I inspired her with the strongest emotions of abhorrence and disgust. Let me not be vain enough to say that no woman had ever looked at me in this manner before.
This made me laugh. The self-awareness here is refreshing. Before, I thought of him as pretentious, but now I'm noticing some self-deprecating humor.
Limping Lucy
Yikes...the way they talk about women is bad enough, now added on to that is the way they talk about disabled people. I have to say these are some of the most unlikable narrators I have ever encountered. I wonder if readers from when this was first published would have felt the same way, or if it is a reflection of the culture of the time.
affectionately, you understand
The fact that he has to specify this is a little odd, isn't it? The rest of the paragraph also proves that he is anything but affectionate. Affection is merely a performance to get what he wants.
Strong language! and suggestive
The inconsistent capitalization in the novel is fascinating to me. Often times, words that aren't typically capitalized, such as "Will" or "Diamond", are capitalized as if they are characters, but the the beginnings of sentences sometimes are not. I wonder if that is meant to emphasize the continuation of the sentence (so the exclamation point here could perhaps be acting as a semi-colon)
all good wives are worthy of that)–but to be also capable of properly administering a trust (which, in my experience of the fair sex, not one in a thousand of them is competent to do
It's interesting that moments when we see positive adjectives paired with nouns related to women, we actually get a misogynistic message. I wonder if there's a way to compare the use of descriptions for women among male narrators using computational analysis.
as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless,
She seems to be very fixated on the idea of physical appearance as an indicator of moral fitness/religious discipline. I wonder if I could use computational analysis to compare and contrast the different things each narrator associates with religion.
I find my insignificant existence suddenly remembered by Mr. Franklin Blake.
I can't help but notice the difference between the way male and female narrators describe themselves. So far it seems that female narrators tend to diminish themselves by using adjectives such as "insignificant," whereas male narrators confidently refer to themselves as "scholars" to build credibility for their "true" stories.
One of the wise ancients is reported (I forget on what occasion) as having recommended his fellow-creatures to “look to the end.” Looking to the end of these pages of mine, and wondering for some days past how I should manage to write it, I find my plain statement of facts coming to a conclusion, most appropriately, of its own self. We have gone on, in this matter of the Moonstone, from one marvel to another; and here we end with the greatest marvel of all–namely, the accomplishment of Sergeant Cuff’s three predictions in less than a week from the time when he had made them.
This is an incredibly insightful paragraph from a beautiful quote by Herodotus:
One should always look to the end of everything, how it will finally come out. For the god has shown blessedness to many only to overturn them utterly in the end.
I wonder if the fact that he forgot "on what occasion" this quote was referring, which turns out to be the blessings (or absence of blessings) from god, is commentary on the role of superstition as a force of evil that turns people away from god, which symbolizes goodness and truth. Perhaps this is foreshadowing that there are even more misfortunes to come.
it was a Diamond!
It's strange that this sentence begins with a lowercase letter, but the word "Diamond" is capitalized. Why would "it" be lowercase if it is referring to the same Diamond? Perhaps he is trying to emphasize the significance of the Diamond by making it the only capitalized word in the sentence.
She caught Rosanna at Mr. Franklin’s dressing-table, secretly removing a rose which Miss Rachel had given him to wear in his button-hole, and putting another rose like it, of her own picking, in its place.
I like the idea of Rosanna attaching significance to an object that is nearly identical to another. Perhaps this is meant to justify the attachment to the Moonstone. If we can understand Rosanna's reasoning for replacing Miss Rachel's rose with hers, we can understand the reasoning behind the infatuation with the Moonstone.
they were actually foolish enough to believe in their own magic
I see another example of how colonization impacts the mindset of the British here. They simultaneously belittle magic/superstition and engage in it, yet when people from other cultures do the same, it's "foolish."
In two words
Is this a figure of speech? I'm noticing a lot of contrast in this text, first with his statement that he is telling the truth making him an unreliable narrator, and then the juxtaposition between "two words" and one of the longest paragraphs in the text.
one lawless Mohammedan hand to another
The narrator already makes his lack of awareness apparent here. I'm assuming that the narrator is British, and it's ironic that he's calling the Mohammedans "lawless" for passing around the Moonstone when it was also common for British colonizers to steal sacred artifacts. I'm curious to see if he'll have the same criticism of the British later on, or if he just doesn't realize the irony in this moment.