How we cite our quotes: Collins doesn't use traditional chapters in The Moonstone, so the citations are a little trickier than in other Victorian novels. Citations follow this format: (Period.Narrative.Chapter.Paragraph).
Quote #4
She handed me back the tract, and opened the door. We must sow the good seed somehow. I waited till the door was shut on me, and slipped the tract into the letterbox. When I had dropped another tract through the area railings, I felt relieved, in some small degree, of a heavy responsibility towards others. (2.1.1.12)
Penelope is not interested in reading the religious tract Miss Clack offers her. But Miss Clack can't just let it go. She shoves the tract through the mail slot on her way out, and insists that it's part of her "heavy responsibility towards others." It's not that the other characters are not Christian; Miss Clack just thinks that her own version of Christianity is far superior to others.
Quote #5
Oh, my young friends and fellow-sinners! beware of presuming to exercise your poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy. Let your faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put on at a moment's notice! (2.1.1.17)
Miss Clack preaches to the reader against using "reason" or intellect in solving problems. This is obviously questionable advice. The next piece of advice, in which she compares religious faith to "stockings," isn't just an odd simile. She suggests that her "faith" isn't something that she "wears" at all times – it's something that she can "put on at a moment's notice." This is strange: does that mean that her devout religious faith is something that she can "put on" and turn off? Is she letting slip that it's all a show?
Quote #6
He beamed on us with his beautiful smile; he held out a hand to my aunt, and a hand to me. I was too deeply affected by his noble conduct to speak. I closed my eyes; I put his hand, in a kind of spiritual self-forgetfulness, to my lips. He murmured a soft remonstrance. Oh, the ecstasy, the pure, unearthly ecstasy of that moment! I sat—I hardly know on what—quite lost in my own exalted feelings. When I opened my eyes again, it was like descending from heaven to earth. There was nobody but my aunt in the room. He had gone. (2.1.2.94)
Miss Clack's "ecstasy" seems more than religious in this passage. It seems like it's not just "spiritual self-forgetfulness" when she kisses Godfrey's hand. Sounds to us like she's got a major crush and she is trying to disguise it by calling it religiously "exalted feelings."