When thinking about the purpose of the majority of William Shakespeare’s characters, it is understandable that they always seem to have to overcome some sort of tragic scenario that would change their lives forever while making them learn, most of the time, a valuable lesson. However, this is not the only trait they share because, when thinking deeply about it, all these tragedies start with something in common: a woman. Whether she is a mother, a daughter, or a wife, depending on the story Shakespeare is telling, they are always the ones to blame for the tragic upcoming that the lead man is forced to face.
But not every one of Shakespeare’s plays is tragedy, and not every woman he created should be judged under that initial lens. This can be seen, for example, in The Tempest, a text in which the woman is not the cause of a tragedy, but also a text in which William Shakespeare represents the agency and power of the female characters in an inferior level in comparison to their male counterparts. In other words, even though Miranda, the only woman that actively takes part in this story, is not the center of the blame, she is still portrayed as inferior when compared to the male characters in the play.
The Tempest tells the story of Prospero, an exiled duke that ended up stranded on a desert island with his daughter and wants to get his power back. By using magic that he learned how to perform while reading his entire library and leaving his duke’s duties unattended, Prospero is able to create a tempest that causes a shipwreck, making all the ship’s crew to be forced to go to the island he is stranded on. By doing this, Prospero intends to manipulate some of the characters that arrive from the ship in order to achieve his main goal, which is regaining his duke status.
Miranda is Prospero’s teenage daughter, and because she is the most important thing he has, this is one of the few cases in which the woman is not the one to blame for the tragedy that takes part in the story. In fact, every single action that happens in this play is directly related to her, as she acts as the motor for the male characters to function and try to achieve their own objectives, no matter what those are. Miranda is not the only woman that exists in the story, but she is the only one that participates in it and has some sort of purpose. The other two women named in The Tempest, in fact, are slightly blamed for the reactions that their vanishment created in these group of men.
However, even though the women in the story are important for the narrative and Miranda can be seen taking some action and having objectives, different from most of Shakespeare’s female characters, there are a few moments in where the play demonstrates that the patriarchy reflected from the Elizabethan era determines Miranda’s actions in The Tempest.
“Miranda’s relative autonomy is both admirable and unusual,” Mike Brett states in So perfect and so peerless': the role of Miranda in The Tempest, even though all is not what it seems (“So perfect and so peerless”, par 3). She is definitely braver and stronger than most of Shakespeare’s female characters, but her rebelliousness is “entirely illusory” as it is Prospero who secretly approves and manipulates all her actions. “He choreographs every aspect of her life, going so far as to imprison Ferdinand as a form of love test designed to determine the extent of his devotion to Miranda,” Brett explains (“So perfect and so peerless”, par 3).
Miranda is unaware of her father’s influence, as she genuinely believes that she owns her life and her actions when, in reality, her life is indirectly dictated by Prospero and the patriarchal ideals that he got from the society he used to belong to. “Prospero treats Miranda as a valuable prize that he has 'given' to Ferdinand and goes on to refer to her as 'my rich gift'. Such language reinforces the reader’s perception of Miranda as something to be bartered over and traded between men, rather than as a self-determining human being in her own right,” Brett explains, demonstrating that as free as Miranda seems to be, her actions are dictated by a man, her father (“So perfect and so peerless”, par 11).
Even though it is understandable that she is the most important thing in his life and the (main) reason he wants to go back to his place as Duke of Milan, it is evident that she is treated as a thing that can be manipulated and also functions as some kind of gift or prize for the man in the story to achieve. She is not the one to blame for the tragedies that occurred in The Tempest, that is for sure; and this difference positions her on a higher level than some other Shakespearean female characters, such as Juliet, Gertrude, or Desdemona, whose only purpose seems to be to somehow envy the man she is in love with. However, this is still not enough for her to be considered as an equal to her male counterparts, because the fact that she is seen and treated as a prize for Ferdinand to win demonstrates that her agency and power are both at a very inferior level.
Following this logic, it is necessary to remember that Miranda is the only female character in this play that has direct participation in the narrative. As Stephen Orgel demonstrates in Prospero’s wife, both Miranda and Caliban’s moms are missing and, because the rest of the characters arrive on the island after the shipwreck caused by Prospero, there is no other woman that could take part in the story. According to Orgel, his wife “is missing as a character, but Prospero, several times explicitly, presents himself as incorporating her, acting as both father and mother to Miranda” (Orgel, 4).
Because of this situation, Miranda has been raised under a male lens, which can be positive but have negative effects as well. It is a gain for her growth because, different from what she would have learned if raised at their original kingdom by her group of maids, Miranda is not as naïve as it would be expected and is far away from what it would be considered a “proper” woman. This way, Miranda approaches life in kind of a manly way, as she reproduces what she was taught from a man’s point of view and can be sensed as someone with more self-assurance than what any other Shakespearean woman might be.
However, the fact that she is more masculine than the stereotype reproduced from the Elizabethan era is not enough for her to be considered in the same level of power that her male counterparts have. If the reader compares Miranda with Ferdinand, which is her exact equivalent but in a male form, her ability to achieve her objectives is far from happening in the story, as the reader does not even know what those objectives are. Ferdinand, on the other hand, wants to fulfill his destiny as prince and continue with what is expected from him, as his inherited social role would dictate. He is the son of a king, and as such, he is used to doing whatever it takes to achieve his objectives. “Some kinds of lowly activities are done for noble reasons, and you can do poor things that leads to rich results,” he explains to Miranda when she is upset about what her father did to him. (Shakespeare, 3.1.1-3).
One might think that their marriage is the goal for both of them, as like in most of Shakespeare stories they fall in love immediately and start to believe that by getting married they would achieve what they expect, but this is only valid for Ferdinand. Miranda might think she is following her destiny as well but as stated by Orgel, “Miranda’s marriage is brought about by the magic; it is a part of Prospero’s plan,” therefore she is not the owner of her actions and decisions. This plan, the author explains, “pleases Miranda but it is designed by Prospero as a way of satisfying himself,” demonstrating the patriarchal ideas behind what Miranda thinks, are her own doings. (Orgel, 10).
As Rahul Singh states in his article Shakespeare's plays: men celebrated; women despised?, the women characters in his tragedies “seem to be designed, more or less, as weak, treacherous, terribly naive, cruel, intriguing, or stubborn individuals”, setting them as the best target to put the blame for the tragedy itself and for all the obstacles that the strong men have to face in Shakespeare’s plays (“Shakespeare’s plays: men celebrated; women despised?”, par 1). This is something that will throw the women’s role downhill, aligning with the patriarchal ideas of the Elizabethan era, helping some people agree that, because of her condition of being a woman, Miranda definitely had it coming.
“If the other tragedies of Shakespeare are carefully read and assessed, it appears that he has actually celebrated his male characters as against the female ones,” Singh explains while describing some of Shakespeare’s most famous women characters (“Shakespeare’s plays: men celebrated; women despised?”, par 5). Following this logic, it could be argued that every single tragic event in The Tempest happened because of Miranda, therefore the tragedy of this entire play lies all on Miranda’s back. Just as Eve in ‘The Bible’ had become responsible for Adam’s downfall, Miranda in The Tempest becomes instrumental in bringing about the demise and ruin of every man around her: it is because he tried to rape her that Caliban ended up as Prospero’s slave, it is to save her that Prospero causes the tempest, it is to marry her that Ferdinand decides to perform as Prospero’s servant, and so it continues.
Even though it is well known that all these characters have more intentions behind the Miranda trait, she could have all the blame put on her and the story would just keep going until the point in which she has to pay because of it. If the reader insists to see the story through this lens, Miranda can be targeted as the one to blame for the tragic situations in The Tempest, demonstrating once again that she is completely inferior to her male counterparts, who at the same time are the ones acting on behalf of her, therefore the ones with the real liability in this Shakespearean tragedy.
Despite the fact that it is arguable that Miranda from The Tempest might not be a total innocent when it comes to the origins of the tragic moments in the story, the way she is treated in the play demonstrates that, in Shakespeare’s verses, the agency and power of female characters is set in an inferior level in comparison to their male counterparts. She works as a reason and a motor for the main male characters to take action in the story: she is the reason why Prospero wants to go back to Milan, the cause of Caliban’s derailing that leads him to end up as Prospero’s servant, and the motor for Ferdinand to do anything he is asked to, just to have her hand in marriage as the final price. Her own objectives and desires are never set up in the story or, even worse, are strictly determined by these male characters and tricked into her mind for her to feel them as her own aspirations.
Following this logic, it is easy for the reader to conclude that Miranda’s character does not fall far from the Shakespearean women’s three, although she is not in the hardest spot like Gertrude, Lady Macbeth or even Portia. She might not be the main character to blame, but this does not mean that her own thinking and doing will be fulfilled in this story, because her actions are always going to be aligned with what is expected from her by the male characters and with what should be correct for her as a woman. At the end of the day, however, it is hard to not wonder how Miranda’s path would be if she was a man in Shakespeare’s world. Or in any world.
Works Cited
Brett, Mike. "'So perfect and so peerless': the role of Miranda in The Tempest: is Miranda a proto-feminist or a pawn in a patriarchal society? Mike Brett looks at the gender issues that permeate Shakespeare's late play." The English Review, vol. 17, no. 1, Sept. 2006, pp. 35+. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://bit.ly/3jSUL4s. Accessed 18 Apr. 2022.
Morris, Sylvia. “Ferdinand and Miranda”. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 11 Nov. 2010, https://bit.ly/39l7ESV. Accessed 29 Apr. 2022.
Orgel, Stephen. “Prospero’s Wife” Representations, Autumn 1984, https://bit.ly/3xyPGGI. Accessed 18 Apr. 2022.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Edited by Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman, W.W. Norton &Company. New York. London 2019.
Singh, Rahul. "Shakespeare's plays: men celebrated; women despised?" Language In India, vol. 14, no. 2, Feb. 2014, pp. 141, https://bit.ly/3LwhrUE Accessed 27 Apr. 2022.