Many of Collins’s characters expose the rigid gender roles and ideologies that confined women in Victorian England. Ultimately, although the novel ends in a happy marriage, Collins clearly understands that it is possible to reject gender hierarchy without rejecting the value of love. Numerous critics and observers have noted that the theft of the Moonstone (from Rachel’s bedroom, in the night, on her birthday as she comes of age) is a metaphor for the symbolic loss of Rachel’s innocence, or virginity in fact, with Rachel’s broken engagements and the Verinder family’s female leadership, the novel comments extensively on Victorian England’s strict, codified gender hierarchy, whether by mocking those who enforce it or showing how women are capable of far more than men anticipate.
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