Ezra's Criticism of Racial Standards in Victorian Politics

In this context of racial opinions, the apparition of Ezra Jennings is revolutionary, as his character criticises those mentalities. Mondal’s article adds that “those of mixed race could challenge the distinction between colonizer and colonized and act as … threats to white privilege” (Hall, qtd. in Mondal, 30). According to the illustration of this part of the novel, that is what the editors of Harper’s Weekly thought of Ezra. This portrayal of him while speaking to Franklin Blake pays him no justice. Those gruesome features are quite distant from Franklin’s account of “his fine shape and modelling” and eyes that “took your attention captive at their will” (Collins 310). Furthermore, his fierce expression and hands seemingly to leap on Franklin to possibly attack him reinforce the racist ideas associated with him on American readers. However, Ezra is opposite to those stereotypes. Franklin says that “… I was speaking to a gentleman. He had … a sure sign of good breeding” (Collins 352). Some British readers could also recognise that as well. All the Year Round has no illustrations of the novel, leaving only Ezra’s actions for the readers to judge him. His personality gives a better image of him, as he is professional, sympathetic and helpful. Additionally, his kindness and sensitivity grant him not only Franklin’s confidence, but also his access to the Verinder house, which only him is able to restore. Hence, The Moonstone challenges nineteenth-century social conventions by putting a remarkable mixed-race gentleman as the solver of a mystery in an English house.

Apart from scrutinising social politics of race, Ezra Jennings also comments the political debates of Victorian Britain in the late 1860s. At the same time Ezra Jennings ascends as the "new man of the [Verinder] house” (Mondal 26), Benjamin Disraeli became the first mixed-race[1] Prime Minister of the House of Commons. Nevertheless, Disraeli’s Jewish background is as badly received as Ezra’s colonial one. On these pages after the novel, Harper’s Weekly portrays Disraeli (right) and his political opponent, William E. Gladstone (left), to illustrate the above article comparing their political figures. Like with Ezra, the editors assert Disraeli and Gladstone as “belong[ing] to different races” (“Disraeli and Gladstone” 429). Disraeli’s black curly hair and unpleasant face mimics Ezra’s depiction in the previous image. The editors also apply their racialised social norms to him: they think “Disraeli was a wondering Jew in Syria, without wealth or position” (“Disraeli and Gladstone” 429). Conversely, Ezra’s and Disraeli’s ableness in their jobs is attested. Mondal says that “Ezra’s entrance into the Verinder home … is the occasion an experimental reorganization of the Victorian home” (25). To do so, he makes use of the unorthodox method of drugging Franklin Blake with opium. Harper’s Weekly believes the same about Disraeli, as they call him to be “not so scrupulous in his use of instrumentalities” (“Disraeli and Gladstone” 430). But, although dubious, their practices are effective. Ezra’s experiment finds how the diamond was stolen, and Disraeli calms the uprising revolts in the colonies by proclaiming Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877. Forthwith, Ezra Jennings gives a positive opinion of Benjamin Disraeli as Prime Minister, which nineteenth-century readers would be reluctant to accept. Despite what society said of them, mixed-race people were much qualified to resolve English matters.  

Notes

[1] Benjamin Disraeli can be considered as “mixed-race” because even though he descended from a Jewish family, he was born and raised in England, and baptised in the Anglican church. See Bloy’s biography of him.

Works cited

Bloy, Marjorie. “Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)”. The Victorian Web, www.victorianweb.org/history/pms/dizzy.html. Accessed 4 November 2019.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. E-book, Standard Ebooks, 2019.

“Disraeli and Gladstone”. Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 4 July 1868, pp. 429-430.

Mondal, Sharleen. “Racing Desire and the New Man of the House in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone”. Nineteenth Century Gender Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (2009), pp. 23-43. Web. Accessed 25 October 2019. ncgsjournal.com/issue51/mondal.htm