Monthly Archives: January 2013
Cursed Diamonds in Georgetown
Lest we think Georgetown has remained untouched by cursed objects from the periphery, The Hope Diamond, which now resides in the Smithsonian, has its own murky history and a long line of unlucky owners… Its penultimate owner, (the final being … Continue reading
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Rachel: a portrait of a “modern” woman?
As the Betteredges’s narrative progresses, I was particularly struck by the portait of Miss Rachel and her marriage plot of the two suitors. Our narrator describes her first as “difficult […] to fathom” and then presents many of her characteristics … Continue reading
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Tagged Betteredge, characterization, Collins, female, Franklin, gender, marriage plot, modern, Moonstone, narrative, narrator, point of view, Rachel, The Moonstone, viewed, viewer, Wilkie Collins, woman
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Betteredge is Living a Lie! (according to Jameson)
When reading the first section of Wilkie Collins’ “The Moonstone” I was reminded of Jameson’s text, “Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” and his idea that individual experiences are “lies.” He says, essentially, that while people know what … Continue reading
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Robinson Crusoe and Myth-Making
For a work proclaiming, on its title page, to be “A Romance,” Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone finds itself undeniably fascinated by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which, for critic Ian Watt, is decidedly a novel (as he argues in The Rise … Continue reading
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Tagged Collins, colonization, core, diamond, Moonstone, myth, novel, periphery, Robinson Crusoe
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To Trust a Storyteller…?
Wilkie Collins makes the reliability of the narrator an immediate and persistent question in The Moonstone. In the prologue, Collins writes, “And I declare, on my word of honour, that what I am now about to write is, strictly and … Continue reading
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Tagged Betteredge, knowledge, Moonstone, narrator, perspective, reliability, Truth, Wilkie Collins, witness
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