Ezra Jennings

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Ezra Jennings is a character, and part-narrator, in Wilkie Collins' 1868 novel The Moonstone.

Ill-favoured, and of ill repute, he is ultimately responsible for solving the mystery of the Moonstone's theft, and so for reuniting the hero with the heroine, Rachel Verinder.

Origins[]

Walking with Dickens in the Lake District, Collins sprained his ankle, and was much struck by the appearance of the doctor's assistant treating him: "a startling object to look at, with his colourless face, his sunken cheeks, his wild black eyes, and his long black hair".[1] He used him as the basis for a series of characters, culminating in Ezra Jennings.[2]

Characteristics[]

Where the whiter-than-white Godfrey Ablewhite conceals an evil core, the ugly Jennings hides by contrast a heart of gold.[3] A liminal figure, spanning East and West, male and female - "some men are born with female constitutions - and I am one of them"[4] - Jennings is able to use his creative sensitivity to bring the unconscious theft of the stone back into social consciousness.[5]

As an opium-user, and a cultural figure on the margins of Victorian respectability, Jennings is the figure in the novel who comes closest to the author himself.[6]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Quoted in G. Lindop, A Literary Guide to the Lake District (London 1993) p. 222
  2. ^ G. Lindop, A Literary Guide to the Lake District (London 1993) p. 222-3
  3. ^ J. Meckier, Hidden Rivalries in Victorian Fiction (2015) p. 139-40
  4. ^ W. Collins, The Moonstone (Oxford 1999) p. 438
  5. ^ L. Pyckett, Wilkie Collins (2009) p. 127
  6. ^ M. Bachman, Reality's Dark Light (2003) p. 125 and 362

External links[]

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