throughout the novel’s duration.

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The mystery of the Moonstone originates in the disappearance of the diamond on the night of Rachel Verinder’s eighteenth birthday. She is gifted the Moonstone by Franklin Blake who has been charged to deliver it at the request of the dying John Herncastle. The novel begins its accounts of the Indian diamond with the tale of its bloody acquisition by Herncastle in the Siege of Seringapatam. The narratives are then reported from different points of view, beginning with Gabriel Betteredge, House Steward of the Verinders. The Moonstone uses this narrative technique to capture the concrete events surrounding the diamond to construct a sensible and linear narrative of its whereabouts. Different characters' rooted sentiments and biases are displayed as they relay their experiences with respect to time. The hyper-fixation on the Moonstone consequentially allows the object to become a character itself. The differing narrators’ existence is streamlined through the Moonstone itself which permits or denies their presence within the diegesis.

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The idea of spectatorship seems to dominate the telling of Collins’ novel. It can be said that The Moonstone is composed of different forms of viewing––both inside the life of the story and outside of it. The novel heavily involves itself with acts of seeing and looking. Its construction relies upon perspectives that are presented to the reader of the events revolving around the central object. Different gazes and sightlines are crucial to the novel’s aesthetic, particularly in its presentation as a documentative portrayal of these fictional events. In this sense, the reader of The Moonstone can be said to be more involved as a viewer or spectator of the narrative. The characters within the world of the novel are spectators in that they concentrate their energies toward the “view” of the diamond. They take what they gather to have seen in such events and relay it with their biased perceptions.

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The reader is included in witnessing the spectacle of each account and forming their own conclusions regarding the story. This point does not only speak for The Moonstone but rather an overwhelming majority of detective fiction, where the engagement of the reader is deeply important. The characters and readers of the story witness the spectacular events involved in solving a crime. The solving of the mystery in crime fiction mends the mysterious and nonlinear events as similarly displayed in the cases of detective heroes such as Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes or Christie’s Jane Marple. This parallel alone does not distinguish the spectatorial nature of Collins’ novel; it is, however, critical to understanding the kind of literary viewership that is present in the genre. With The Moonstone, it is the variety of perspectives that are streamlined through a conscious “view” of the diamond, as well as its epistolary form, which permits a phenomenological experience of viewership for both reader and character. In The Moonstone, events and emotions are not described––they are seen. The screening of these sentiments as well as the object consciousness in its narrative style can lead us to establish a connection between The Moonstone and cinema. Betteredge notes in the conclusion of his section of the narrative: “In the matter of the Moonstone the plan is, not to present reports, but to produce witnesses.” (197) While these matters are physically reported to the viewer through written text, the narrative of The Moonstone’s asserts itself as being visual, portraying varied images. Given this, we may employ the language of film and its ontologies that intensely grapple with understanding the narrative experience of sight and visuality, applying it to Collins’ novel. The construction and spectacle of The Moonstone allow the literary act of reading and writing to function simultaneously as an act of viewing––creating a deeper intimacy between the two mediums through the functions of spectatorship.

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What must be initially distinguished is the simple fact Collins’ 1862 novel cannot have any direct linkages to film which began its emergence in England about thirty years after The Moonstone’s first publication. We can, however, invite a cinematic discourse indirectly through an acknowledgment of Collins’ background in painting and the theatre. These arts have proven to be fundament in establishing the basis of cinematic thought and theory due to their visual qualities. It can be of immense use to consider classical film theorist André Bazin’s perspectives on the relationship and influences shared between cinema and the arts. An assertion of just how we may approach the daunting task of analyzing literature through a cinematic lens is posited in Bazin’s “In Defense of Mixed Cinema”.

 What do we mean by “cinema” in our present context? If we mean a mode of expression by means of realistic representation, by a simple registering of images, simply an outer seeing as opposed to the use of the resources of introspection or of analysis in the style of the classical novel, then it must be pointed out that the English novelists had already discovered in behaviorism the psychological justifications for such a technique. […] The truth is that the vast majority of images on the screen conform to the psychology of the theater or to the novel of classical analysis. (63)

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What permits The Moonstone to operate within the filmic language is particularly its means of acting on a simplistic level as the “outer seeing” that Bazin describes. While the written account of Betteredge and company does often employ its “resources of introspection” that are naturally bound with literature, the emphasis of sight that is inherent to the art of cinema is a “technique” argued to have already been tied with prose writers. With The Moonstone, Collins can be said to be one of these authors.

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The Moonstone is keen in its attention to theatrics and the staging of the body. This is prominent in Ezra Jennings’ empirical investigation and reenactment of the night of Rachel Verinder’s birthday. In the sequence, Franklin Blake takes a dosage of opium to replay the same events as the past incident in the hopes of discovering where the diamond has gone to. Something comparable to a set is created to replicate with the authenticity of the state of the Verinder household as it was on the night of the crime. With this, Ezra hopes “to revive the old impressions of places and things as vividly as possible in [Mr. Franklin’s] mind.” (412) Collins presents the attempts to stage a close imitation of reality. The viewer of such a scene perceives, feels, and experiences something that is closely associated with their own conceptions of reality in a similar experience to that of what is witnessed in a film or play. Bazin’s “psychology of the theater” comes back when thinking of how Ezra’s staging of this opium scene works as a mimesis and reinterpretation of reality in Rachel’s birthday.

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Here the scene involves a live performance on Mr. Franklin’s part and a particular observation of it from Ezra, making it in this sense close in proximity to the experience of theater. This may be extended, however, to the assertion that Ezra’s capturing of this scene with the writing makes the moment more cinematic. His writing acts as the recording and observing mediator––a camera––between the real event within the story and its projection to the audience. As Ezra’s purposes in his experiment are stated in this scene to be “purely medical” he is utilized by Collins to act as a constantly observing apparatus analogous to the basic functions of a camera. (412) The opium scene is a particularly rich example of the fixated view on the Moonstone––even if it is a recreated fake diamond as in this scene––and succeeds in capturing the novel’s aesthetic obsession with sightlines and viewership. The writing of Franklin’s actions freezes the moment in time as a spectacle to be screened once again to the reader from Ezra’s journal. Here we see that although The Moonstone is of course not cinema, these qualities of seeing that are expressed through writing can certainly be denominated as cinematic.

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Film scholar David Bordwell writes in detail about the narrative theories of cinema and points himself to Bazin’s assertions that “a normal narrative film… is like a photographed play, with the changes in camera position selecting and stressing certain details.” (Bordwell 9) Moving from the theatrical nature of the opium scene and unpacking the implications of viewership that work within The Moonstone, it is important to note that the novel exists also off the limitations of the narrators’ view. Having several reporters in Collins’ novel allows for the different views to stress these “certain details” that may include a focus on a certain person’s interactions with other characters or the space around them. There is no omniscient narrator, no commanding conscience, so the inability of one character to perceive and articulate the whole ordeal of the Moonstone is what invites the unique narrative quality of having several observers. Bordwell continues with the early film theory establishment of the “invisible observer”, which posits the metaphor for the camera as a “perspectival eye”. (9) In this sense, the camera exists as a pair of human eyes, a real observer, within the scene of a film––documenting it. Ezra Jennings in the opium scene is the invisible pair of eyes that serves as this “invisible observer”. Within the world of The Moonstone, this idea becomes of use when thinking of how each narrator and their written report acts as a set of eyes, an “invisible observer”, that gazes on the diamond.

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The formal structure of The Moonstone and its reliance on multiple characters to narrate the story is rooted in the fact that each character’s view of the Moonstone is limited. Each of these limitations does not halt the reader’s experience, who themselves are granted a far more “idealized” view than the fragmented pieces of each singular account. (Bordwell 10) This idea from Bordwell is related in that the camera’s placement in the scene of a film may is always in an “idealized” position to observe a scene or exchange between characters. The reader of Collins’ novel is only subjected to the consciousness and view of Betteredge in the beginning. When Betteredge’s understanding and reported observation of the events that surround the Moonstone is halted, the reader is granted the privilege to assume the object consciousness of Miss Clack, Mr. Bruff, Mr. Franklin, and so on. Culminating the bits of perspective in the novel creates one wholly “ideal” observer that can project the events to the reader. (10) The singular accounts of those like Betteredge are not considered “ideal”, as they have a limit in what is being presented. The expression of varied consciousness in The Moonstone’s narrative places the reader as an idealized implied viewer of the scenes. The narrative form caters to the viewer’s complete and uninterrupted understanding of the plot. If there were only one narrator such as Betteredge, the unideal and insufficient view of the Moonstone becomes lost once the general interest in the diamond moves away from the Verinder household.

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The reader physically transitions to a new state of consciousness as Betteredge parts with the audience and directs them to follow the “Indian Diamond”, writing that “to London you must go after it, leaving me at the country-house.” (Collins 197) Referring again to Collins’ prefatory statement, the “view” on the Moonstone also implies that the narrators of the novel only exist through this object. Once Betteredge lays down the pen to Miss Clack, his voice, his sentiments, and the values which he has imposed onto the reader’s view are now subject to be contradicted by a new writer. Understanding his new “companionable” feelings as an author with his reader, he expresses his fear in Miss Clack’s perspectives towards himself, advising the reader to “do [him] the favour of not believing a word she says”. (195) Each narrator incites new opinions and emotions for the reader as each account carries certain beliefs and biases that are imposed upon them. While the viewer of The Moonstone does become placed in the eyes of these “idealized” character positions to capture––like a camera––the events of the novel, the mystery involving the disappearance of the Moonstone remains unknown in its retelling. They are meticulously placed within these perspectives by Franklin Blake who can be said to function as a director of this “film”, placing the “camera” in certain positions to emphasize the “certain details” that Bazin has posited. This does come as some sort of limit to the viewer’s advantageous position within the diegesis but is a defining factor in the thrill of mystery within the detective genre. The Moonstone’s reader cannot see everything––but sees enough that influences their own cognitive involvement in creating hypotheses and conclusions regarding the solving of the crime.

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Considering the wider genre of detective fiction in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, we notice how the viewership is differentiated from The Moonstone. Due to the nature of Sherlock Holmes’ scientific “deductions”, the reader of Doyle’s novel is placed in a less idealized view for the involvement within the story. (Clark 9) The narrative runs through the conscience of Dr. Watson who operates on a similarly inferior cognitive level with the reader in comparison to Holmes (at least regarding the crime). Elaborated detail and staging of the events before and after the crime are not quite as closely described from Watson’s limited view as they are in the different perspectives of Collins’ novel. Observation within A Study in Scarlet focuses on the spectacle of Sherlock Holmes, whose ability to draw rational conclusions from the minute evidence of the murders inspires entertainment and wonder within the reader. Dr. Watson and the reader sit on the exterior of the crime and gaze upon Holmes, who himself is involved in the scientific and medical observation needed to resolve Jefferson Hope’s crime. The exposition of his views comes at different points where Watson and the reader are allowed to be caught up with Holmes’ perspective, only to be left behind again shortly after to observe the detective in his unique work. The Moonstone conjoins the characters and the reader to the same level of understanding in the progression of the narrative as the mysteries of the diamond are constantly looming and seemingly out of reach for all––even for Sergeant Cuff, who at times carries a similar charisma and confidence in understanding that Holmes projects. Since the gaze of the reader and narrator in Collins’ novel rests on the diamond, the Moonstone itself may truly be what represents the superior sense of knowledge seen in a Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple. Like the detective hero, the diamond asks for the attention of one’s gaze.

 

The lives of the narrators run through the singular Moonstone which itself seems to become a character of the story. The diamond’s presence is briefly physical when Rachel is first gifted the diamond. Its spectacle is captured by Betteredge when Rachel flashes it before him. He writes: “When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else.” (Collins 74) The diamond has a consistent domination over the mental space of Collins’ novel, but in this scene, we see how it dominates the physical space as well. The view of the Moonstone in this sense is important as it can permit the connection of another theory of cinematic observation. French philosopher and theorist Gilles Deleuze details in The Movement Image that objects in cinema themselves are able to take life and become “faceified”, meaning that they carry their own set of eyes which gaze and reflect back into the audience. Since there are multiple layers to the way that observation works in Collins’ novel, this faceifaction works on levels inside and outside of the diegesis. The Moonstone becomes so centralized as the singular object of spectatorship in every account, that they see “nothing else” besides it. The elusive diamond becomes facecified and, in a way, gazes back.

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The diamond itself becomes an “observer” that acts as the set of eyes within the life of the story. The object itself carries the view that “directs the course” of the narrative as it watches the characters interact in the events that unfold in the Moonstone’s absence. It is these interactions revolving around the diamond that influence the intriguing mystery in the experience of the novel. The Moonstone stares back at those within the life of the story who report an account of its whereabouts. It simultaneously gazes back reflectingly on the reader who fixates on the diamond, trying to piece together a coherent understanding of the mystery. The Moonstone reveals itself to be the omniscient character of the narrative, standing as the medium between the reader and the characters of the story. In this way, the hyper-fixation on the gem affects it to really become the “invisible observer”. The diamond, even in its physical absence, becomes the camera that captures and records the actions of the novel, while the written reports from the characters function to project these scenes. Because the narrative requires the mental and physical energies of the characters to be exerted on uncovering the secrets of the diamond, it can be said that the Moonstone is the one that truly observes the play of interactions and dramatics that unfold in the quest for its discovery.

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The success of The Moonstone in developing the complicated ideas of viewership is demonstrated in Collins’ ability to articulate the different consciences that narrate through different eyes set upon the central diamond. The novel associates itself with a certain spectatorial technique that is portrayed and implied through the written word, displaying its scenes and interactions to the reader in a visual manner. With this, we consider the different ways in which spectatorship can function within the diegesis and outside of it. With the employment of cinematic language and theory can we think of the narrator of The Moonstone as an “invisible observer” within the diegesis that projects the plot events to the reader. The Moonstone itself also becomes characterized, working as this kind of observer, due to its centralized position in the narrative of the object “in view”. The work of film theorists and their perspectives become useful in describing how spectatorship works in cinema to present a narrative. The Moonstone achieves a certain visual life through its narrative form that is founded around the singular object. Collins’ novel can arise as a particularly important example of the influence of literature on cinema, inciting a deeper understanding of how these two mediums so closely exist and function despite their formal and technical differences.

 

 

Works Cited

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone, first published 1868. Penguin Books, 1998.

Bazin, André. “In Defense of Mixed Cinema”, from What is Cinema?, University of California Press, 2004.

Bordwell, David. “Mimetic Theories of Narration”, from Narration in the Fiction Film, 1987.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. A Study in Scarlet, 1887.

Deleuze, Gilles. The Movement-Image, 1983.