The Construction of Heroism in The Transatlantic Moonstone: Part XXXI

Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone presents a narrative as multi-faceted as its serialization in Harper’s Weekly and All the Year Round. In Harper’s, the surrounding illustrations, advertisements, and political commentary allow for a broader scope of interpretation of The Moonstone’s characters and events. Likewise, All The Year Round situates its instalments of The Moonstone within compilations of creative and non-fiction texts, presenting equal opportunity for varied interpretation without the influence of illustrations. In both periodicals, the depiction of characters within The Moonstone are significantly influenced by the spatial positioning of the text itself.

Consequently, Victorian periodicals offer a breadth of opportunity for analysis. Barbara Korte examines the relationship between popular Victorian magazines and ideas surrounding heroic figures, arguing that periodicals utilized depictions of heroism to emphasize the significance of particular morals or values. While the periodicals differ in intended audiences, stylistic characteristics, and contribution to social discourse (182), Korte demonstrates how concerns surrounding hero “worship” versus “admiration” are consistently connected to readers’ emotional engagement with heroic figures. Korte further emphasizes the value placed on “moral heroism” and the distinction between “true” and “false” heroes.

Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge analyze the illustrations in the Harper’s Weekly publication of The Moonstone, arguing that the addition of illustrations directly inform the narrative, just as they inform an individual reader’s interpretation of the multi-faceted text (222). In this way, the illustrations equally contribute to and represent the many possible layers of interpretation within The Moonstone itself.

Surridge and Leighton’s ideas surrounding the relationship between illustrations and the hermeneutic activity (222) of readers can be similarly applied to the Victorian periodical’s depiction of heroism. Specifically, the penultimate instalment of The Moonstone constructs an image of heroism that is reinforced by the layers of spatial, visual, and textual positioning in Harper’s and All the Year Round. Harper’s Weekly bookends the narrative of The Moonstone with the physical layout of articles and illustrations to depict Sergeant Cuff and Gooseberry as ‘true heroes’ and Godfrey as a ‘false hero.’ Comparatively, All the Year Round concludes with commentary on the heroism in three fairy tales, defining proper “heroic character” after an instalment of The Moonstone wherein the nature of heroic character is questioned. In this way, Harper’s and All the Year Round utilize the spatial positioning of preceding and succeeding material to bookend The Moonstone and reiterate the ideals of the heroic characters they construct.

Works Cited

All The Year Round: A Weekly Journal, 1 Aug. 1868.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 1 Aug. 1868.

Korte, Barbara. “On Heroes and Hero Worship: Regimes of Emotional Investment in Mid-Victorian Popular Magazines.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 49, no. 2, 2016, pp. 181-201. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/vpr.2016.0012.

Leighton, Mary Elizabeth & Surridge, Lisa. “The Transatlantic Moonstone: A Study of the Illustrated
Serial in Harper's Weekly.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 42, no. 3, 2009, pp. 207-243. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/vpr.0.0083.