I came back to read this passage again when I realized that the cake was lost possibly in the tram. At the moment, Maria's emotions did not seem to the overflowing. We mainly see their actions--"bowed", "raised his hat", "bending her tiny head", etc.--and the only internal thought we have is at the end when Maria reflects "how easy it was to know a gentleman even when he has a drop taken." I wonder whether the reason why Maria was so shocked by the stranger gentleman's demeanor is that she is not used to people treating her so nicely.

I wonder what "hopes and visions of the future" Polly holds and why they are so "intricate." It seems from earlier passages that the end goal--marriage--is rather simple and straight-forward.

Such "reverie" that Polly is experiencing right now echoes the "delirium" that Mr. Doran experienced earlier, except that the delirium was passing and yet the reverie lasts long.

I think the ending of this story carries ambiguity and transience of her feelings. The fact that at this moment, her eyes did not show "love or farewell or recognition" does not signify finality, and does not mean that she does "love" or "recognize" him. It is as if he is metamorphosized into the ocean at this very moment and therefore becomes unrecognizable.

Four adjectives in a row here. Not many writers uses a series of adjectives as Joyce does. It would be interesting to to a pos_tag analysis of "JJ-JJ-JJ-JJ" in Joyce's work.

It is uncanny to repeatedly describe the corpse as being "beautiful" when the formerly living person was not described as such.

This lengthens the story beyond the frame of the narrative, as if there is a history of these characters prior to this story.

"Rich" carries multiple meanings: it could refer to the rich material condition this family is in, and to the noises made by the wife and the children. Of course, these two things are also related to each other.

I think I've identified a pattern of the way Mansfield starts her stories. Pronouns referring to the main characters almost always precede the names of the characters, and there is usually a considerable distance between the pronoun and the name.

I think this story shows how easily fluctuated and pervious to change the mind of a young girl is. After almost an entire life of isolation from proper social life, Leila bases her understanding of the world too much on other people's words and actions and lacks her own sense of judgement.

Another "flower" metaphor. The implication is that while she does have one dancing partner, psychologically Leila isn't really having an interaction with one concrete human being, but with an entire sphere of life previously unopen to her.

Isabel's reaction is intriguing here. Prior to this paragraph, we only read about William's feelings towards the changed Isabel, but we were not sure whether and to what extent Isabel feels the same. The fact that her first reaction after receiving a letter from him is"mournful" indicates that she is as aware of the problems between them and just attempts to postpone any direct confrontation, pretending that they don't exist if she doesn't look. This short description really reveals a lot about Isabel's character.

I think William does not really "enjoy" work as much as he finds work an escape from family life and intimate relationships. It is ambiguous whether it was work that turned his personal life dull or it was his dreadful personal life that turned him to work, but I do think there is a nuanced critique of the alienation of labor implied in the story.

I find this description of his living room atypical because it seems as if he is visiting here for the first time as a guest (so much so that he has to literally "follow" a maid to know his whereabouts). Furthermore, the wall painting might have some symbolic meaning about the relationship between William and Isabel. There is a one-sided/lop-sided sense of giving and receiving at play.

There is a sense of visual eroticism throughout this whole story conveyed through different people's gaze. The first paragraph of the story starts with a description of Miss Raddick's facial features and dress in her mother's deeply admiring glance. In the middle of the story there is an invisible creepy old man looking at her "through a monocle", and here at the end, we supposedly have the narrator's erotic gaze at her.

It seems as if the little items in her life are coming into life here. I have chills down my spine when I read the "deadly-secret glance between her and the mirror." She seems to be utterly lonely and uncomfortable even when she is in the crowd, so much so that she has to find company and alliance in inanimate objects.

The amount of dashes used in Mrs. Raddick's speech is over the top: "I've had the most dreadful time with--her", "Of course I can't leave--her." Furthermore, the position they are inserted don't really follow typical speech patterns.

This passage together with the ending of "The Garden Party" reveals Mansfield's tendency to leave things unsaid. Furthermore, the implied message is not easily inferable, and it demands a lot of cognitive energy from the readers.

I wonder how the nltk tokenizer would tokenize/stem/lemmatize these accented words.

I wonder whether the man is truly "happy" or whether Laura has projected happiness on him in order to rid her of her moral discomfort and guilt.

Even in a supposed act of sympathy, Mrs. Sheridan does not forget to show off her superiority.

Sarcastic because Mrs. Sheridan herself also insisted on giving the party and even added flairs to it.

I think the novel almost has two parallel plots--the Indian "myth" plot and the actual human plot. Personally, after finding out that Godfrey is the real culprit, the suspense has dissipated, and I didn't really care whether the Indians have succeeded in bringing the Diamond back to India.

I wonder whether a program could identify the true culprit (maybe by checking whether one's full name is repeated frequently in a certain range of texts). PS: I've guessed it right!

Another instance of reference to books and intertextuality in the novel. I fancy that these books might carry deeper meanings if we do further research into their contents.

While in Betteredge narrative, there was a strong preference for the orthodoxy of "Englishness" and a discrimination against anything foreign (as Betteredge frequently refers to weird sides of Franklin's personality as his "French, German, and Italian parts"), Jennings takes the opposite position and seems critical of the "English character." I wonder whether this novel is ultimately about the "English character" versus everything alternative.

It is quite surprising to me that the first thing anyone associates with "science" would be "explosion." It seems like there was a negative prejudice against science at the time (at least amongst the older generations) that needs to be taken into consideration. The novel's theme of myth VS science has been rekindled.

This reads like what is generated by the "generate( )" function of NLTK.

Based on what we have read so far, it is obvious that different narrators have remembered the various events associated with the lost diamond differently and attributed different weights of importance to each of them. Here, for example, to Mr. Candy, the birthday dinner is important but to Franklin it is merely one of the many preceding episodes that led to the loss of the diamond. I wonder if we could plot the weight each character attributes to each event with a program.

So much international traveling involved in the plot... It would be interesting to plot all the character's domestic and international travels (with the respective times) on a map with the help of programming.

Bruff points out that impact that passage of time has on the investigation of the crime. It seems like unlike many other detective stories, in The Moonstone, we actually see the crime associated with the diamond unfold over several years. I wonder why Collins designed it this way, instead of for example letting Franklin read Rosanna's letter as soon as it was written.

For once, "roses" are no longer associated with Rosanna's name or Sergeant Cuff's fondness of gardening!

Here we see another instance of prophesizing about the future, as Cuff has done earlier.

In Betteredge's narrative, we see that Cuff uses his "experience" with upper class British society to surmise on the whereabouts of the diamond; now we have Murthwaite basing his logic on "knowledge of a national character." Neither of which seems convincing enough to me.

It is interesting that Mr. Bruff characterizes Rachel as possessing self-dependence because from the stand-point of the two previous narrators, Rachel is nothing but ill-mannered and slightly rude.

Similar to Betteredge, Miss Clack proclaims that she is "above reason." Why are all the narrators so far obsessed with "reason"?

"Modern" has appeared yet again, and it would be fruitful to investigate the different narrators' conception of modernity.

Miss Clack's series of religious books (including The Serpent at Home acts in a way similar to Betteredge's Robinson Crusoe.

Directly contracting Sergeant Cuff's way of conducting investigation in the previous narrative, given the different weight they put on "experience" respectively.

It is quite ironic that Miss Clack is the one who reminds the readers not to "judge others", as she herself has been quite unreserved about passing her own comments, many of which negative, on all characters involved. In this, as a narrator, she has quite a different relationship with the readers than Betteredge does, as she is more didactic.

It is interesting how explicit the different narrators' hierarchy of priorities are. For Miss Clark, the "regard for truth" trumps the "respect for persons", and I'm immediately reminded of Betteredge's confession in the previous narration that he has a "superiority over reason."

"Superiority to reason" might be a clever play-on-words that actually means inferiority at reasoning.

What does "that" refer to here? Could a program figure it out?

Cuff's way of reasoning is quite different from the other detectives I'm familiar with, such as Holmes, who barely mention their previous experiences and observations about human nature as premises for their judgement but rather base everything on facts.

This is a self-referential moment for the novel, as everything is precisely conducted through writing rather than words here.

Interesting choice of formatting here. Even though the words did not come out, the author still chooses to put them inside quotation marks while he could have used free indirect discourse or italicized the sentences.

Very nuanced yet important distinction between "stolen" and "missing" that has appeared several times in the text so far.

Helpful but perhaps unnecessarily inclusion of numbers attached to the three tasks to help the readers consolidate an avalanche of information.

Drastic change of prose style and another textual document introduced here. This is like the precursor of a "list" that could be programmed and analyzed.

Even in this urgent moment, Betteredge does not forget to roast his wife.

"Size" seems to really matter to Betteredge. I remember when he first reconvened with Franklin he remarked on his unexpected mediocre height and likewise when he describes Godfrey he also comments on his supreme height.

A little demonstration of his keen observation and sharp wits. This might be the original "detective" personality with eccentricities that Holmes was modeled on.

The gendered set-up of the novel is further intensified, as all the investigators are male, and both the suspect(s) and the victim are female.

Here, Betteredge's "Englishness" is again juxtaposed with both Franklin's foreignness and the traveler's Indianness as a way to explain something he does not understand.

How interesting that in 1868 (when this book was published), characters were already referring to themselves as being "modern." In the context of this book (with all the mystique and superstition in plot), it is worth considering how the "modern" described by Betteredge (as opposed to a more universal definition of "modern" is related to superstition.

There are two concepts of "foreign" presented in the story so far: "Foreign" as in the Oriental and mysterious Indians, and "foreign" as in the more complicated and dissectible "French, German, and Italian" sides of Mr. Franklin. In this sense, both the original owners of the Moonstone and the current carrier of the Moonstone are marked by a trace of foreignness. I wonder why "foreignness" is so central to the novel, in terms of plot and symbolic significance.

hahaha what a pun here. In "short" VS "In short"

I think the stairs is an intriguing analogy for domestic life because on the one hand, one could interpret running into people on the stairs as "getting in one another's way" as Betterage does, but on the other hand, one could also interpret it as unplanned coincidences that bring two people physically close to each other. It all depends on how one wants to interpret it.

It is already blunt and sarcastic enough that the servant describes marriage as "economy-with a dash of love" in the previous paragraph. But here, I think it is even more ironic that he has internalized the economic position and interest of his owner, while he himself is in a similar sort of economic bondage.

The author could have chosen to not spell out the dying Indian's last words in the previous passage, leave the readers in the dark, and retain the same suspense to both the narrator and the readers. Reading the exchanges immediately after this confrontation, it is presumable that both the narrator and his cousin knew what the Indian's last words were, but for some reason both pretended like they did not.

This is the first time the second-person "you" is used in this narrative. At this point, it is still unclear whom the "you" refers to. All we know is that "you" is probably one member of the narrator's family.

It is quite interesting that the author, up till now, has not referred to the moon-god by its name, while he has given names to the cities, the conquerers and other Indian gods. Instead, he only refers to it as "the inviolate deity." I think there is something to be said about the curious lack of specificity here.