Introduction

Indian Diamonds 137
(Lindner 76). Lord George’s desire confuses Lizzie and her diamonds; he is
equally covetous of both and drops Lizzie when she loses the diamonds.
The metaphor of diamonds as a stand-in for female sexuality relies on the
equation of women and diamonds as cash items, as valuably marketable in marriage.
In their function as heirlooms, the Eustace Diamonds confer identity because
an heirloom presupposes fixity. As a bequest they are bound to the male
line. As paraphernalia, however, they are regarded as female and can be tendered
and “circulate promiscuously through the commodity marketplace” (Lindner 83).
As a commodity which is traded and coveted, they can be read to stand for female
sexuality. This also provides the psychoanalytical reading of the Moonstone before
the first postcolonial interpretation by John R. Reed (1973). The Moonstone as a
symbol of Rachel’s virginity is kept in her bedroom and stolen by night, only leaving
a stained nightgown. As long as the diamond remains uncut, Rachel, as a virgin,
is a valuable object to trade (Gruner 135). The same conflation of illicit sexual
encounter and diamonds figures in the Sherlock Holmes short story “The Beryl
Coronet”, where the taking of the diamonds coincides with the girl’s elopement.
The theft of the Eustace Diamonds from Lizzie’s bedroom mirrors The Moonstone
and lends itself to the same interpretation. “The Rajah’s Diamond”, as Barry
Menikoff observes, revolves around interactions which are either sexual or economic
(348). The primary object which connects people in the story is, of course,
the diamonds which combine both associations. The potentially adulterous Lady
Vandeleur is a “gem of the first water” (Stevenson, “Rajah’s” 90). The joy which
Harry derives from the sight of the diamonds and which Francis experiences in
the presence of the dictator’s daughter elicit the same reaction: Both see “all the
colours of the rainbow” (111; 84).
As a commodity for purchase, diamonds lose their positive ascriptions, and as
they are “tendered openly in the market” they, just like women, “lose their […]
most alluring charms of feminine grace” (Trollope 523). According to this reading,
diamonds as free floating objects are thus gendered as female, and the image they
confer on their wearers is negative as they are associated with moving and sellable
goods.
This imagery is usually opposed to the “sentimental” or “affective” (Plotz 334;
337) use of the trope of the virtuous woman as diamond (Daly 74). If diamonds
represent fickleness and eroticism as moving objects, their absence connotes simplicity
and naturalness. Lizzie’s opposite is the poor governess Lucy, wholly devoid
of any kind of jewellery comparable to the Eustace Diamonds. Yet, the narrator
constantly evokes the tear in Lucy’s eye, sparkling like a diamond: “[…] in
her eye, too, a tear would sparkle, the smallest drop, a bright liquid diamond that
never fell” (Trollope 212). Although in criticism, Lizzie is always compared to her
diamonds, Trollope’s narrator states that Lucy is a treasure (61) and a diamond:
“Lucy held her ground because she was real. You may knock about a diamond,
and not even scratch it; whereas paste in rough usage betrays itself. Lizzie […]