| Although some researchers claim that The Moonstone is an anticolonialist literary work, deep down inside it is the other way around. Through literary discourse analysis, this thesis makes an attempt to reveal the veiled colonialism in the narratives. It is found that the Moonstone, a sacred gemstone belonging to the Indians, has been defiled by the British. John Herncastle has ill-used it to take revenge on Lady Verinder; his cousin and Gabriel Betteredge consider it a cursed object; Mr. Candy, the family doctor, wants to evaporate it; Rachel uses it as a tool for gaining public recognition of her social status and power; lastly, Godfrey Ablewhite views it as a mere commodity providing wealth. The characters’ loathing the Indians and the hybrid, Ezra Jennings, portrayed by Betteredge, Franklin Blake, Drusilla Clack, and Matthew Bruff, also indicates Collins’ degrading the locals. Finally, Collins’ setting the Brahmins as the criminal and the British as the victim as well as his colonial alienation to Mr. Murthwaite and characterising Jennings as the feminine Orient clearly prove that The Moonstone is a colonialist literary work. |