Saturday, December 6, 2014

In The Moonstone, after the first few minutes of their conversation, what does Blake think of Jennings?

Franklin Blake meets Ezra Jennings, who is described as
having a strange face and piebald hair, or hair of different colors all over the head.
His first impression is not positive, but he finds himself oddly drawn to Jennings, not
only for the information that he has but because Jennings seems to be entirely without
friends, and seen in a negative way simply for his appearance. As it turns out, Jennings
has his odd appearence because of a disease, which eventually kills him, and Blake,
after conversation, comes to the following
conclusion:


readability="12">

The little that he had said, thus far, had been
sufficient to convince me that I was speaking to a gentleman. He had what I may venture
to describe as the UNSOUGHT SELF-POSSESSION, which is a sure sign of good
breeding...
(Collins, The Moonstone,
gutenberg.org)



In other
words, Blake has come to the conclusion that a person's outward appearance does not
definitely correlate to his inward personality. This is probably an attempt at diversity
in early literature, and could also have been a direct stab by author Wilkie Collins at
Charles Dickens, who often used outward appearance to show a character's inner
personality. Either way, Jennings is made more of a reputable character through Blake's
opinion.

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