Back to the Best Books

by Marilyn Green Faulkner

  Sources:

  Wikipedia

  www2.netdoor.com/~moulder/thwhite

  Fantasyland: Take it Personally

  One of the keys to any good relationship is having meaningful interests to share. Reading to a child creates an instant bond, not only because of the time shared, but because the things you read about lead to conversations, and hobbies, and projects that last through the years. Again I quote my beloved teacher, Arthur Henry King:

  “It is all very well to read silently to yourself, but the right thing to do with anything worthwhile is to read it aloud to yourself or, even better, to others. Parents who are in the habit of reading to one another and to their children will find that their children respect reading and want to read. Children can even learn to read by being in an atmosphere in which there is reading, in which it is done with them there. They gradually come to follow on the page, and before you know it, they are reading.” (The Abundance of the Heart, 220.)

  We’ve made plenty of mistakes as parents. (When our kids were younger I used to encourage them to keep a list of all the mistakes I was making so that they could share it with a therapist later!) One thing I am happy about in retrospect is the time we spent reading together and, just as importantly, talking about the things we were reading. The old saying goes that small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, and great minds talk about ideas. Even very young children can talk about abstract concepts. If you get in the habit of discussing books from the start, you will build a relationship that will transcend all of the stages of life. You’ll create a lasting friendship with your child, and you’ll always have something interesting to talk about!

  Chapter Twelve

  The Mystery Makers

  “Death in particular seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of innocent amusement than any other single subject.”

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  “A mystery is a way of examining the dark side of human nature, a means by which we can explore, vicariously, the perplexing questions of crime, guilt and innocence, violence and justice.”

  Sue Grafton

  Murder, the ultimate human crime for which no reparation can be made, is the greatest taboo, and also, on a purely visceral level, the most fascinating subject. Stories fashioned around the commission of a murder and the subsequent path to justice, in other words, the murder mystery, have fascinated us since the first account of Cain and Able. How a story involving terror, murder and mayhem can be relaxing and rejuvenating is a mystery in itself, but the worldwide popularity of the genre proves it is so. It seems fitting to end a volume on the classics with some classics of pure entertainment.

  P.D. James remarks, “We do not expect popular literature to be great literature, but fiction which provides excitement, mystery and humour also ministers to essential human needs.”

  The Body in the Library: Why We Love Murder Mysteries

  For several years I wrote a monthly column on classic literature, and led an online book club to discuss these works. As the leader of this erstwhile group of bibliophiles, I enjoyed scouting out classic books and doing just enough research and commentary to get a good discussion going. After about five years, however, I found that I began to lose my enthusiasm for the weighty tomes that we were discussing, and had a secret longing that I could no longer deny:

  I just wanted to read a good mystery.

  So I did. And after that, I read another, then another. Over the next two years I read a truckload of mysteries and found some great authors. So let’s nudge Tolstoy and Austen aside for a moment and close this volume with that underrated genre that actually accounts for over one-third of all fiction sold in the English-speaking world: the mystery novel.

  Mysteries, Myth and Meaning

  Why do we like to read mysteries? The obvious answers are these: we read such stories for entertainment, escape, and in order to solve a puzzle. However, these reasons fail to account for the universal appeal of mystery stories, since a good crossword would satisfy all those requirements. The love of a good mystery crosses all lines of class, race, economic status and lifestyle. Everybody likes them and new mysteries constantly appear to great acclaim. Marie Rodell, in her book Mystery Fiction, (1943) digs a little deeper into why everybody likes to find a body in the library. People, she said, read mysteries for four basic reasons:

  1. The vicarious thrill of the manhunt . . . carried on intellectually in the cleverness of detective and reader.

  2. The satisfaction of seeing the transgressor punished.

  3. A sense of identification with the people [the hero principally] and events in the story which will make the reader feel more heroic.

  4. A sense of conviction about the reality of the story.

  I’m not sure if I buy the fourth reason, (there is nothing very believable about Sherlock Holmes, but we love him) but I do think Ms. Rodell is on to something when she talks about identification with the hero. This leads us into a realm far deeper than mere literary device, and suggests that the modern mystery is an outgrowth of the ancient myth.

  Mythical themes, or “functions,” are as old as the human ability to tell stories, and the mystery novel ties into one of the oldest: the journey of the hero. In every good mystery the mythical elements are in place. Death (the body in the library) comes as a result of evil (the murderer) and is overcome by reason (the clever work of the detective) and bravery (often facing the criminal alone). Our hero ventures into the world of the crime, is challenged and threatened, then overcomes through reason and courage, and the reader is left with an assurance that the unknown dangers that terrify us (the greatest of which is death) may be faced successfully. So the mystery is more than an escape; it is a way of preparing the mind and spirit to face the next real-life challenge by placing ourselves in the archetypical place of the hero. And you thought you were just killing a couple of hours by the pool!

  Mysteries come in all shapes and sizes, but my two favorites are the detective and the “cozy” mystery. A cozy mystery is one that takes place in an enclosed or secluded place (a country house, quaint village, or monastery for example) that we would not normally associate with murder and mayhem. The hero that solves the crime is usually an unlikely character such as an old woman (Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple), a priest (Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael) or even an archaeologist (Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody). Detective mysteries, which range from Sherlock Holmes’s elegant, urbane sleuthing to the troubled, wounded P.I.’s of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, actually began with a Victorian novel titled The Moonstone.

  A Priceless Gem:

  The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins

  Though many novels of the Victorian period had a mystery as a part of the plot, Wilkie Collins was the first to fashion an entire novel around a crime and its eventual solution by a brilliant detective. In addition to the detective as hero, The Moonstone also introduced a unique narrative style. While watching and reporting on a court trial, Collins got the idea to present a mystery through a series of narrators, much as the evidence in a trial is established through a series of witnesses. Collins noted that as each witness bore testimony, a picture of the crime was built in the minds of the listeners. He later wrote:

  “It came to me then that a series of events in a novel would lend themselves well to an exposition like this. Certainly by the same means employed here, I thought, one could impart to the reader that acceptance, that sense of belief, which I saw produced here by the succession of testimonies so varied in form and nevertheless so strictly unified by their march towards the same goal. The more I thought about it, the more an effort of this kind struck me as bound to succeed. Consequently, when the case was over I went home determined to make the attempt.” (Moonstone, xxiii)

  The result of this experiment was The Moonstone. Published in serial form in Dickens’s periodical, All the Year Round, The Moonstone caused quite a sensation among the public. According to reports at the time, o
n publishing days large, anxious crowds waited for the latest number, and bets were placed on where the Moonstone might be found at last, and who the culprit would turn out to be.

  Synopsis

  The story opens with a brief history of the fabulous gem called the Moonstone, stolen from an Indian raj by a soldier named John Herncastle. The gem is sacred to its owners and the three Brahmins who guard it are murdered in the theft. Fast forward to the mid-1800’s, and the gem is left to Herncastle’s niece, Rachel Verinder, on her eighteenth birthday. Franklin Blake, a distant cousin and old acquaintance, comes to deliver the gem and renew his friendship with Rachel. However, the gem is stolen that night. Three Indian characters have been seen lurking around the property and are, of course suspected but nothing can be proved. Rachel reacts so strangely to the theft and is suddenly so cold to him that Blake is mystified, and determines to find the thief.

  When the investigation falters, Blake seeks out a famed police inspector and brings him to the Verinder estate to pursue the case. Inspector Cuff suspects a serving maid named Rosanna Spearman, who suddenly commits suicide after hiding something in a dangerous area called the Shivering Sands. Another cousin, Godfrey Ablewhite, courts Rachel and, seemingly in despair, she briefly becomes engaged to him. Rachel’s mother passes away and the stone is traced to a moneylender in town. Finally a letter is discovered that reveals the identity of the thief, and Blake is shocked and mystified. (Unlike most classics, where the plot is well-known, to reveal the perpetrator of the crime would ruin the reader’s fun, so it will not be told here. You’ll just have to read the book!) A local doctor helps him solve the mystery, and eventually the two lovers are reconciled, while the jewel makes its way back to India and into the hands of its rightful owners.

  The Moonstone features eleven different narrators: an unnamed cousin of John Herncastle; Gabriel Betteredge (steward to Lady Verinder); Miss Clack (Lady Verinder’s niece); Mr. Bruff (Lady Verinder’s lawyer); Franklin Blake (Lady Verinder’s nephew); Ezra Jennings (assistant to Dr. Candy); Sergeant Cuff; Dr. Candy; Sergeant Cuff’s investigator; the Captain of the steamboat Bewley Castle; Mr. Murthwaite (traveler to India). Gabriel Betteredge and Franklin Blake narrate more than two sections each. Everyone else narrates one section.

  What Makes it Great?

  The Moonstone combines several elements of interest: a beautiful young girl with a fabulous gem as an inheritance, sinister figures from the East (who actually have more right to the stolen gem than the hapless girl who inherits it), hypocritical religious “do-gooders” whose charitable acts mask secret lives, and of course, the wonderful Inspector Cuff, dragged out of his beloved rose garden to solve a seemingly unsolvable puzzle. In addition, the Yorkshire dales provide a marvelously eerie setting reminiscent of Wuthering Heights. Collins is adept at using the physical landscape to evoke the emotions of the characters. Here, the “Shivering Sands” (an area of quicksand that will play a terrible role in the story) is described by the first narrator to chilling effect:

  “The last of the evening light was fading away; and over all the desolate place there hung a still and awful calm. The heave of the main ocean on the great sand-bank out in the bay, was a heave that made no sound . . . It was now the time of the turn of the tide; and even as I stood there waiting, the broad brown face of the quicksand began to dimple and quiver—the only moving thing in all the horrid place.” (131)

  Collins also displays a wicked sense of humor. Each of his narrators is satirized in some way by what the author has them reveal of themselves. Most delightful is the butler, Gabriel Betteredge, who narrates the beginning and the end of the story. He often speaks directly to us and even warns us to pay attention:

  “Here follows the substance of what I said, written out entirely for your benefit. Pay attention to it, or you will be all abroad, when we get deeper into the story. Clear your mind of the children, or the dinner, or the new bonnet, or what not . . . I hope you won’t take this freedom on my part amiss; it’s only a way I have of appealing to the gentle reader. Lord! haven’t I seen you with the greatest authors in your hands, and don’t I know how ready your attention is to wander when it’s a book that asks for it, instead of a person?” (43)

  Betteredge’s description of his less-than-happy marriage is priceless:

  “We were not a happy couple, and not a miserable couple. We were six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. How it was I don’t understand, but we always seemed to be getting, with the best of motives, in one another’s way. When I wanted to go upstairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there was I coming up. That is married life, according to my experience of it.” (25)

  Betteredge is deeply devoted to “his Lady,” and to the family he has served for fifty years. He brags that he never lets the facts come between him and his duty:

  “It was downright frightful to hear him piling up proof after proof against Miss Rachel, and to know, while one was longing to defend her, that there was no disputing the truth of what he said. I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason.

  Did You Know?

  Wilkie Collins suffered from gout, and was addicted to the laudanum (a derivative of opium) that he took for the pain. His interest in opium addiction and its attendant hallucinations led to the creation of the character Ezra Jennings (also an opium addict and a rather tragic figure) that saves Franklin Blake through his scientific reasoning.

  This enabled me to hold firm to my lady’s view, which was my view also. This roused my spirit, and made me put a bold face on it before Sergeant Cuff. Profit, good friends, I beseech you, by my example. It will save you from many troubles of the vexing sort. Cultivate a superiority to reason, and see how you pare the claws of all the sensible people when they try to scratch you for your own good!” (444)

  From these examples it is obvious that we don’t have to trade literary quality for the fun of a mystery: this is a classic piece of superb writing. Collins’s use of several narrators keeps the story vibrant and interesting, and each is a complex character in his/her own right. The young “victim” of the crime, Rachel Verinder, is far more than a damsel in distress; she is a strong, self-willed woman, very unlike the swooning heroines of that period. (Her virginal strength and beauty is symbolized by the prized Moonstone.) Betteredge describes her thus:

  “She was unlike most other girls of her age, in this—that she had ideas of her own . . . She judged for herself, as few women of twice her age judge in general; never asked your advice; never told you beforehand what she was going to do; never came with secrets and confidences to anybody . . . In little things and great . . . Miss Rachel always went on a way of her own, sufficient for herself in the joys and sorrows of her life.” (65)

  Collins wrote that he attempted to make the action in the story spring from what the characters would actually have done, rather than simply placing figures in various situations. As a result this book, though set in Victorian drawing rooms, has a strangely modern feel to it. It is as much a psychological study of the hidden motivations and inner desires of its characters as it is a thrilling whodunit. The surprising solution to the mystery adds another layer of interest, confirming T.S. Eliot’s description of The Moonstone as “the first, the longest and the best of the English detective novel.”

  Quotations taken from The Moonstone. Penguin Classics Edition, London. 1998.

  Talk About It

  Drug addiction plays a major role in this novel, raising the question of accountability. How much is Franklin Blake responsible for his actions?

  About the Author: Wilkie Collins

  Born in 1824, William Wilkie Collins was the son of famous landscape artist William Collins, and grew up in the heart of the London literary movement of the 1800s. From ages 12 to 15, he lived with his parents in Italy. At age 22, he studied law and was called to the bar in 1851, the same year in which he first met Charles Dickens; excellent friends, the two novelists are closely associated to this day. Choosing
to write, Collins never practiced law. But, write he did. Between 1848 and his death in 1889, he penned 25 novels, more than 50 short stories, at least 15 plays, and more than 100 non-fiction pieces. He was first a playwright and wrote the two plays in which Dickens famously performed.

  His best-known works are the novels, The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1867). Interestingly, the first weekly serial installment of The Woman in White appeared in the same edition of All the Year Round as the last installment of A Tale of Two Cities. Published in volume form, The Woman in White broke all sales records for novels. Hugely popular, Collins was extremely well loved and well paid. Afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis and gout, Collins suffered from chronic pain in his back, and became severely addicted to the opiate laudanum, which he took for pain. Opium figures prominently in The Moonstone, and one of the characters, Ezra Jennings (writer and opium addict), is modeled after Collins himself.

  He is the inventor of the Sensation Novel, a genre that today is considered a precursor to suspense and detective fiction. The Moonstone boasts an unusual narrative structure—portions of the book have different and distinct narrators. It is considered the first detective novel in the English language.

  Sources:

  victorianweb.org