Introduction

170
Sabina Fazli
Jennings turns out to hold the key to the mystery. The initial anticipation of an
alien thief is turned around in the conviction of Godfrey Ablewhite. The Moonstone
as the earliest of the texts discussed here thus presents the most ambivalent picture
in the description of its racial Others, while in The Sign of Four and The Eustace
Diamonds the stereotypical characters fulfil their role as villain. Ezra Jennings is
further set off from the other outlandish characters because he does not desire the
diamond.
The desire of the English protagonists for the diamonds is represented as infectuous
and addictive. The intrusion of the Other is imagined as the spread of
poison and the effect on the individual is a contamination. The diamonds are
caught up in the same imagery and thus complement the invasion by a foreign
people.
Oriental Contaminants and “the intoxicating chrystal”
A discussion of poison and drugs in the stories has become necessary for two
reasons: The diamonds and their passing from India to Britain and through many
hands suggests an image of imperial economy in which goods and raw material are
hauled from the colony to the centre for profit and consumption. Drugs formed
an important part in the economic relation with the colonies. Opium was harvested
in India and profitably passed on to the Chinese market. Yet, addiction also
became a problem in Britain itself and the potential dangers of the drug were realised.
Opium and diamonds share a violent history, and a history of exploitation.
Opium, according to Keep and Randall, is an “uncanny” element in British culture
(207) which has not shaken off its imperial associations and as such resembles the
diamonds as products which still remember the violence of their history. The
opium traffic draws attention to the imperial economy and the close interrelatedness
of the markets of India and Britain. It also exposes the suffering this market
produces as the opium addicts appear in the heart of London itself.
Secondly, imported to and consumed in Britain, opium furnishes a powerful
image of contamination:
Cultivated in India for export throughout the empire, […] opium above all
other substances represented the global penetration and ontological contamination
of a modern imperial economy. The commodity in its pure state
as all-pervading, all subverting fluid, opium enthralls the inner subject to an
alien, Asiatic identity. (Duncan 310)
Elleke Boehmer asserts that, especially towards the end of the century, the perceived
threat of degeneration was articulated in images of contamination (66).
Ezra Jennings serves as the prime example of mental contamination through
opium addiction in combination with “the mixture of some foreign race” (Collins,
Moonstone 367).