Introduction

Indian Diamonds 181
uncivilised in the midst of civilisation (77). The Andamanese swamps and the
Thames marshes in The Sign of Four as well as The Moonstone’s Shivering Sands, are
representations of treacherous ambiguity. They are not only physically but also
psychologically threatening (77) as a landscape which exists both in the colony and
in England. The “fever-ridden swamps” (Doyle, Sign 213) on the Andamans and
the “melancholy Plumstead Marshes” (204) are the sites where the struggle for the
treasure takes place and which are thus linked (Wynne 78).
The common denominator which connects the quicksand as a site of repression
with the rivers is the spatial dimension. The repressed is topographically situated
at the bottom and imagined as buried which reflects its psychological place in
the sub-conscious. Suppression can thus be visualised as ‘sinking’, through permeable
surfaces . This place below the suface is assigned to the diamonds and to
Rosanna Spearman and Tonga. While Rosanna carries with her revolutionary ideas
as voiced by her friend Limping Lucy, Tonga is the diabolic personification of the
Mutiny.
Forgetting and silencing, too, are markers of repression and accompany the
acquisition of the Rajah’s Diamond and the Moonstone. The unspeakable nature
of Thomas Vandeleur’s services, which, are the true “skeleton in the house” (Stevenson,
“Rajah’s” 75), and John Herncastle’s silence mirror the discourse of the
Mutiny. As “The Rajah’s Diamond”, The Moonstone and The Sign of Four all emphasise
the historical background of the hunt for the diamonds, the diamonds are
associated with colonial violence and colonial history. While both are confined to
the far-away periphery, the diamonds bring these events uncannily close. Like real
diamonds which are typically invested with some legendary history, the fictional
diamonds reveal the violence behind the flow of wealth to Britain. The protagonists
in Britain thus have to be absolved from this guilt so that acquisition by
chance becomes a common feature. The amnesia in Dr Candy and Franklin Blake
equally bears traces of repressing guilt.
In the same way that opium turns Blake into a thief by activating a buried
identity, the diamonds animate “dark and irrational passions” (Carens 240-241),
which was projected on the Other but actually exist in the middle of English society.
Greed and criminal intentions are constantly ascribed to Others, as the Rajah
of Kashgar in “The Rajah’s Diamond”, the Sikhs in The Sign of Four, the three
Indians in The Moonstone and the Jews in The Eustace Diamonds, but actually motivate
the Vandeleur and Sholto brothers, Godfrey Ablewhite and Lizzie Eustace.
The repressed thus also comes to reside in the Others as the “evil passions” as
evangelical Miss Clack warns: “How soon may our evil passions prove to be Oriental
noblemen who pounce on us unawares!” (Collins, Moonstone 203)