The Moonstone: Motifs 8 key examples

Blake has become so different he "baffles [Betteredge] altogether." This is conveyed to the reader through Betteredge's impressions of Blake's skin. His rosy cheeks are as gone as his "trim little" childhood clothes, indicating that he's become an adult and lost his youthful flush both physically and spiritually. Because his complexion has "got pale" and he has lost his youthful vigor and sweetness, he seems like a different person "altogether" to Betteredge.

Rachel Verinder is also initially "rosy" but "darkens" later, as she also loses her innocence. The theft of the Moonstone, which symbolizes her loss of physical purity in the novel, takes the "roses" from her cheeks. This seems especially relevant because of how regularly the Moonstone's theft from her bedroom and related events to that theft are linked to the imagery of "rosiness." Rachel gives roses to Franklin Blake, before her "roses" are symbolically taken from her and replaced by flowers Rosanna chooses. Sergeant Cuff, in a conversation in a rose garden in Narrative 2 Chapter 12,  says that he doubts anyone can "Show [him] any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief": a rose is all innocence, and a thief by definition all guilt. He also refers to the damask roses growing at the Verinder house as "a goodish stock for most of the tender sorts" right before Julia Verinder appears in the garden. She is Rachel's mother (her "stock" in Victorian parlance) and Rachel herself is the "tender sort" in question.

Indeed, when the reader first meets Rachel, she's described as being all pink and yellow, flushed and innocent like a flower. Betteredge says in Chapter 18 of the First Period that:

 Miss Rachel came downstairs – very nicely dressed in some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion. [...] She had primrose-colored gloves [...] Her little ears were like rosy shells – they had a pearl dangling from each of them. 

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These colors, and this language of "rosy" blushing, primrose petals, and soft innocence, regularly appear in descriptions of Rachel  until after the Moonstone is stolen. After this happens, although her cheeks still "flush,"  she has lost her "rosiness," and a "dusky" color appears on her face:

Slowly, as if acting under some influence independent of her own will, she came nearer and nearer to me; the warm dusky colour flushing her cheeks [...]

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Dark faces in this novel are aligned with bad or negative characteristics. Collins describes both the metaphorical "face" of the Shivering Sand and the novel's stereotypically depicted Indian characters as having these kinds of complexions. When Rachel gets tangled up in the Moonstone mystery, she both loses her innocence and gains a direct association to these darker things. This symbolically and literally "darkens" her "rosiness" and lends her a "dusky" color instead.

Even though the gem is "flawed," which is a "serious drawback," it's still extremely precious. This discussion immediately follows an observation by Blake Sr. that "the question of accurately valuing it presented some serious difficulties." These "difficulties" set the stage for an extended assessment of Rachel's physical appearance by Mr. Betteredge a little later in the same Period. He describes her as being "one of the prettiest girls your eyes ever looked upon." However, this prettiness is qualified. Rachel is beautiful provided that the "looker" has "no particular prejudice" about any of the many things about her which Betteredge then lists as physical defects or unfashionable traits. Betteredge always aligns Rachel's value with her beauty, as the Moonstone's value is dependent on its appearance.

The stone and Rachel's body are powerfully and repeatedly aligned in the novel, but the Moonstone is also symbolically linked with Rachel's personality. The gem is flawed in its "heart," as characters like Miss Clack and Betteredge believe Rachel to be due to her internal imperfections. These include things like her "straightforwardness" and other characteristics that don't line up with Victorian ideals of femininity.

Finally, the gem also metaphorically represents Rachel's virginity. Virginity was at a premium for unmarried Victorian women, as it wasn't considered socially acceptable to have sex before marriage.  Both the Moonstone and Rachel's "virtue" are depicted as precious possessions with monetary value, which need to be protected. When Franklin Blake comes into Rachel's room at night and "steals" the gem, he symbolically "takes" her virtue, and much of the novel's plot involves the search to get it back. What's more, though Blake "steals" the Moonstone from Rachel, he eventually also marries her. By the end of the novel, then, there's still a "diamond" in the Verinder family even though the Moonstone is gone.  Rachel's "virtue" (even if it's flawed) is restored to her via her marriage. 

In this passage, Betteredge's first-person narration directly addresses the reader and puts Rachel's attractiveness up for interpretation and consideration. Betteredge qualifies his own statements about her beauty several times, noting  the parameters by which Rachel is usually assessed. He says that people will find her pretty if they don't care about what's fashionable, if they like "dark women," and if they don't mind what "size" women are. This is a lot of "ifs" for a passage that ends with the phrase "one of the prettiest girls your eyes ever looked on." Collins provides the reader with a rubric for interpreting Rachel's beauty, just as the novel provides the reader with data to interpret, critique, and assess.

Collins employs these descriptions of Rachel's looks as a motif. Throughout the novel people comment on Rachel's face, body, clothes, and manner. In addition to Betteredge, Miss Clack, Godfrey Ablewhite, Rosanna Spearman, and others all do so at several points. This constant commentary links people's idiosyncratic responses to physical appearance to the novel's argument about the dangers of subjective interpretation. Having your own interpretation of any data, Collins implies, is both important and risky.

This motif of imperfect beauty also aligns Rachel to the Moonstone diamond in a significant way. The Moonstone as an object of value is already associated with Rachel's virginity and purity. She's gifted it on her 18th birthday by the patriarch Colonel Herncastle, "loses" it when a man enters her bedroom, and is then put at social risk because of this loss of her most "precious" asset. What's more, Rachel's looks themselves are also related to the Moonstone in that each has a significant "flaw." Some characters think that the Moonstone's internal "heart-shaped" flaw contributes to its beauty, and some see it as a fault which deprives it of value. Everything, whether it's the appearance of a diamond or the looks of a young woman, is up for subjective interpretation in The Moonstone.

The Shivering Sand moves as if it's alive, even though it's really just an area of quicksand on the Yorkshire coast. The "shiver" that creeps over it gives it its name, but it's also implied that it's scary enough to provoke "shudders" in people who stay to watch the "spirit of terror" hidden beneath its exterior.  Under the surface of both the Moonstone's "yellow deep" and the Shivering Sand is something horrible and alive, which almost every character notices. 

Rosanna Spearman and Franklin Blake have little in common beyond a mutual revulsion for the quicksand. However, their mutual horror of the Sand is detailed so often and with such similar diction by Collins—Rosanna also describes a surface hiding "suffocating people" and "dreadful deeps"—that their eventual "meeting" on its shores after Rosanna's suicide in "The Discovery of the Truth" seems unsurprising. When the sunlight is on it, the Shivering Sand can be very beautiful, as the Moonstone is in the darkness that shows its "moony glow." There is a supernatural eeriness to the "influence" of both of these things, which overpower people in a way that defies reason. People are drawn to the Moonstone in ways which cause them to ruin their own lives. The stone, Collins tells the reader, is cursed for anyone but the devotees of the Moon God, though it exerts an inexplicable influence over everyone who sees it. So does the Shivering Sand,  which "draws" people like Rosanna toward "their graves." Although the Moonstone only has one "flaw" below its surface, and the Shivering Sand is essentially an expanse of deadly mud and dirty water, they are both supernaturally charged with a similar power. Collins portrays these powers in a way which invites the reader's comparison. Both quicksand and diamond are inanimate objects that are inexorably evil on the inside.

Further, Collins also links his descriptions of both to the book's detective story. Sergeant Cuff, the master sleuth who is brought in to solve the mystery of the Moonstone, is always looking for a "motive below the surface," as outlined here in a discussion with Betteredge in Period 1, Chapter 15:

‘Is anything thrown into that quicksand of yours, ever thrown up on the surface again?’ he asked. ‘Never,’ I answered. ‘Light or heavy, whatever goes into the Shivering Sand is sucked down, and seen no more.’

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Betteredge assumes that trying to probe below the surface of the Sand is both dangerous and pointless: whatever one sought would be impossible to locate in the mire. Cuff, however, takes a vested interest in exactly that sort of investigation. Part of his characterization as an excellent sleuth is this inclination to dig deeper than others are willing to. He is always seeking to probe below the surface to find whatever has been "sucked down," whether it's "light or heavy." The "unfathomable depths" of the stone and the sand present a challenge to him and an insurmountable obstacle to others.

Blake has become so different he "baffles [Betteredge] altogether." This is conveyed to the reader through Betteredge's impressions of Blake's skin. His rosy cheeks are as gone as his "trim little" childhood clothes, indicating that he's become an adult and lost his youthful flush both physically and spiritually. Because his complexion has "got pale" and he has lost his youthful vigor and sweetness, he seems like a different person "altogether" to Betteredge.

Rachel Verinder is also initially "rosy" but "darkens" later, as she also loses her innocence. The theft of the Moonstone, which symbolizes her loss of physical purity in the novel, takes the "roses" from her cheeks. This seems especially relevant because of how regularly the Moonstone's theft from her bedroom and related events to that theft are linked to the imagery of "rosiness." Rachel gives roses to Franklin Blake, before her "roses" are symbolically taken from her and replaced by flowers Rosanna chooses. Sergeant Cuff, in a conversation in a rose garden in Narrative 2 Chapter 12,  says that he doubts anyone can "Show [him] any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief": a rose is all innocence, and a thief by definition all guilt. He also refers to the damask roses growing at the Verinder house as "a goodish stock for most of the tender sorts" right before Julia Verinder appears in the garden. She is Rachel's mother (her "stock" in Victorian parlance) and Rachel herself is the "tender sort" in question.

Indeed, when the reader first meets Rachel, she's described as being all pink and yellow, flushed and innocent like a flower. Betteredge says in Chapter 18 of the First Period that:

 Miss Rachel came downstairs – very nicely dressed in some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion. [...] She had primrose-colored gloves [...] Her little ears were like rosy shells – they had a pearl dangling from each of them. 

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These colors, and this language of "rosy" blushing, primrose petals, and soft innocence, regularly appear in descriptions of Rachel  until after the Moonstone is stolen. After this happens, although her cheeks still "flush,"  she has lost her "rosiness," and a "dusky" color appears on her face:

Slowly, as if acting under some influence independent of her own will, she came nearer and nearer to me; the warm dusky colour flushing her cheeks [...]

Cite this Quote

Dark faces in this novel are aligned with bad or negative characteristics. Collins describes both the metaphorical "face" of the Shivering Sand and the novel's stereotypically depicted Indian characters as having these kinds of complexions. When Rachel gets tangled up in the Moonstone mystery, she both loses her innocence and gains a direct association to these darker things. This symbolically and literally "darkens" her "rosiness" and lends her a "dusky" color instead.

Pamphlets accompany Miss Clack as a motif, even though no-one ever reads them. Through this, Collins implies that information on things like the "sinfulness of dress" is not actually "returning good for evil," but actually just spreading nonsense and overly devout misinformation. Clack's self-righteousness and silliness here are pointedly exaggerated. Even the title of the pamphlet itself—which is "devoutly familiar" to Clack—is a ridiculous one, as "cap ribbons" are a foolish thing to call "sinful."

Clack doesn't think much of Rachel's morals, but the reader isn't encouraged to think much of hers, either, in moments like this. She also seems to be the only one reading these tracts, as they are always turned down by people she tries to pass them along to. Penelope refuses to take one in the First Chapter of the First Narrative, and Rachel also refuses to read "Satan Among the Sofa-Cushions" in Chapter 4 of this Period, when the pamphlets make another appearance.

This imagery recurs as a motif throughout the novel whenever Jennings first meets a new person: he's described as a "remarkable-looking man" five times. He is the novel's only mixed-race character. Collins never actually specifies what the other half of Jennings's non-English ethnicity is. However, it is strongly implied to be Indian both through the novel's other Indian contexts, and through the author's description of Jennings's nose, which has "the fine shape and modeling so common to the ancient peoples of the East." There's also the fact that other people can't seem to resist noting how "dark" he is "in the complexion."

Collins refers to the deeply divided nature of the British racial divide when the clerk says that he and his companions "set [Jennings] down in the office for an Indian": the people who are responsible for making records have metaphorically "set him down" or defined him with this identity. These descriptions of Ezra's non-English features are never praise, as everyone says Jennings is "remarkable" in his "ugliness." The word "remarkable" occurs over and over, emphasizing how different Jennings looks from his companions.

Mr Blake, in the fourth chapter of Narrative 3, also describes Jennings as unusual-looking and "remarkable":

the most remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him by his figure and his movements, he was still young. Judging him by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two. His complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a pent-house. From this strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown – eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits – looked out at you [...]

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Blake's description expands on that of the clerk, noting Ezra's unusual features and adding some legal and categorizing language of his own. He "judges" Ezra first by his face, and then by "his figure and his movements." This description is so detailed that it's almost reminiscent of a witness report, furthering the sense of legal categorization. A description of Jennings recurs in Narrative 3 Chapter 9, also by Blake, as if to emphasize that Jennings's startling visual qualities are unforgettable and must somehow relate to his character:

His gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial bones, his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the puzzling contradiction between his face and figure which made him look old and young both together – were all more or less calculated to produce an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger’s mind.

Cite this Quote

Throughout the novel Jennings is depicted as "dreamy," "gaunt," and "old and young both together," all of which are also British cultural stereotypes about people of Indian descent from the 19th century. Even though Jennings isn't specifically named as having Indian heritage, Collins's imagery renders him an almost cartoonish portrait of Indian cultural stereotypes.

The Shivering Sand moves as if it's alive, even though it's really just an area of quicksand on the Yorkshire coast. The "shiver" that creeps over it gives it its name, but it's also implied that it's scary enough to provoke "shudders" in people who stay to watch the "spirit of terror" hidden beneath its exterior.  Under the surface of both the Moonstone's "yellow deep" and the Shivering Sand is something horrible and alive, which almost every character notices. 

Rosanna Spearman and Franklin Blake have little in common beyond a mutual revulsion for the quicksand. However, their mutual horror of the Sand is detailed so often and with such similar diction by Collins—Rosanna also describes a surface hiding "suffocating people" and "dreadful deeps"—that their eventual "meeting" on its shores after Rosanna's suicide in "The Discovery of the Truth" seems unsurprising. When the sunlight is on it, the Shivering Sand can be very beautiful, as the Moonstone is in the darkness that shows its "moony glow." There is a supernatural eeriness to the "influence" of both of these things, which overpower people in a way that defies reason. People are drawn to the Moonstone in ways which cause them to ruin their own lives. The stone, Collins tells the reader, is cursed for anyone but the devotees of the Moon God, though it exerts an inexplicable influence over everyone who sees it. So does the Shivering Sand,  which "draws" people like Rosanna toward "their graves." Although the Moonstone only has one "flaw" below its surface, and the Shivering Sand is essentially an expanse of deadly mud and dirty water, they are both supernaturally charged with a similar power. Collins portrays these powers in a way which invites the reader's comparison. Both quicksand and diamond are inanimate objects that are inexorably evil on the inside.

Further, Collins also links his descriptions of both to the book's detective story. Sergeant Cuff, the master sleuth who is brought in to solve the mystery of the Moonstone, is always looking for a "motive below the surface," as outlined here in a discussion with Betteredge in Period 1, Chapter 15:

‘Is anything thrown into that quicksand of yours, ever thrown up on the surface again?’ he asked. ‘Never,’ I answered. ‘Light or heavy, whatever goes into the Shivering Sand is sucked down, and seen no more.’

Cite this Quote

Betteredge assumes that trying to probe below the surface of the Sand is both dangerous and pointless: whatever one sought would be impossible to locate in the mire. Cuff, however, takes a vested interest in exactly that sort of investigation. Part of his characterization as an excellent sleuth is this inclination to dig deeper than others are willing to. He is always seeking to probe below the surface to find whatever has been "sucked down," whether it's "light or heavy." The "unfathomable depths" of the stone and the sand present a challenge to him and an insurmountable obstacle to others.

This imagery recurs as a motif throughout the novel whenever Jennings first meets a new person: he's described as a "remarkable-looking man" five times. He is the novel's only mixed-race character. Collins never actually specifies what the other half of Jennings's non-English ethnicity is. However, it is strongly implied to be Indian both through the novel's other Indian contexts, and through the author's description of Jennings's nose, which has "the fine shape and modeling so common to the ancient peoples of the East." There's also the fact that other people can't seem to resist noting how "dark" he is "in the complexion."

Collins refers to the deeply divided nature of the British racial divide when the clerk says that he and his companions "set [Jennings] down in the office for an Indian": the people who are responsible for making records have metaphorically "set him down" or defined him with this identity. These descriptions of Ezra's non-English features are never praise, as everyone says Jennings is "remarkable" in his "ugliness." The word "remarkable" occurs over and over, emphasizing how different Jennings looks from his companions.

Mr Blake, in the fourth chapter of Narrative 3, also describes Jennings as unusual-looking and "remarkable":

the most remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him by his figure and his movements, he was still young. Judging him by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two. His complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a pent-house. From this strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown – eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits – looked out at you [...]

Cite this Quote

Blake's description expands on that of the clerk, noting Ezra's unusual features and adding some legal and categorizing language of his own. He "judges" Ezra first by his face, and then by "his figure and his movements." This description is so detailed that it's almost reminiscent of a witness report, furthering the sense of legal categorization. A description of Jennings recurs in Narrative 3 Chapter 9, also by Blake, as if to emphasize that Jennings's startling visual qualities are unforgettable and must somehow relate to his character:

His gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial bones, his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the puzzling contradiction between his face and figure which made him look old and young both together – were all more or less calculated to produce an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger’s mind.

Cite this Quote

Throughout the novel Jennings is depicted as "dreamy," "gaunt," and "old and young both together," all of which are also British cultural stereotypes about people of Indian descent from the 19th century. Even though Jennings isn't specifically named as having Indian heritage, Collins's imagery renders him an almost cartoonish portrait of Indian cultural stereotypes.

For example, Collins spends a great deal of time in this novel making Rosanna Spearman a sympathetic and appealing character, even though she's a thief. Rosanna's thefts were done out of necessity, which qualifies them somewhat in The Moonstone. She was also a skillful thief, and her exploits are both boasted about and regretted by the unfortunate maid in Narrative 3, Chapter 5 of "The Discovery of the Truth":

In the days when I was a thief, I had run fifty times greater risks, and found my way out of difficulties to which this difficulty was mere child’s play. I had been apprenticed, as you may say, to frauds and deceptions – some of them on such a grand scale, and managed so cleverly, that they became famous, and appeared in the newspapers.

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Rosanna, who is poor and doesn't have a lot of choices in how she's allowed to live, steals because she must. The reader is allowed to take pleasure in and even admire this, as she describes her crimes as being "cleverly managed." Some of her more recent thefts are also described in a sympathetic way: her "theft" of Rachel's roses is an act of love for Blake. She's a thief, but not a villain.

Another instance of this contradictory motif occurs in the prologue. The unknown narrator describes the theft of the Moonstone and other treasures from the city of  Seringapatam as "plunder." This "plunder" is viewed as "bad" theft by the British Army, but the theft of land and resources from the inhabitants of Mysore when Seringapatam is not.

In Prologue 3, during the "taking" of Seringapatam, the narrator tells the reader that "the plunder still going on, General Baird announced publicly [...] that any thief detected in the fact [...], should be hung." Stealing tangible, portable objects from the Indian population is depicted as being morally reprehensible to the British. However, the larger problem of colonial violence and exploitation which they are there to enforce is not. Even though Seringapatam is both literally and metaphorically  "taken" by the British during this attack, the colonizers didn't consider this enormous larceny to be stealing. Soldiers aren't allowed to steal treasure, but it's fine for Britain to "take" a city.

So many things are stolen in The Moonstone, both large and small, that it's hard to keep track of them all. The motif of theft appears in every chapter. Almost anything  can be stolen in this novel, whether it's a real object or something abstract: Rachel Verinder's honor, real roses and the "roses" of flushed cheeks, colonies, letters, secrets, the truth. All of these thefts are morally nuanced by the author. They are presented mostly as discrete actions by complex characters, not everlasting moral blights.

Blake has become so different he "baffles [Betteredge] altogether." This is conveyed to the reader through Betteredge's impressions of Blake's skin. His rosy cheeks are as gone as his "trim little" childhood clothes, indicating that he's become an adult and lost his youthful flush both physically and spiritually. Because his complexion has "got pale" and he has lost his youthful vigor and sweetness, he seems like a different person "altogether" to Betteredge.

Rachel Verinder is also initially "rosy" but "darkens" later, as she also loses her innocence. The theft of the Moonstone, which symbolizes her loss of physical purity in the novel, takes the "roses" from her cheeks. This seems especially relevant because of how regularly the Moonstone's theft from her bedroom and related events to that theft are linked to the imagery of "rosiness." Rachel gives roses to Franklin Blake, before her "roses" are symbolically taken from her and replaced by flowers Rosanna chooses. Sergeant Cuff, in a conversation in a rose garden in Narrative 2 Chapter 12,  says that he doubts anyone can "Show [him] any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief": a rose is all innocence, and a thief by definition all guilt. He also refers to the damask roses growing at the Verinder house as "a goodish stock for most of the tender sorts" right before Julia Verinder appears in the garden. She is Rachel's mother (her "stock" in Victorian parlance) and Rachel herself is the "tender sort" in question.

Indeed, when the reader first meets Rachel, she's described as being all pink and yellow, flushed and innocent like a flower. Betteredge says in Chapter 18 of the First Period that:

 Miss Rachel came downstairs – very nicely dressed in some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion. [...] She had primrose-colored gloves [...] Her little ears were like rosy shells – they had a pearl dangling from each of them. 

Cite this Quote

These colors, and this language of "rosy" blushing, primrose petals, and soft innocence, regularly appear in descriptions of Rachel  until after the Moonstone is stolen. After this happens, although her cheeks still "flush,"  she has lost her "rosiness," and a "dusky" color appears on her face:

Slowly, as if acting under some influence independent of her own will, she came nearer and nearer to me; the warm dusky colour flushing her cheeks [...]

Cite this Quote

Dark faces in this novel are aligned with bad or negative characteristics. Collins describes both the metaphorical "face" of the Shivering Sand and the novel's stereotypically depicted Indian characters as having these kinds of complexions. When Rachel gets tangled up in the Moonstone mystery, she both loses her innocence and gains a direct association to these darker things. This symbolically and literally "darkens" her "rosiness" and lends her a "dusky" color instead.

In this section, Jennings explains to Blake that opium is the only painkiller, or "palliative," that makes his life bearable, providing a "respite of many years" from his agony. However, he knows that the drug itself is very damaging to him, and his addiction to it has taken over his life. He is "feeling the penalty at last."  Opium use in this (and many other) Victorian novels is linked to the book's narratives of virtue and good moral behavior. Through his depiction of Jennings's addiction to the drug, Collins suggests that the addicted are morally weak. The "penalty" that Jennings faces for his addiction is a moral one as well as a physical one, as his society alienates and  "punishes" him for his addiction. Even his odd, prematurely elderly and "gaunt" appearance—which people find so disturbing and "remarkable"—is described as being partially a consequence of his drug use.

Opium is also a substance deeply associated with British colonialism in India, as British sites on the subcontinent exported and sold a huge amount of the drug from the 17th century onwards. The fact that Ezra is the novel's only half-English character, and also its only drug addict, also contributes to Collins's stereotypical portrayal of people from Britain's colonies in the global South. Indian characters in English novels are often depicted as childlike, morally weak, and susceptible to vices. Given this association, it's unremarkable that Jennings cannot kick the habit, while Blake seems to be unaffected by cravings.

However, the motif of opium use also supports Jennings's characterization as a man of science and learning. When Jennings discusses the effects of opium with Blake, he points him to volumes in his library, and asks that his companion:

Observe, Mr Blake, before you begin, that I am now referring you to one of the greatest of English physiologists. The book in your hand is Doctor Elliotson’s Human Physiology; and the case which the doctor cites, rests on the well-known authority of Mr Combe [...]  ‘Are you satisfied that I have not spoken without good authority to support me?’ he asked. ‘If not, I have only to go to those bookshelves, and you have only to read the passages which I can point out to you.’

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Jennings references contemporary scientific theories and discoveries from the "greatest of English physiologists." He invites Blake to conduct his own research into the matter, and to back up the assertions he makes with references. Opium use in The Moonstone thus occupies a nebulous position between mysticism and science, as does Ezra Jennings himself.

This imagery recurs as a motif throughout the novel whenever Jennings first meets a new person: he's described as a "remarkable-looking man" five times. He is the novel's only mixed-race character. Collins never actually specifies what the other half of Jennings's non-English ethnicity is. However, it is strongly implied to be Indian both through the novel's other Indian contexts, and through the author's description of Jennings's nose, which has "the fine shape and modeling so common to the ancient peoples of the East." There's also the fact that other people can't seem to resist noting how "dark" he is "in the complexion."

Collins refers to the deeply divided nature of the British racial divide when the clerk says that he and his companions "set [Jennings] down in the office for an Indian": the people who are responsible for making records have metaphorically "set him down" or defined him with this identity. These descriptions of Ezra's non-English features are never praise, as everyone says Jennings is "remarkable" in his "ugliness." The word "remarkable" occurs over and over, emphasizing how different Jennings looks from his companions.

Mr Blake, in the fourth chapter of Narrative 3, also describes Jennings as unusual-looking and "remarkable":

the most remarkable-looking man that I had ever seen. Judging him by his figure and his movements, he was still young. Judging him by his face, and comparing him with Betteredge, he looked the elder of the two. His complexion was of a gipsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a pent-house. From this strange face, eyes, stranger still, of the softest brown – eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits – looked out at you [...]

Cite this Quote

Blake's description expands on that of the clerk, noting Ezra's unusual features and adding some legal and categorizing language of his own. He "judges" Ezra first by his face, and then by "his figure and his movements." This description is so detailed that it's almost reminiscent of a witness report, furthering the sense of legal categorization. A description of Jennings recurs in Narrative 3 Chapter 9, also by Blake, as if to emphasize that Jennings's startling visual qualities are unforgettable and must somehow relate to his character:

His gipsy-complexion, his fleshless cheeks, his gaunt facial bones, his dreamy eyes, his extraordinary parti-coloured hair, the puzzling contradiction between his face and figure which made him look old and young both together – were all more or less calculated to produce an unfavourable impression of him on a stranger’s mind.

Cite this Quote

Throughout the novel Jennings is depicted as "dreamy," "gaunt," and "old and young both together," all of which are also British cultural stereotypes about people of Indian descent from the 19th century. Even though Jennings isn't specifically named as having Indian heritage, Collins's imagery renders him an almost cartoonish portrait of Indian cultural stereotypes.