Introduction

168
Sabina Fazli
The Moonstone: Ezra Jennings
Ezra Jennings acts as an intermediary figure in the novel. Born to an English father
and a foreign mother he personifies another version of the ‘close’ Other and
“performs a link between the Indian frame and the English center” (Mehta 628).
Three times Franklin Blake describes Ezra Jennings as “remarkable-looking”
(Collins, Moonstone 321; 332; 356), thus constantly drawing attention not only to
his racial markedness. The other “remarkable-looking man” in the novel is the
chief of the Indians, who sees Mr. Bruff at his office. He speaks “in an excellent
selection of English words” and appears in “European costume” (278). The adjective
thus seems to be reserved for the more or less hybrid characters and emphasises
their visibility without approving of their appearance which imitates English
norms. The behaviour is similar to Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of “mimicry”
(Bhabha 86), which necessarily disturbs imperial self-fashioning and accounts for
the excessive repetition of the “remarkable” appearances which finds the narrators
lost for words.
In Franklin Blake’s description Ezra Jennings’ appearance seems inexplicably
incongruent. He is neither young nor old and has piebald hair: “Over the top of
his head it was still of the deep black which was its natural colour. Round the sides
of his head – without the slightest gradation of grey to break the force of the extraordinary
contrast – it had turned completely white” (321). To Franklin he
“look[s] old and young together” (364). Furthermore, Jennings describes his own
character as hysteric and alleges that “Physiology says, and says truly, that some
men are born with female constitutions – and I am one of them” (369). His psyche,
too, is described as indeterminate. His mental instability is further stressed by
his opium use because of “an incurable internal complaint”: “My nervous system
is shattered; my nights are nights of horror” (375). Physical and mental illness are
thus paired. The indeterminacy in his character stems from the “mixture of some
foreign race in his English blood” (367) which Franklin Blake detects in his physiognomy,
where he can “read” “[t]he story […] in his face” (366):
His complexion was of a gypsy darkness; his fleshless cheeks had fallen into
deep hollows, over which the bone projected like a pent-house. His nose
presented the fine shape and modelling so often found among the ancient
people of the East, so seldom visible among the newer races of the West.
(Collins, Moonstone 321)
As in his bicoloured hair and indefinable age, Franklin’s reading of Jennings’ face
shows that Jennings’ body is the key to his “remarkable” position.
Ezra Jennings himself allegedly has an indistinct criminal past which is never
fully explained and follows him as slander which he cannot set right (Collins,