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The Discovery of the Truth 2: 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Moonstone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Detective Methods and Genre Standards
Intention, Identity, and Personality
Science and Religion
Gender and Victorian Morality
Class, Wealth, and Nobility
British Imperialism
Summary
Analysis
Bruff turns to the Moonstone. His information is important because of its relevance to “events which are still to come.” Roughly a week after Rachel left his house, a foreign man comes to Bruff’s office with a card bearing the recommendation of Septimus Luker. Bruff’s clerk explains that the man looks Indian, and Bruff realizes that he may have something to say about the Moonstone, so he gives him an interview. This “highly unprofessional sacrifice to mere curiosity” is justifiable because of Bruff’s connection to the Moonstone mystery: he was also Herncastle’s lawyer and played a key role in convincing Franklin Blake to bring the Moonstone to the Verinder estate.
Now that the tale of Julia’s death and Rachel’s ill-fated engagement to Godfrey has been settled, the narrative turns back to the Moonstone, which quickly resurfaces in London. The Indian’s visit is bold and potentially threatening (given how the men mugged Godfrey and Luker), but luckily Bruff’s sense of duty to the Verinders, even if “highly unprofessional” in a technical sense, puts him closer than anyone has been to guessing at the Indians’ side of the story, and using their leads to restart the family and their allies’ own investigation.
Themes
Bruff immediately determines that the “mysterious client” is one of the Indian jugglers, likely “the chief.” In “excellent” English, the man apologizes for the inconvenience and brings out a small jeweled box, which he offers as collateral on a loan he hopes to take out. (Mr. Luker, the Indian explained, does not have the money to lend.) Bruff knows that “this Oriental gentleman would have murdered me” over the Moonstone, but still finds him a remarkably respectful client. Nevertheless, Bruff explains that he does not lend to strangers, and the Indian does not argue, but merely asks what the normal repayment term for such a loan is—a year, Bruff explains, and the man leaves in “a noiseless, supple, cat-like way.”
Bruff takes a fascinating, surprisingly sympathetic stance towards the Indian whom he admits might be willing to kill him. The man’s manners and English completely contradict what Collins’s readers would have expected from an Indian; it suggests the man’s superior intelligence and social intuition, even despite his apparent unfamiliarity with the norms and ways of London. At the same time, this hyperintelligence bordering on the mystical (like the man’s “noiseless, supple, cat-like” exit) does play on the Western stereotypes about India that run throughout this novel.
Themes
Literary Devices
After the man leaves, Bruff realizes that this last question was the purpose of the man’s visit, as an interview with Septimus Luker confirms the next day. Luker is “so vulgar, so ugly, so cringing, and so prosy” compared to the Indian that Bruff prefers to summarize rather than recount their conversation. A few days before, the Indians’ leader visited Mr. Luker, who was “quite paralyzed with terror,” as these same Indians had attacked him some time before. The man asked Luker the same question about a loan and, out of fright, Luker referred him to Bruff, “the first name which occurred to him.” Luker has come to Bruff to apologize; Bruff learns that the Indian also asked Luker the same question on his way out, and then he dismisses Luker and begins preparing for a dinner-party.
Indeed, the contrast Bruff paints between the well-behaved Indian and the “vulgar” Luker further suggests that Indian civilization and manners are not inferior to the British, as many imperialists wanted the public to believe, but in fact incomparably superior. While Luker’s fear is comprehensible, his apparent cowardice and boorishness seem to reflect his line of work—he is a profit-seeking middleman apparently uninterested in whether his merchandise was stolen (or how many times).
Themes
