English Eyes on French Work

In the literary journal All the Year Round, part XXI of Collins’s The Moonstone is published along with a shorter work titled “English Eyes on French Work” that does not uphold this “essential criminality in the Indian character” (Radford 1188). Rather, this anonymous article indicates how the genre of The Moonstone “show how Victorian narratives of detection grapple with issues of imperial politics” (Radford 1188) through a different approach. That is, this article displays the English’s fascination with the foreign due to their contact with the foreign Other through “colonial expansion and aggressive urbanisation” (Radford 1188). As described in the article, skilled artisans were sent to Paris to study the French’s production (560), where they became enchanted by the “French life, French manners, and French industries” (561). This fascination with a different culture and its “social etiquette and literary convention” (Radford 1181) resulted in the English workmen making comparisons to their own society, representing the differing views towards the foreign as some disliked the overhaul gaiety, while others “contrasted the orderliness and innocence of the French fêtes with the brutal sottishness of London junketings” (561). This article exemplifies the other view of foreign relationships, as it displays certain English admiration of cultural differences, the comparison between the cultures resulting in the realization of beauty in the encountered foreign culture. This contributes to the reading of part XXI of The Moonstone as Mr. Murthwaite is Indian, but is described as “the eminent traveller”, a hero, and is celebrated for his “many dangerous adventures” (Collins 278) when he returns to England, indicating the English fascination with the Other.

Works Cited

All the Year Round. 23 May 1868. 560-561. Print.

Collins, Wilkie. “Chapter III.” The Moonstone. Ed. John Sutherland. Oxford University Press, 2008. 199-132. Print.

Radford, Andrew. “Victorian Detective Fiction.” Literature Compass, vol. 5, no. 6, 2008, pp. 1179–1196