Browse Exhibits (3 total)

Sensation Fiction and Characterization in the Nineteenth Installment of The Moonstone

The simultaneous transatlantic publication of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, in All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal and Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, begs the question: what difference does context make to the meaning of the text? At the forefront of this question is the novel’s status as sensation fiction. According to Elizabeth Anderman, sensation novels were often criticized for being too visual (27). Anderman goes on to quote H.L. Mansel’s 1863 article which identifies that the greatest downfall of the genre is that the novels were ornamental and colorful like a sign promising entertainment within (27). The British publication of The Moonstone in All the Year Round diverts from this idea with its layout, lack of illustration, and the article that follows, entitled “Lighting by Oxygen”. By looking at the interplay between these elements and the text, All the Year Round constructs a narrative that underplays the notion of sensationalism and focuses attention on the emotional capabilities of the text itself. The American publication in Harper’s Weekly accomplishes the opposite effect and emphasizes its sensationalism most noticeably by the illustration that is placed in the center of the page and also by the accompanying Hungarian folk tale, “The Devil Outwitted”. All of these elements seem to amplify the emotion and excitement expected of sensation novels and indicates the different values in the American journal. This exhibit will look at four images taken from either publication to display how the context’s acceptance or rejection of the form directly impacts the audience’s reception of the characters, specifically Miss Clack, appearing in the nineteenth installment of The Moonstone.

Works Cited

All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal. Edited by Charles Dickens, vol. 19, Chapman & Hall, 1868, London, pp. 505-511.

Anderman, Elizabeth. “Serialization, Illustration, and the Art of Sensation.” Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 52, no.1, 2019, pp. 27-56. Project Muse, doi:https://doi.org/10.1353/vpr.2019.0001. Accessed 01 December 2019.

Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Harper & Brothers, 1868, New York, pp. 293-294.

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Matthew Morrison - Moonstone - Part 1 - Exhibit 2019

            Although there are many diverse genres which use illustrations within texts, the term “picture books” often conjures an image of children’s books. The importance of reading to children, including picture books, is a widely researched and well supported field. Through this process, children not only develop important language skills, but they also learn the power of imagination and creativity. As philosopher and author G.K. Chesterton puts it, “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.”. These stories tell children that we can overcome our greatest challenges and that anything is possible. As adults, the hope is that we have ingrained this ability, but unfortunately, more than not, we forget that important idea amidst our busy daily lives. Dr. Louise Joy, a professor at Homerton College, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, argues that these stories we read as children still have the same effect on us as adults. “We cherish children’s classics precisely because they represent a world that does not resemble the world as we experience it”. With a growing trend of dissatisfaction in adults, the idea of returning to a simple childhood full of possibility is alluring.

            The United States in the mid-19th century was another time where such desires for a simpler world were relevant. In the wake of the American Civil War, many people were struggling to identify what it meant to be an American, what their country stood for, and what it would come to stand for. The idea that anything is possible could extend to this idea of national identity as this newly unified country sought to define itself. In the American publication of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, the editors, Harper and Brothers, chose to commission illustrations to include as part of the story. Much like the children’s books of our youth, such richly illustrated publications would serve to spark the imagination of a country.

In the reading of this story, readers would be filled with a suspension of disbelief and lean into the supernatural elements of this book. In a mystery story such as The Moonstone, hallmarked as the defining detective novel, this inclusion of illustrations that depict the supernatural heightens the suspense of the reader, as they believe truly, that anything is possible.

Works Cited

“Children’s literature an escape from the adult world” University of Cambridge, 24 sep 2011 https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/childrens-literature-an-escape-from-the-adult-world

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

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Ezra Jennings's Politics of Race in The Moonstone, Part XXVII

The 1860s British sensation novel became a best-selling literary genre at both sides of the Atlantic. One of the reasons was its treatment of the social issues that dominated imperialistic Britain and United States. Wilkie Collins’s novel The Moonstone, which was published simultaneously in Britain and the United States through All the Year Round and Harper’s Weekly, is a clear example of this. The propriety of the English high-class Verinder house is disrupted by a diamond robbery occurred inside the house, which places its main characters at stake. Nonetheless, the household is re-established with the irruption of Ezra Jennings. His construction as a character is fully made clear at the twenty-seventh part of the novel, when Collins portrays him as an ambiguous, mixed-race outcast. Being described as “the bastard child of the British Empire” (Thomas, qtd. in Mondal, 24), his character can comment about the novel’s theme of colonial objects in England. Nevertheless, critics have studied this issue mainly considering the Indian background of the diamond and the Brahmin priests. Critic Sharleen Mondal offers an innovative analysis by putting Ezra Jennings as a key element in the novel’s reorientation, in terms of sexuality and desire. Moreover, Ezra Jennings also questions nineteenth-century politics of race, which resonate with the political debates occurring in mid-Victorian England.

Works cited

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

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