Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews April 5, 2023 March 29, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Franklin's presence as editor is apparent at selective moments in The Moonstone. It arises mainly in the form of footnotes but also in narrators' accounts of instructional conversations with him. The implications of his presence are twofold. First, it serves to remind us that the driving force of all of these narratives is to clear Franklin Blake's name of suspicion. Second, it encourages us to read the text of The Moonstone non-linearly. Franklin will often step in to refer us back to another section of another narrative for a different (or corroborating) viewpoint on the same facts. Thus the experience of reading The Moonstone becomes a comparative, revisionist one.
Rosanna Spearman and Ezra Jennings exist as their own characters, yet also as the tragic, outcast counterparts to the respectable Victorian hero and heroine, Franklin and Rachel. Rosanna is aligned with Rachel in her love for Franklin, as well as her quick intelligence. Jennings is aligned with Franklin through his non-English background, his imaginative capacity, and his tragic history of being falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit. Rosanna and Jennings are both dead by the end of the novel. There is a sense that they exist to show the possibility of what could have happened to Rachel and Franklin if things had gone differently (for example, if Franklin had not acquitted himself of the theft of the diamond and had to wander around England away from his love and running from damaging rumors). Thus the deaths of Rosanna and Jennings are necessary to the harmonious closure of the novel in which Rachel and Franklin triumph against adversity.
Franklin Blake, when explaining the superstitious history to a skeptical Betteredge in Chapter VI of the First Period, supports his own belief in the superstition by saying, "But then I am an imaginative man; and the butcher, the baker, and the tax-gatherer, are not the only credible realities in existence to my mind." When this statement was made, Franklin and Betteredge would have both had in mind Franklin's often-referred-to foreign education. A dichotomy is set up in The Moonstone between characters with non-English backgrounds and the accompanying imaginativeness or mysticism that comes from this (like Ezra Jennings, Franklin Blake, or the Indians), and the solidly English characters who seek logical explanations for supernatural phenomena and are, consequently, adverse to imaginative explanations (such as Betteredge and Mr. Bruff).
Several critics have remarked that the novelty of The Moonstone lies in the fact that it is a story that hinges on opium and features an opium addict, as told by another opium addict—Wilkie Collins himself. Indeed, addiction of various sorts crop up in The Moonstone. Ezra Jennings and John Herncastle are both opium addicts. Franklin Blake and Gabriel Betteredge are tobacco addicts. We might even say that Miss Clack is addicted to the distribution of her Christian pamphlets, as this action is presented as something that Miss Clack requires to make her feel normal and satisfied.
Please wait while we process your payment