A Sensation and a Stone.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is one of the first detective novels and is centered around British Imperialism. Collins himself describes it as a novel of how character affects circumstance rather than the traditional form of circumstance upon character. The novel compromises of eleven chapters with eleven narrators which emphasises that it is not a story of the people involved but it is a story of the moonstone itself.

The Moonstone is based on the Koh-i-Noor (meaning 'mountain of light' in Persian) diamond which was brought to Britain in 1850, it was cut in a traditional ancient Indian style and was re-cut by the monarchy in to a more traditional style as its original current was thought to be crude. Once weighing in at 185 carats it was re-cut to 105.60 carats. The diamond had belonged to various rulers, Hindu, Iranian and Sikh included  and it was fought bitterly over, continually being sized as a spoil of war. 

Eventually British rulers seized it in 1850 and was presented to Queen Victoria who was proclaimed empress of India in 1877 when it then became part of the British Crown Jewels and remains there to be viewed to this day.  It has been said that whoever owned the Koh-I-Noor ruled the world, a suitable statement for this, the most famous of all diamonds and a veritable household name in many parts of the world. Legend has suggested that the stone may date from before the time of Christ. History proves its existence for the past two and a half centuries.

"It was a diamond! As large, or nearly, as a plover's egg! The light that streamed from it was like the light of the harvest moon. When you looked down into the stone, you looked into a yellow deep that drew your eyes into it so that they saw nothing else. It seemed unfathomable; this jewel, that you could hold between your finger and thumb, seemed unfathomable as the heavens themselves." (Chapter Nine.)

The diamond still causes controversy today as this BBC article relates, BBC article concerning David Cameron and the Koh-i-Noor diamond.


The Moonstone was termed by its critics as one of the Victorian Sensation novels. The sensation novels were a minor sub-genre of British fiction in the 1860s. Termed as such due the content which mixed contemporary domestic realism with elements of the Gothic, an invasion of the realistic domestic space with extraordinary events. An example of this is the three Indian jugglers present in the house, stereotypical characters who perform tricks,spells and voodoo, initially thought to be the the culprits of the theft of the moonstone. Even the moonstone itself, an allegedly cursed object present in a seemingly ordinary Middle-class Victorian setting hints at this invasion. In the sensation novel extreme evil is masked by its realistic appearance.
John Locke's theory of mind and senses which is linked with Associationism, the idea that mental processes operate by the association of one state with its successor states can be applied to the sensation novel. The mind was conceived as a blank sheet which received sensation and then translated them into ideas of sensations, and then linked them together according to ones principled,social position and similarity. The sensation novel is meant to ignite the senses, one aspect of this in The Moonstone is the delaying tactics used by Batteridge leaving the reader agitated and desperate for the real story.
There are also links between gender and the Sensation novel. "Sensation fiction is full of women who refuse the angelic role; powerful women who take charge and sometimes multiple husbands; manly or androgynous women; sexually beguiling women and ambitious and ruthless women who will stop at nothing to get what they want." (Gilbert.) Collins struggled with this label and its links to the feminine.


A final  interesting issue with the moonstone is its spiritual and material value. 
As mentioned previously the stone was cut when in the possession of the monarchy decreasing its material value but also arguably  its spiritual value. Originally a religious stone, its significance changes when it is brought to Britian and as it exchanges hands in the novel it continually represents different things depending on the character  who owns it at the time. For example, Rachel views simply an ornament, for others its material value is what is important and for the Indian suspects it is the religious value which becomes the most significant.