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The Loss of the Diamond: 13
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
Betteredge is in the garden with Cuff, who confirms he has reached a certain conclusion about the matter and asks Betteredge about the servants’ responses to the Diamond’s loss. He then changes the subject and takes Betteredge away to a safer location before asking him about Rosanna, whom Cuff claims to have noticed eavesdropping from the bushes just before. If Rosanna has a “sweetheart,” Cuff thinks, her hiding is explicable; otherwise, it is “highly suspicious.” Reluctantly, Betteredge repeats Penelope’s suspicion that Rosanna is in love with Franklin, and Cuff responds with amusement and pity for “ugly women” like Rosanna. Cuff asks if anything else suspicious happened, and Betteredge simply responds that everyone—including himself—“lost our heads” after the theft. Cuff thanks and compliments Betteredge, they shake hands, and then Betteredge starts sending the servants in for one-on-one interviews with Cuff.
Rosanna’s suspicious behavior keeps her in the spotlight, although Cuff is slower than Seegrave and Betteredge to declare her under suspicion for the theft. Betteredge increasingly feels left behind by Cuff’s intellect, as Cuff is usurping Betteredge’s former role as the man in the house most knowledgeable about its inhabitants. His and Cuff’s pity for “ugly women” is ironic because they are both elderly and described as unattractive, and it reflects a Victorian gender ideology in which a woman’s primary value is her physical appearance in the eyes of men (which translates to her likelihood of marrying well and maintaining or improving her and her family’s economic and social status). At the same time, by pitying “ugly women” (instead of outright judging them) they show their hope that things might be otherwise.
Themes
Each of the servants reacts strongly after their short interview with Cuff, except Rosanna, who stays “longer than any of them” and has “no report on coming out.” Cuff asks to be notified if Rosanna asks to go for a walk outside—which she does almost immediately—and follows her. Betteredge is frustrated that Cuff seems to suspect her. Betteredge chats with the other servants about their interviews over tea and discovers that two maids—“two devils,” in his estimation—told the skeptical Cuff about Rosanna’s suspiciously locked door and the suspicious sight of a fire in her room in the middle of the night.
Betteredge pities Rosanna because of her status as a pariah, not just in society at large but also in the Verinder estate (whose other servants turn against her). At the same time, her behavior is undeniably suspicious, and Betteredge feels powerless to help her because of Cuff’s newfound power over the house.
Themes
Outside, Betteredge meets Franklin, whom Julia has just updated about the day’s events and who declares in a frenzy that he wishes he had “thrown [the Moonstone] into the quicksand” when he first arrived with it. Betteredge recounts the details of Cuff’s investigation and Franklin immediately grows convinced that Rosanna has stolen the Moonstone and burned her paint-smeared dress in the night. Just as Franklin threatens to tell Julia, Cuff shows up and warns him against it, and against questioning his authority; if Franklin tells anyone, Cuff threatens, he will leave the case. Betteredge realizes that Franklin and Cuff seem to understand one another on unspoken terms, and that Penelope seems crucial to their understanding. Cuff reprimands Betteredge for undertaking his own “little detective business” and asks for the way to the Shivering Sand, for which they set out together at the chapter’s close.
Again, the well-meaning but amateurish detectives Franklin and Betteredge get in the way of the professional Cuff and have their roles in the household challenged; although they do their best to help the investigation, they realize they have nothing to contribute except by obeying Cuff. And again, Betteredge realizes that he—and therefore the reader—is out of the loop in regards to critical information to which even his daughter is now privy. Cuff and Betteredge go to the Shivering Sand because that is where they expect to track down Rosanna, who seems their best lead regarding the paint smear—although Betteredge still does not know why Cuff thinks this.
Themes
