Addictions
The Vengeance of opium overtook me again last night.
Collins, “The Moonstone” p. 406
Addictions, to people, substances, and habits, create a strong underlying sense of dependence throughout Wilkie Collins’ Victorian novel, The Moonstone. Enslavement to habits, emotions, and substances, to the extent cessation causes trauma, directs the course of many of Collins’ characters (Dictionary.com). Franklin Blake’s addiction to Rachel, Betteridge’s need for Robinson Crusoe and its prophecies, and Ezra Jenning’s dependence on opium, all exert a control over the characters, whether it’s through their emotions, thoughts, or body.
Franklin Blake is a man driven by his love for Rachel Verinder. When his love is cruelly revoked by Rachel, he is forced to go abroad, away from the straight-laced, English Victorian society, “resolved-if change and absence could help [him]-to forget her.” (p. 289). Distance seems to help him recover from his addiction, but it really only places it in remission. As he returns to England, the thought of seeing Rachel reopens his emotions for her and inhabits his thoughts. The closer he gets to home, “the more irresistibly her influence began to recover its hold on [him].”(p. 289). She, in a sense, controls him. His decisions upon his return to England revolve around his addiction to Rachel, determining all of his actions.
Betteridge, his addiction on a slightly smaller scale, is completely dependent on direction from the novel “Robinson Crusoe” for any decision making. He believes “Robinson Crusoe” contains the answers to all of life’s challenges. It is his drug. When Ezra Jenning’s informs Betteridge that he had not read this sacred text since he was a child, Betteridge “looks at [him] with an expression of compassionate curiosity, tempered by superstitious awe” (p.403). He is shocked someone would travel through life without the guidance and knowledge “Robinson Crusoe” offers. “Robinson Crusoe” is Betteridge’s only remedy and any discontinuation of such substance would hinder dramatically his effectiveness.
Ezra Jennings, the most obvious addict, offers a dramatic glimpse into the effects of opium on the human psyche. Opium causes Ezra to have “frightful dreams” with visions of his old love, “hideously phosphorescent” and “phantoms of the dead” (p. 392). His body is utterly dependant on opium. He has a semi-comatose life: “My night, thanks to the opium, was the night of a man who is stunned. I can’t say that I woke this morning…” (p.405). He tries to give up his dose of opium, but because of excruciating physical pain, has “to return to the opium for the hundredth time” (p.396). Ezra relies on his addiction to allow him to function in day to day life.
Wilkie Collins’ characters became entirely subordinate to their addictions. The reader sees the role dependence plays in controlling the decisions of each character. In the tightly managed Victorian society, what started off as pleasure soon took on the role of a compulsion, the only constant habit of their nature, something on which to depend.
Works Cited
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. New York: Oxford, 1999.
Definition: “Addiction” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/addiction
Collins, “The Moonstone” p. 406
Addictions, to people, substances, and habits, create a strong underlying sense of dependence throughout Wilkie Collins’ Victorian novel, The Moonstone. Enslavement to habits, emotions, and substances, to the extent cessation causes trauma, directs the course of many of Collins’ characters (Dictionary.com). Franklin Blake’s addiction to Rachel, Betteridge’s need for Robinson Crusoe and its prophecies, and Ezra Jenning’s dependence on opium, all exert a control over the characters, whether it’s through their emotions, thoughts, or body.
Franklin Blake is a man driven by his love for Rachel Verinder. When his love is cruelly revoked by Rachel, he is forced to go abroad, away from the straight-laced, English Victorian society, “resolved-if change and absence could help [him]-to forget her.” (p. 289). Distance seems to help him recover from his addiction, but it really only places it in remission. As he returns to England, the thought of seeing Rachel reopens his emotions for her and inhabits his thoughts. The closer he gets to home, “the more irresistibly her influence began to recover its hold on [him].”(p. 289). She, in a sense, controls him. His decisions upon his return to England revolve around his addiction to Rachel, determining all of his actions.
Betteridge, his addiction on a slightly smaller scale, is completely dependent on direction from the novel “Robinson Crusoe” for any decision making. He believes “Robinson Crusoe” contains the answers to all of life’s challenges. It is his drug. When Ezra Jenning’s informs Betteridge that he had not read this sacred text since he was a child, Betteridge “looks at [him] with an expression of compassionate curiosity, tempered by superstitious awe” (p.403). He is shocked someone would travel through life without the guidance and knowledge “Robinson Crusoe” offers. “Robinson Crusoe” is Betteridge’s only remedy and any discontinuation of such substance would hinder dramatically his effectiveness.
Ezra Jennings, the most obvious addict, offers a dramatic glimpse into the effects of opium on the human psyche. Opium causes Ezra to have “frightful dreams” with visions of his old love, “hideously phosphorescent” and “phantoms of the dead” (p. 392). His body is utterly dependant on opium. He has a semi-comatose life: “My night, thanks to the opium, was the night of a man who is stunned. I can’t say that I woke this morning…” (p.405). He tries to give up his dose of opium, but because of excruciating physical pain, has “to return to the opium for the hundredth time” (p.396). Ezra relies on his addiction to allow him to function in day to day life.
Wilkie Collins’ characters became entirely subordinate to their addictions. The reader sees the role dependence plays in controlling the decisions of each character. In the tightly managed Victorian society, what started off as pleasure soon took on the role of a compulsion, the only constant habit of their nature, something on which to depend.
Works Cited
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. New York: Oxford, 1999.
Definition: “Addiction” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/addiction
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