The Moonstone

The conclusion of the novel provides resolution to some of the major plots. Rachel and Franklin enjoy a happy marriage and begin to grow their family, symbolizing a solidification of community and tradition, and a restoration of social order. Rather than being the site of a sinister and mysterious crime, the Verinder house in Yorkshire becomes a happy family home. Ezra Jennings meets a less optimistic ending, since he explicitly asks to be buried in an unmarked grave where he can “sleep, nameless […] rest, unknown” (471). However, Jennings dies at peace, feeling that he has contributed to a meaningful cause in helping to solve the mystery, and Mr. Candy cares for him compassionately in his last illness.

The removal of the diamond from not only the region, but from England, appears to lift the curse from Herncastle’s family, providing for a more secure future for the next generation. While the mystery is resolved, the diamond is never returned to Rachel. As Murthwaite predicts, “[Y]ou have lost sight of it in England […] you have lost sight of it for ever” (482). This conclusion is presented as largely positive: Collins offers a critique of Britain’s imperialism by depicting the diamond as rightfully being restored to India, presenting it as positive for the English characters when the artifact associated with theft and plunder is taken far away from them.

Murthwaite’s letter, the final document in the narrative, provides a description of someone seeing the diamond returned to its intended setting and purpose: as a sacred object. For all of the interest that the diamond inspires in England, all of the English characters treat it as a material object, valuable either as a source of income or potentially as an adornment. Murthwaite highlights this contrast when he comments on seeing the diamond “in the forehead of the deity […] whose splendour had last shone on me in England, from the bosom of a woman’s dress” (482).

Taking into account the documents included in Betteredge’s final narrative and the Epilogue, Collins’s main plot extends from the spring of 1848 (in the lead-up to Rachel’s birthday on June 21, 1848) to at least November 1850 (it is unclear exactly when in 1850 Murthwaite writes his letter). Historically, the Koh-i-Noor diamond travelled from India to London between 1849 and 1850, and was presented to Queen Victoria in July 1850. The voyage of the ship transporting the diamond was notably difficult, encouraging rumors that the diamond was cursed.

Collins’s plot reverses this trajectory, with the diamond travelling from England back to India in the 1849-1850 period. Collins returns the gemstone to India, portraying the three Indians as successful in their quest to regain it. While they seize the diamond by force and smuggle it out of England, the Indians are not portrayed as thieves—arguably, they are even presented as somewhat heroic for the daring exploits they enact to get the diamond back to its rightful home.

The novel does end on a note of some ambivalence, as Murthwaite looks at the diamond and ponders, “so the years pass, and repeat each other; so the same events revolve in the cycles of time” (482). This comment, especially given Murthwaite’s context as a scholar and researcher, implies that the violent imperial conquest in which Britain has engaged is not a historically isolated event: For thousands of years, different civilizations have warred with and exploited one another. The true curse of the diamond may be this seemingly innate human tendency, implying that events similar to what unfolds in the novel will continue to reoccur.