Cuff Looks at Rosanna

This image alongside The Moonstone publication in Harper’s Weekly, depicting Rosanna meeting with Cuff, Betteredge and Lady Verinder works both in the degradation of women and the servant class. The focal point of the image is Rosanna, who is gazed upon with distaste by the three other figures in the room. Rosanna is set apart, gaze downcast, othering her from the rest of the characters. This epitomizes the general tone toward Rosanna in this portion of the novel. From the moment Sergeant Cuff sets eyes on Rosanna, he is suspicious of her. The scene this image depicts is captioned as follows; “Sergeant Cuff looked attentively at our second housemaid [Rosanna] – at her face, when she came in; at her crooked shoulder, when she went out.” (Collins 109). Throughout the novel, and especially in this section, Cuff is shown to have misogynistic attitudes towards women, from his suspicion of them as suspects, to the way he speaks of them, as well as classist attitudes toward the servant class. For example, “There’s no knowing what obstacles they [the servants] may not throw in my way – the women especially” (Collins 107). As such a prominent figure at the beginning of the novel, Cuff’s attitudes of classism and sexism are overt symbols of these themes throughout the novel. This image portrayed in this way alongside the text serves the classist and sexist ideologies of both The Moonstone and the periodical it appears in.

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 2008