Excerpts from Chapter X 'The Moonstone' [text]

Excerpts from Chapter X 'The Moonstone' [text]

This excerpt from All the Year Round alludes to a number of sources, of varying genre. There is the scientific "lecture on physiology" ("All the Year Round" 100), which is referenced and cited twice, and the reference to Confessions of an English Opium Eater (101). Upon first glance there is a blurring of genres, between the sensational Confessions and the realistic science lectures. However, the reference to Confessions of an English Opium Eater creates an interesting dynamic between another commonly found material in British newspapers of the Victorian period: the agony column (Rubery 51). Like the agony column, Confessions was published anonymously, and was based upon scandalously biographical experience. Such "tales of personal distress" (51) soon found their way into the advertisements of British newspapers, and quickly became "a meeting place as much as a marketplace for readers" (50). Rather than sensational, Rubery argues that influence of newspaper articles, agony columns, and advertisements is more a "shock of actuality" that stems from the "relevance, accuracy, and ... realism" (48).

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