An Invaluable Medicine for the Purifying of the Blood

Rosanna Spearman is a prominent character within The Moonstone. Rosanna is most known for her disability, as she has a crooked shoulder which is often pointed out by the characters in their respective narratives. Her disability subsequently becomes a defining feature of her character. In the twenty-fourth serial part of this novel, Mr. Franklin reads the letter that Rosanna leaves to him. In this letter, Rosanna exclaims that Mr. Franklin would shun Rosanna if she ever tried to speak to him because she has, “a crooked shoulder [and is] only a housemaid” (Collins 324). Mossman describes Rosanna’s disability as being an “obvious deviation from the norm, [and] disruption of the normalized perceptual field” (488). Rosanna is deemed the Other because she does not look the same as conventional Victorian ladies and is therefore alienated by the male characters in the novel. When reading this section in Harper’s Weekly, the negative implications of the physical Other is reinforced by the many advertisements for medication to solve “all obstinate affections of the skin” (Harper’s Weekly 383) as is seen in this advertisement. Including this type of advertisement beside the section of the novel focused on a woman with a physical deformity implies that any physical ailment that can be seen on the body is negative and therefore it should be fixed with the medications advertised. This alienates the reader in the same way that Rosanna is alienated by the other characters because of her physical deformation.