Harper's Weekly - Third Narrative Begins

The Moonstone has an apparent connection to modern genres such as mystery and detective fiction. In the novel “the reader must penetrate the resulting web of multiple ‘intersecting narratives’ and ‘frequently shifted point of view’ in order to solve the mystery of the stolen diamond” (Leighton & Surridge 210). Within the text itself Collins gives clues that the reader is meant to understand The Moonstone as a literary mystery. Chapter I of the Third Narrative is contributed by Franklin Blake, one of the many homodiegetic narrators in the novel. This allows for the type of secret communication between implied author and implied reader that narrative theory describes. In “Redundant Telling” James Phelan explains how “the narrator directly addresses a narratee and, through that direct address, the implied author…indirectly addresses the authorial audience” (Phelan 211). This indirect address to the audience is occurring in The Moonstone when Blake receives a letter and narrates: “I know nothing, in a case of this kind, so unendurable as suspense” (Collins, Harper’s). Since the typical assumption is that the purpose of the detective story is “to keep the readers in suspense” (Reyes) this line becomes ironic. It is a wink to the reader from Collins. The narrative structure allows for this metafictional nod to the fact that we all know suspense is more than endurable, it is highly entertaining and sought out by the very reader being indirectly addressed in this passage.