Introduction- The Moonstone Chapter XV Installment

An original of a Victorian novel was performed through the process of serial reading. Instead of having access to the entire novel at once, readers at the time would have received the novel in parts, through weekly installments in publications such as Harper’s Weekly in America, or All the Year Round in England. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is one example of a Victorian serial novel that was included in these publications. Like all texts, these publications can also be analyzed for both the overt and covert messages they convey, especially considering that they were intended for public reception. All the Year Round was created in 1859 by Charles Dickens, who at the time would have been known as the author of several literary works. Harper’s Weekly was created in 1857 for an American audience, at a time when literary publications occupied a precarious place in the market (Stewart 173). Ashlyn Stewart notes the importance of sustained readership for Harper’s Weekly, and that one of the publication’s major selling points was its content, which sought to include all types of readers (174). An analysis of the weekly installments of The Moonstone in these publications can be compared to reading the weekly issues as a system, in which themes and topics brought up in the installment might also appear elsewhere in the issue. Katie Lanning expands on this idea in the concept of “tessellated reading”, in which Victorian periodical readers arrived at a “unified meaning” from the sum of the various texts read within a periodical (1).

Keeping this concept in mind, two themes in chapter XV of The Moonstone that recurs elsewhere in the issue is that of gender and science. Particularly, traditional notions of gender and gender roles and how these intersect with the field of science, as well as ideas surrounding scientific discourse at the time. Arguably, Betteredge and Sergeant Cuff bear resemblance to the notion of the “men of science” that Ruth Barton identifies as a part of Victorian discourse in the field of science. The February 29, 1868, issues of Harper’s Weekly and All the Year Round rely on and exemplify traditional gender roles in conversation with the weekly installment of The Moonstone.

Works Cited: 

Barton, Ruth. “’Men of Science’: Language, Identity and Professionalization in the Mid-Victorian Scientific Community.” History of Science, vol. 41, no. 131, 2003, pp. 73-119. Sage, doi:10.1177/007327530304100103. Accessed 01 Dec. 2019.

Lanning, Katie. “2011 VanArsdel Prize Essay Tessellating Texts: Reading The Moonstone in All the Year Round.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41638120. Accessed 01 Dec. 2019.

Stewart, Ashlyn. “Creating a National Readership for Harper’s Weekly in a Time of Sectional Crisis.” National Collegiate Honors Council, vol. 19, no. 1, 2018, pp. 173-209. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1185580.pdf. Accessed 01 Dec. 2019.