To Miranda, it is precisely this confusion - anything "nasty," as she says - that makes people alive and that has been the impetus for all great art. Miranda's imprisonment in Clegg's basement is experienced differently by the two main characters. As the captor and jailer, Clegg can play into his instincts as a collector. He does not want to kill Miranda, but subconsciously wants to kill any part of her that could resist him.
Clegg hopes that his prison will accomplish just this, that Miranda will succumb to his power, fall in love with him, and let him dictate the terms of the rest of her life. To Miranda, her prison is primarily something to be escaped. It is claustrophobia-inducing and apparently impregnable. She is cut off from daylight and freedom for weeks.
The idea of prison and captivity is prominent throughout the novel; indeed, imprisonment creates the central conflict between Miranda and Clegg. For Miranda, such confinement is the one reason why she could never love Frederick: he imprisoned her, after all. Yet for Clegg, confinement is the only way to make Miranda love him: in the outside world, he believes, their class differences would keep her from ever taking notice of him. Clegg is a collector of butterflies, an amateur entomologist, and his desire to collect and preserve both butterflies and Miranda is a central theme of the novel.
He likes to observe objects from afar, dead and sanitized and without any complicating emotions. Several times Miranda remarks that her presence is becoming unwieldy because she keeps expressing her emotions and trying to escape. Miranda also hates the idea of collecting, whether the collection contains great artworks or simply Clegg's butterflies. In the case of art, Miranda believes that it is a crime to merely catalog and classify all the beautiful pieces of art in the world, to hide them in private collections and not let them be enjoyed by vital, living people.
To her, the idea of a collection robs objects of individuality, confining them in categories. In the case of Clegg's butterflies, Miranda views collection not as an accomplishment but as a massacre, since Clegg killed all the future butterflies that could have come from his collected specimens.
The differences in Miranda's and Clegg's views about collection illuminate core aspects of their characters. Shakespeare's play The Tempest is frequently alluded to in Fowles's novel, and the comparisons and contrasts between the two stories reveal Clegg's and Miranda's mindsets in The Collector.
Clegg tells Miranda that his name is Ferdinand; in The Tempest , the character Ferdinand is a cultured and kind prince with whom Miranda falls in love. It is clear that this is the side of his character that Clegg wants the captive Miranda to see. Yet Miranda calls Clegg Caliban. In The Tempest , Caliban is a monstrous man who tries to rape Miranda. Yet Prospero, the powerful magician who serves as Shakespeare's protagonist, reduces Caliban to slavery.
Caliban is violent, uncivilized, and undesirable. This is how Miranda views Clegg throughout much of The Collector. By analyzing The Collector in light of its similarities to The Tempest , one can unearth revealing aspects of the characters. Miranda is a lover of art. As an art student, she aspires to be a great painter, and is heavily influenced by her mentor G. In her art, Miranda strives above all for authenticity. One of the things that most aggravates her about Clegg is his lack of appreciation for art.
When Miranda and Clegg listen to music together or look at pictures, Clegg is completely blind to the levels of meaning that Miranda discerns. He does not enjoy reading; he dutifully reads The Catcher in the Rye to please her, but gets no pleasure from it.
To Miranda, this is madness. Art for her is truth, and she cannot fully grasp that Clegg is part of the nameless mass of people who lack any real appreciation of art. From Clegg's point of view, this is all part of Miranda's elitist stance; as Clegg sees it, she is looking down on him for not having had her advantages in life.
The sharp differences in their opinions about art highlight their radically different views of life as a whole. The Question and Answer section for The Collector is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. Why fate helps Frederick? Who is the main character. The Collector study guide contains a biography of John Fowles, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.
The Collector essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Collector by John Fowles. Remember me. ABC for book collectors by Carter, John, Publication date. Here is a quick description and cover image of book The Collector written by John Fowles which was published in —.
The Book Collector is a London based journal that deals with all aspects of the book. It is published quarterly and exists in both paper and digital form.
It prints independent opinions on subjects ranging from typography to national heritage policy, from medieval libraries to modern first editions. An earlier series that preceded the Book Collector was the Book Handbook. The journal has had only four editors since it was founded. After the death in of John Davy Hayward, the friend and muse of T. Eliot, it was edited for fifty years by Nicolas Barker, sometime publisher and first head of conservation at the British Library.
Some articles of particular interest include 'Our Literary Banquet' a fantasy banquet for bibliophiles with place settings ; [8] 'National Trust Libraries' ; [9] and 'In Search of Missing Copies of Shakespeare's First Folio' Each issue consists of pp and is sent to subscribers by airmail, where appropriate. Subscribers also have digital access to every issue of The Book Collector , as printed, since its first appearance in and to its predecessor Book Handbook , which was published in twenty-eight numbers between and There is no restriction for libraries and other institutions on the number of digital users.
The Book Collector' s website holds its complete archive, indexed. The Book Collector produces Podcasts at Soundcloud.
