The Moonstone Foreignness and 'the Other' Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Collins doesn't use traditional chapters in The Moonstone, so the citations are a little trickier than in other Victorian novels. Citations follow this format: (Period.Narrative.Chapter.Paragraph).

Quote #4

'I don't want to force my opinion on you,' Mr Franklin went on. 'The idea of certain chosen servants of an old Hindoo superstition devoting themselves, through all difficulties and dangers, to watching the opportunity of recovering their sacred gem, appears to me to be perfectly consistent with everything that we know of the patience of Oriental races, and the influence of Oriental religions.' (1.1.6.24)

Franklin says that he doesn't "want to force my opinion on" Betteredge, but then he goes on to give a very opinionated and self-confident set of stereotypes about all "Oriental races." He sounds almost like an anthropologist, as though the Indians were an object of scientific study.

Quote #5

In plain English I stared hard, and said nothing. (1.1.6.42)

Betteredge doesn't speak any foreign languages, and hasn't studied foreign cultures like Franklin Blake has, so he keeps his mouth shut – but does it "in plain English."

Quote #6

At the age when we are all of us most apt to take our colouring, in the form of a reflection from the colouring of other people, he had been sent abroad, and had been passed on from one nation to another, before there was time for any one colouring more than another to settle itself on him firmly. (1.1.6.53)

Gabriel Betteredge is obviously using a figure of speech when he says that Franklin Blake was sent to be educated in foreign countries at an "age when we are all of us most apt to take our colouring." What he means is that Franklin was sent abroad at an impressionable age. But he keeps using that word, "colouring," to describe the foreign influence Franklin was given by being educated in other countries. It's possible that he might want to suggest that all of this foreign influence, or "colouring," has somehow made Franklin less English.