Introduction

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Sabina Fazli
the wrong suitcase in a train restaurant (Marsh 251) after the diamonds had already
been stolen, and he maintains his innocence: “‘The diamonds came into my
possession owing to an accident’” (294), “he had but found them” (48).
Franklin Blake unconsciously steals the Moonstone while he is under the influence
of opium. Dr Candy, as well, suffers from a “mysterious amnesia” after he
has dosed Franklin (Duncan 314). The reason for the restaging of the theft in the
novel is not to determine the identity of the thief but to clear Blake of guilt, as
Melissa Free remarks that opium serves to divest Blake of any guilt whatsoever
(354). Similarly, Godfrey Ablewhite, the true villain does not himself take out the
diamond from Rachel’s chest, but Franklin presents it to him so that, although
Ablewhite acts consciously, he is helped by Blake who actually takes the diamond
from the cabinet. Sergeant Cuff’s statement that “[n]obody has stolen the Diamond”
(Collins, Moonstone 113) appears as a very lucid remark. At the same time,
as opium exculpates Franklin Blake from the theft, his attitude reiterates the attribution
of an agency to the diamond. The denial of blame for having plundered
mirrors Herncastle’s looting and perpetuates the same view in England (Free 154).
Not only The Moonstone, but other texts, as well, exhibit this tendency to transfer
agency from the diamonds’ owners onto the diamonds. Prince Florizel’s remark,
that the slipping of the diamond from one owner to the next can only be
explained by providence (Stevenson, “Rajah’s” 128) points to the notion that the
human agent is directed by some other power. None of the characters set out with
the intention of stealing the stones but each was ‘accidentally’ made into thieves
by circumstance. This unintentional acquisition of the diamonds, however, is restricted
to their passage within England.
The transference of agency from person to object is that of a fetish, as Ian
Duncan suggests with reference to the Moonstone: “The fetishistic displacement
of agency from persons onto the relic of an apocalyptic collectivity constitutes The
Moonstone’s figure of mystery […]” (318). Christopher Lindner observes the same
in The Eustace Diamonds: “What Trollope is essentially showcasing is commodity
culture’s fetishistic tendency. More precisely, […] Trollope exhibits a distortion of
vision in which the commodity appears to erase all trace of human presence that
animates it” (76). Lindner and Duncan base their analyses on Marx’s definition of
a fetishistic relation between people, “the social relation between people looks like
a relation mediated by things” (Lindner, 76, italics in the original). The fetish in
Marx is a product which takes on religious dimensions turning products into
agents:
Hier [in der Religion] scheinen die Produkte des menschlichen Kopfes mit
eigenem Leben begabte, unter einander und mit den Menschen in Verhältnis
stehende selbstständige Gestalten. So in der Waarenwelt die Produkte
der menschlichen Hand. Dies nenne ich den Fetischismus, der den Arbeitsprodukten
anklebt […]. (Marx 103)