The Moonstone

The Moonstone

by

Wilkie Collins

Franklin Blake Character Analysis

Rachel Verinder’s cousin and love interest, as well as one of the novel’s chief detective figures, and the compiler and editor of all the first-person narratives that comprise it. Educated abroad, he returns to Yorkshire at the beginning of the novel after more than a decade, at the age of 25, with the Moonstone that his uncle John Herncastle has left for Rachel as a birthday present. The other characters mostly remember his mischievous boyhood and the rumors about his wasteful spending habits and monumental debts. Having heard about the Diamond’s alleged curse, Franklin is unsurprised when it disappears and quickly throws himself into the search for it, but far later he is astonished to learn that he was the Diamond’s thief. In the meantime, during his search, he is struck by Rachel’s increasing distance from him and the increasingly odd behavior of the servant Rosanna Spearman—both, it turns out, are in love with him, know he stole the Diamond, and want to cover his tracks. In the last third of the book, Franklin leads the push to prove his innocence and uncover what happened to the Diamond after he unwittingly took it. Eventually he is successful, and he and Rachel marry at the end of the novel. Other characters have much to say about him—most notably, Betteredge calls him “a sort of universal genius” but finds his indecision problematic (which Betteredge attributes to his conflicting English, French, German, and Italian sides). Nevertheless, Franklin’s own narratives are comparatively dry and straightforward. Yet, precisely because of his editorial hand, it is impossible to know how much has been left out, or removed, from the novel’s various narratives.

Franklin Blake Quotes in The Moonstone

The The Moonstone quotes below are all either spoken by Franklin Blake or refer to Franklin Blake . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Detective Methods and Genre Standards Theme Icon
).
The Loss of the Diamond: 4 Quotes

“Do you know what it looks like to me?” says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. “It looks as if it had hundreds of suffocating people under it - all struggling to get to the surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a stone in, Mr Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let's see the sand suck it down!”
Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach feeding on an unquiet mind!

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Rosanna Spearman (speaker), Franklin Blake
Related Symbols: The Shivering Sand
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
The Loss of the Diamond: 5 Quotes
If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond—bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man.
Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , The Three Indians, Colonel John Herncastle
Related Symbols: The Moonstone
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:
The Loss of the Diamond: 9 Quotes

Lord bless us! it roar a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover's egg! The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon. 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. It seemed unfathomable; this jewel, that you could hold between your finger and thumb, seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves. We set it in the sun, and then shut the light out of the room, and it shone awfully out of the depths of its own brightness, with a moony gleam, in the dark. No wonder Miss Rachel was fascinated: no wonder her cousins screamed. The Diamond laid such a hold on me that I burst out with as large an 'O' as the Bouncers themselves.

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , Miss Rachel Verinder
Related Symbols: The Moonstone
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
The Loss of the Diamond: 20 Quotes

People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves—among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on as. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be. I don't complain of this—I only notice it.

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , Miss Rachel Verinder, Sergeant Cuff, Rosanna Spearman, Penelope Betteredge
Page Number: 167-8
Explanation and Analysis:
The Loss of the Diamond: 23 Quotes

“Where’s this gentleman that I mustn’t speak of, except with respect? Ha, Mr. Betteredge, the day is not far off when the poor will rise against the rich. I pray Heaven they may begin with him. I pray Heaven they may begin with him.”

Related Characters: Limping Lucy (speaker), Franklin Blake , Gabriel Betteredge, Rosanna Spearman, Mrs. Yolland
Page Number: 192
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 1: 1 Quotes

Pecuniary remuneration is offered to me—with the want of feeling peculiar to the rich. I am to re-open wounds that Time has barely closed; I am to recall the most intensely painful remembrances—and this done, I am to feel myself compensated by a new laceration, in the shape of Blake's cheque. My nature is weak. It cost me a hard struggle, before Christian humility conquered sinful pride, and self-denial accepted the cheque.

Related Characters: Miss Drusilla Clack (speaker), Franklin Blake
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 202
Explanation and Analysis:

*NOTE. Added by Franklin Blake — Miss Clack may make her mind quite easy on this point. Nothing will be added, altered, or removed, in her manuscript, or in any of the other manuscripts which pass through my hands. Whatever opinions any of the writers may express, whatever peculiarities of treatment may mark, and perhaps in a literary sense, disfigure, the narratives which I am now collecting, not a line will be tampered with anywhere, from first to last. As genuine documents they are sent to me—and as genuine documents I shall preserve them; endorsed by the attestations of witnesses who can speak to the facts. It only remains to be added, that “the person chiefly concerned' in Miss Clack's narrative, is happy enough at the present moment, not only to brave the smartest exercise of Miss Clack's pen, but even to recognize its unquestionable value as an instrument for the exhibition of Miss Clack’s character.

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Miss Drusilla Clack
Page Number: 202
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 3: 3 Quotes

“Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? And a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet? It will lay hold of you at Cobb's Hole, Mr. Franklin. I call it the detective-fever; and I first caught it in the company of Sergeant Cuff.”

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , Sergeant Cuff, Rosanna Spearman
Page Number: 308
Explanation and Analysis:

The nightgown itself would reveal the truth; for, in all probability, the nightgown was marked with its owner's name.

I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark.

I found the mark, and read —

MY OWN NAME.

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Rosanna Spearman
Related Symbols: The Shivering Sand
Page Number: 314
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 3: 7 Quotes

“If you had spoken when you ought to have spoken,” I began: “if you had done me the common justice to explain yourself—”

She broke in on me with a cry of fury. The few words I had said seemed to have lashed her on the instant in to a frenzy of rage.

“Explain myself!” she repeated. “Oh! is there another man like this in the world? I spare him, when my heart is breaking; I screen him when my own character is at stake; and he—of all human beings, he—turns on me now, and tells me that I ought to have explained myself ! After believing in him as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking of him by day, and dreaming of him by night—he wonders I didn't charge him with his disgrace the first time we met: ‘My heart's darling, you are a Thief! My hero whom I love and honour, you have crept into my room under cover of the night, and stolen my Diamond!’ That is what I ought to have said. You villain, you mean, mean, mean villain, I would have lost fifty Diamonds, rather than see your face lying to me, as I see it lying now!”

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Miss Rachel Verinder (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Moonstone
Page Number: 352
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 3: 8 Quotes

If the excellent Betteredge had been present while I was considering that question, and if he had been let into the secret of my thoughts, he would, no doubt, have declared that the German side of me was, on this occasion, my uppermost side. To speak seriously, it is perhaps possible that my German training was in some degree responsible for the labyrinth of useless speculations in which I now involved myself. For the greater part of the night, I sat smoking, and building up theories, one more profoundly improbable than another. When I did get to sleep, my waking fancies pursued me in dreams. I rose the next morning, with Objective-Subjective and Subjective-Objective inextricably entangled together in my mind; and I began the day which was to witness my next effort at practical action of some kind, by doubting whether I had any sort of right (on purely philosophical grounds) to consider any sort of thing (the Diamond included) as existing at all.

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Gabriel Betteredge
Page Number: 360-1
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 3: 9 Quotes
He had suffered as few men suffer; and there was the mixture of some foreign race in his English blood.
Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Ezra Jennings
Page Number: 371
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 4 Quotes

“Speaking as a servant, I am deeply indebted to you. Speaking as a man, I consider you to be a person whose head is full of maggots, and I take up my testimony against your experiment as a delusion and a snare. Don’t be afraid, on that account, of my feelings as a man getting in the way of my duty as a servant! You shall be obeyed. The maggots notwithstanding, sir, you shall be obeyed. If it ends in your setting the house on fire, Damme if I send for the engines, unless you ring the bell and order them first!”

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , Ezra Jennings
Page Number: 405
Explanation and Analysis:

“I wish I had never taken it out of the bank,” he said to himself. “It was safe in the bank.”

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Gabriel Betteredge, Mr. Bruff, Ezra Jennings
Related Symbols: The Moonstone
Page Number: 423
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 5 Quotes

“It's only in books that the officers of the detective force are superior to the weakness of making a mistake.”

Related Characters: Sergeant Cuff (speaker), Franklin Blake
Page Number: 437
Explanation and Analysis:

“Robbery!” whispered the boy, pointing, in high delight, to the empty box.
“You were told to wait downstairs,” I said. “Go away!”

“And Murder!” added Gooseberry, pointing, with a keener relish still, to the man on the bed.

There was something so hideous in the boy's enjoyment of the horror of the scene, that I took him by the two shoulders and put him out of the room.

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Gooseberry (speaker), Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, Sergeant Cuff
Page Number: 447
Explanation and Analysis:
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Franklin Blake Quotes in The Moonstone

The The Moonstone quotes below are all either spoken by Franklin Blake or refer to Franklin Blake . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Detective Methods and Genre Standards Theme Icon
).
The Loss of the Diamond: 4 Quotes

“Do you know what it looks like to me?” says Rosanna, catching me by the shoulder again. “It looks as if it had hundreds of suffocating people under it - all struggling to get to the surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a stone in, Mr Betteredge! Throw a stone in, and let's see the sand suck it down!”
Here was unwholesome talk! Here was an empty stomach feeding on an unquiet mind!

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Rosanna Spearman (speaker), Franklin Blake
Related Symbols: The Shivering Sand
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
The Loss of the Diamond: 5 Quotes
If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond—bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man.
Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , The Three Indians, Colonel John Herncastle
Related Symbols: The Moonstone
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:
The Loss of the Diamond: 9 Quotes

Lord bless us! it roar a Diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover's egg! The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon. 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. It seemed unfathomable; this jewel, that you could hold between your finger and thumb, seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves. We set it in the sun, and then shut the light out of the room, and it shone awfully out of the depths of its own brightness, with a moony gleam, in the dark. No wonder Miss Rachel was fascinated: no wonder her cousins screamed. The Diamond laid such a hold on me that I burst out with as large an 'O' as the Bouncers themselves.

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , Miss Rachel Verinder
Related Symbols: The Moonstone
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
The Loss of the Diamond: 20 Quotes

People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves—among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on as. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be. I don't complain of this—I only notice it.

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , Miss Rachel Verinder, Sergeant Cuff, Rosanna Spearman, Penelope Betteredge
Page Number: 167-8
Explanation and Analysis:
The Loss of the Diamond: 23 Quotes

“Where’s this gentleman that I mustn’t speak of, except with respect? Ha, Mr. Betteredge, the day is not far off when the poor will rise against the rich. I pray Heaven they may begin with him. I pray Heaven they may begin with him.”

Related Characters: Limping Lucy (speaker), Franklin Blake , Gabriel Betteredge, Rosanna Spearman, Mrs. Yolland
Page Number: 192
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 1: 1 Quotes

Pecuniary remuneration is offered to me—with the want of feeling peculiar to the rich. I am to re-open wounds that Time has barely closed; I am to recall the most intensely painful remembrances—and this done, I am to feel myself compensated by a new laceration, in the shape of Blake's cheque. My nature is weak. It cost me a hard struggle, before Christian humility conquered sinful pride, and self-denial accepted the cheque.

Related Characters: Miss Drusilla Clack (speaker), Franklin Blake
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 202
Explanation and Analysis:

*NOTE. Added by Franklin Blake — Miss Clack may make her mind quite easy on this point. Nothing will be added, altered, or removed, in her manuscript, or in any of the other manuscripts which pass through my hands. Whatever opinions any of the writers may express, whatever peculiarities of treatment may mark, and perhaps in a literary sense, disfigure, the narratives which I am now collecting, not a line will be tampered with anywhere, from first to last. As genuine documents they are sent to me—and as genuine documents I shall preserve them; endorsed by the attestations of witnesses who can speak to the facts. It only remains to be added, that “the person chiefly concerned' in Miss Clack's narrative, is happy enough at the present moment, not only to brave the smartest exercise of Miss Clack's pen, but even to recognize its unquestionable value as an instrument for the exhibition of Miss Clack’s character.

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Miss Drusilla Clack
Page Number: 202
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 3: 3 Quotes

“Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? And a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet? It will lay hold of you at Cobb's Hole, Mr. Franklin. I call it the detective-fever; and I first caught it in the company of Sergeant Cuff.”

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , Sergeant Cuff, Rosanna Spearman
Page Number: 308
Explanation and Analysis:

The nightgown itself would reveal the truth; for, in all probability, the nightgown was marked with its owner's name.

I took it up from the sand, and looked for the mark.

I found the mark, and read —

MY OWN NAME.

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Rosanna Spearman
Related Symbols: The Shivering Sand
Page Number: 314
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 3: 7 Quotes

“If you had spoken when you ought to have spoken,” I began: “if you had done me the common justice to explain yourself—”

She broke in on me with a cry of fury. The few words I had said seemed to have lashed her on the instant in to a frenzy of rage.

“Explain myself!” she repeated. “Oh! is there another man like this in the world? I spare him, when my heart is breaking; I screen him when my own character is at stake; and he—of all human beings, he—turns on me now, and tells me that I ought to have explained myself ! After believing in him as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking of him by day, and dreaming of him by night—he wonders I didn't charge him with his disgrace the first time we met: ‘My heart's darling, you are a Thief! My hero whom I love and honour, you have crept into my room under cover of the night, and stolen my Diamond!’ That is what I ought to have said. You villain, you mean, mean, mean villain, I would have lost fifty Diamonds, rather than see your face lying to me, as I see it lying now!”

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Miss Rachel Verinder (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Moonstone
Page Number: 352
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 3: 8 Quotes

If the excellent Betteredge had been present while I was considering that question, and if he had been let into the secret of my thoughts, he would, no doubt, have declared that the German side of me was, on this occasion, my uppermost side. To speak seriously, it is perhaps possible that my German training was in some degree responsible for the labyrinth of useless speculations in which I now involved myself. For the greater part of the night, I sat smoking, and building up theories, one more profoundly improbable than another. When I did get to sleep, my waking fancies pursued me in dreams. I rose the next morning, with Objective-Subjective and Subjective-Objective inextricably entangled together in my mind; and I began the day which was to witness my next effort at practical action of some kind, by doubting whether I had any sort of right (on purely philosophical grounds) to consider any sort of thing (the Diamond included) as existing at all.

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Gabriel Betteredge
Page Number: 360-1
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 3: 9 Quotes
He had suffered as few men suffer; and there was the mixture of some foreign race in his English blood.
Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Ezra Jennings
Page Number: 371
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 4 Quotes

“Speaking as a servant, I am deeply indebted to you. Speaking as a man, I consider you to be a person whose head is full of maggots, and I take up my testimony against your experiment as a delusion and a snare. Don’t be afraid, on that account, of my feelings as a man getting in the way of my duty as a servant! You shall be obeyed. The maggots notwithstanding, sir, you shall be obeyed. If it ends in your setting the house on fire, Damme if I send for the engines, unless you ring the bell and order them first!”

Related Characters: Gabriel Betteredge (speaker), Franklin Blake , Ezra Jennings
Page Number: 405
Explanation and Analysis:

“I wish I had never taken it out of the bank,” he said to himself. “It was safe in the bank.”

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Gabriel Betteredge, Mr. Bruff, Ezra Jennings
Related Symbols: The Moonstone
Page Number: 423
Explanation and Analysis:
The Discovery of the Truth 5 Quotes

“It's only in books that the officers of the detective force are superior to the weakness of making a mistake.”

Related Characters: Sergeant Cuff (speaker), Franklin Blake
Page Number: 437
Explanation and Analysis:

“Robbery!” whispered the boy, pointing, in high delight, to the empty box.
“You were told to wait downstairs,” I said. “Go away!”

“And Murder!” added Gooseberry, pointing, with a keener relish still, to the man on the bed.

There was something so hideous in the boy's enjoyment of the horror of the scene, that I took him by the two shoulders and put him out of the room.

Related Characters: Franklin Blake (speaker), Gooseberry (speaker), Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, Sergeant Cuff
Page Number: 447
Explanation and Analysis: