The Moonstone: Similes 4 key examples

In comparison to Rachel, whom Collins describes as small, dark, and "straight," these people seem like enormous, rounded golden giants. They are overwhelmingly embodied, "overflowing" with life and with flesh. The imagery surrounding them is startlingly bright and golden. Their bodies are so full and plump that Betteredge says they "bounce" like "India-rubber." He is referring to a kind of natural plastic ball popular with Victorian schoolchildren, which bounced and ricocheted wildly around when thrown. The reader, like Betteredge,  feels almost assaulted by the physical presence of these girls, especially when they bouncingly appear next to the small, economically-proportioned Rachel.

Auditory imagery appears in this passage too; the cries of "O" before the girls speak imply that everything they say is a loud exclamation, and the "bang" that accompanies all their actions only adds to this cacophony. The reader is left with an impression of both overwhelming noise and bulldozing blonde bodies.

In The Moonstone people usually show aspects of their personality in their physical appearance; although there are some notable exceptions, like the noble-hearted but ugly Jennings and the deceitful but handsome Godfrey Ablewhite.  Rachel is not very beautiful, as Betteredge observes earlier, but she's "straight" and pure like a lily (a common symbol of purity in the Victorian period). Rachel is described as being "lithe and supple" here, adjectives which might apply to both cats and lilies in their flexibility and slimness. Through this simile Collins establishes that, at this point in the book, she's in good health, physically and mentally, and like a cat she's cunning and adaptable. 

Rachel also does things and goes places in a "straight" way—she's direct and to the point, with no frippery or unnecessary frills:

She took up her garden hat from a chair, and then went straight to Penelope with this question:

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– ‘Mr Franklin Blake sent you with a message to me this morning?’

Notice here that Rachel doesn't go to "find" Penelope, but instead goes "straight" to her. The is no beating about the bush in Rachel's nature. She is more inclined to be blunt and direct than to be vague and polite, which would be more conventionally feminine. Betteredge also adds the following comment about her in the same section of Chapter 18, reinforcing this language of "straightness" and of purity:

she carried her head as upright as a dart, in a dashing, spirited, thoroughbred way – that she had a clear voice, with a ring of the right metal in it [...]

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Rachel's "straightness" is so ingrained that it's actually a part of her physical makeup. Her voice is not only "clear" but has "a ring of the right metal in it," a play on words which implies that she's both well spoken and very firm. Collins also implies a second animal comparison here, as he aligns her with the imagery of a "thoroughbred" horse. These animals are bred for one purpose. They must be made of the "right metal" to get exactly where they're going as fast as they can, as is the young Miss Verinder.  Rachel may not be conventionally beautiful, but Collins's imagery makes clear that she's direct, straightforward, and honest.

Just before this, Rachel has declared that she cannot bear to have Godfrey blamed for the theft of the Moonstone, and she writes a document declaring his innocence. Godfrey destroys it instead of using it; unbeknownst to Clack, however, he has selfish motives for doing so. Miss Clack has no idea that Godfrey's destruction of Rachel's signed declaration of his innocence is anything but another piece of evidence that Godfrey is a "Christian Hero," as she dubs him earlier in the novel. She is transported into hyperbolic throes of ecstasy by this "good deed."

Her reaction to it is so intense that she almost passes out from this "unearthly ecstasy." Collins injects a little comedy into the scene here, as when Clack opens her eyes Godfrey has already left. She's brought abruptly down from "heaven" and finds herself embarrassingly returned to Earth, where there is "no-one but [her] aunt in the room." This is another instance of Clack's self-aggrandizing and unselfconscious religious silliness, but is also a key moment in the characterization of Ablewhite in The Moonstone. Miss Clack is transported out of her body by her impressions of his "heavenly" behavior. Godfrey, however, is not; he just rudely leaves her to her reveries and gets on with his own machinations.

Rosanna Spearman had loved Franklin Blake in vain since he came to stay at the Verinder estate, as he represented an opening into the ideal life she "had never led." Rosanna's life is a series of tragedies in Collins's book, as she is physically deformed, often violently ill, and had to subsist on petty crime before she was able to gain a position as a maid in the Verinder household. Rosanna has nothing, but is portrayed very sympathetically throughout The Moonstone.

This passage is emotionally evocative, as Rosanna describes Blake (whom she only knew for a month) as being "like a lover in a dream" and "the most adorable human creature" she had ever encountered. She's so fixated on him as an ideal partner that she secretly hides evidence of his involvement in the theft of the Moonstone diamond. When she becomes the prime suspect in the investigation, she kills herself partially in order to deflect suspicion from him.  

Tragically, Rosanna assumes that because of her low station, Blake will "laugh" at her candor, and worries that he won't even take her suicide note seriously. In this passage, Collins illustrates the large and unfair gap between the well-off and the working class in The Moonstone. Rosanna's only conception of a "happy life" in her miserable existence as a housemaid is one she feels "leaping up" in her when she meets Blake. She only becomes relevant to him, however, after she dies.