Brief Summary and Thoughts about the Book the Moonstone
Between Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret and Wilkie Collins’ the Moonstone, the author of this paper chose to discuss the latter. In order to understand the difference between journalism and fiction, one has to be able to summarize what each side says. The Moonstone in this case represents fiction while the real-life elements of the case would represent journalism. The Moonstone revolved around the story of not a person but a huge yellow diamond—based on how Collins described it in his book. It turns out that this diamond was stolen by an English soldier during one of the country’s conquests in India. The diamond was taken back to England and had since then been considered as a family heirloom. The narrator in the story was a butler named Gabriel Betteredge—the wealthy family of the English soldier who was also a diamond thief. His boss Rachel was torn and could not choose who to marry. She had two choices, both of whom were her cousins—since it was considered perfectly normal to marry one’s cousin in England at the time. Franklin Blake was the less attractive one but he is richer because he is the one who possesses the diamond.
Godfrey Ablewhite was the more attractive one—he was also portrayed in the story as the godly and religious one. One evening, when Franklin already gave the diamond to Rachel as a gift, it went missing and the conflict of the story centered on the quest of finding out who stole it. There was another major character involved in the story who was not part of the family—Rosanna, one of the servant girls in the mansion who fell in love with Franklin. After all of the twists and turns, it was discovered that the man who they least expected to commit the act was the one who did it—it was Godfrey Ablewhite. He had a lot of debt and he wanted to use the proceeds from the diamond’s sale to pay them.
Real-life Murder Investigation (Constance Kent case or the Road Murder Case)
Constance Kent’s case was the origin of some of the major elements of Collins the Moonstone . The main element that was derived from Constance Kent’s murder was the factor of surprise on who actually committed the crime. In Constance Kent’s case, his half-brother, a child at that time, got brutally murdered. The initial suspect was the child’s nursemaid. Charges were later on dropped against the nursemaid because of lack of evidence and the fact that it was highly unlikely that she was the one who committed the crime as the results of the investigation of the inspector in charge showed. The eyes of the authorities turned towards Constance Emily Kent. She was, however, released on the basis of lack of sufficient evidence. Years later, however, she confessed to a clergyman; she also said that she wanted to be assisted so that she could do a legal confession. The clergyman assisted her but requested to the courts that he be allowed to not violate the sacredness of the vow of confessions—to which the magistrates responded positively. Speculators had many theories about the confession. Some suggest that Ms. Kent was merely being used as a scapegoat by her father who was an adulterer—that it was he or his mistress who actually killed Constance Emily’s half-brother. However, it is worth noting that she did not retract her confession even after her father and other family member’s death. Constance Kent’s original sentence was death; however, it was lowered down to life in prison as a result of her voluntary confession. She was later on released from prison at the age of 41. She died at the age of a hundred years old. She was able to enjoy the remaining decades of her life as a nurse and a volunteer for various social programs in Europe.
Reflection
Up to this day, it is not clear what really happened behind Constance Emily’s case—whether she was really the one who did it or if her confession was just the result of a mental illness. Relating the two cases to the topic on journalism and fiction, it can be concluded that what the two suggests can be two totally different things. In both cases, it often turns out that the least circumstance everyone expects would later on emerge as the truth as in the case of Collins’ The Moonstone. Fiction can never be a reliable tool in the quest for the search for truths simply because it is already the twisted and bent version of an original story; worse, only elements of an original story are used to make fiction stories more realistic.
Works Cited
Blanco, J. "Constance Emily Kent." Murderpedia (n.d.): http://murderpedia.org/female.K/k/kent-constance.htm. Web.
Collins, W. "The Moonstone." (n.d.): http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/155?msg=welcome_stranger. Web.
