Miranda

Colored lithograph, size approximately 8.5 x 11 inches, Graphic, a weekly London newspaper.

The daughter of Prospero, Miranda was brought to the island at an early age and has never seen any men other than her father and Caliban, though she dimly remembers being cared for by female servants as an infant. Because she has been sealed off from the world for so long, Miranda’s perceptions of other people tend to be naïve and non-judgmental. She is compassionate, generous, and loyal to her father.

Just under fifteen years old, Miranda is a gentle and compassionate, but also relatively passive, heroine. From her very first lines she displays a meek and emotional nature.

“O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer!”

she says of the shipwreck (I.ii.5–6), and hearing Prospero’s tale of their narrow escape from Milan, she says:

“I, not rememb’ring how I cried out then,
Will cry it o’er again”

(I.ii.133–134).

Miranda does not choose her own husband. Instead, while she sleeps, Prospero sends Ariel to fetch Ferdinand, and arranges things so that the two will come to love one another. After Prospero has given the lovers his blessing, he and Ferdinand talk with surprising frankness about her virginity and the pleasures of the marriage bed while she stands quietly by. Prospero tells Ferdinand to be sure not to “break her virgin-knot” before the wedding night (IV.i.15), and Ferdinand replies with no small anticipation that lust shall never take away “the edge of that day’s celebration” (IV.i.29). In the play’s final scene, Miranda is presented, with Ferdinand, almost as a prop or piece of the scenery as Prospero draws aside a curtain to reveal the pair playing chess.

But while Miranda is passive in many ways, she has at least two moments of surprising forthrightness and strength that complicate the reader’s impressions of her as a naïve young girl. The first such moment is in Act I, scene ii, in which she and Prospero converse with Caliban. Prospero alludes to the fact that Caliban once tried to rape Miranda. When Caliban rudely agrees that he intended to violate her, Miranda responds with impressive vehemence, clearly appalled at Caliban’s light attitude toward his attempted rape. She goes on to scold him for being ungrateful for her attempts to educate him:

“When thou didst not, savage,
Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes
With words that made them known”

(358–361)

These lines are so surprising coming from the mouth of Miranda that many editors have amended the text and given it to Prospero. This reattribution seems to give Miranda too little credit. In Act III, scene i comes the second surprising moment—Miranda’s marriage proposal to Ferdinand:

“I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not, I’ll die your maid”

(III.i.83–84)

Her proposal comes shortly after Miranda has told herself to remember her “father’s precepts” (III.i.58) forbidding conversation with Ferdinand. As the reader can see in her speech to Caliban in Act I, scene ii, Miranda is willing to speak up for herself about her sexuality.

The character of Miranda in "The Tempest" is extremely compelling for two reasons. First and foremost it is important to note that the Miranda is the only female character who appears in the entire play. This is the only Shakespeare play where a character has this kind of outstanding distinction. This is not just a fluke on the part of Shakespeare, for it is very important that the character of Miranda appear by herself. The reader is not able to compare her beauty and virtue to any other female in the world of "The Tempest", and this serves both to show her value as a character and the fact that no other living women has the virtue of Miranda. While Miranda may not have many outstanding lines or solioquys, she makes up for this in sheer presence alone. Miranda's character encompasses all the elements of perfectionism and goodness which is lacking in all the other respective characters. All of the other characters in "The Tempest" are reflected by Miranda, and even if she did not speak one line she would still serve this important purpose.

Secondly, Miranda also serves as the ultimate fantasy for any male who (like Ferdinand) is a bachelor. She is extremely beautiful, she is intelligent, and she has never been touched (or even seen) by another male. Shakespeare makes Miranda even more desirable by including the fact that she has never seen or even talked to another man (with the obvoius exception of Prospero). Miranda personifies the ultimate source of good in the play, and provides the ultimate foil for the evil character of Caliban. When Ferdinand is forced to chop wood by Prospero, Miranda offers to do it for him. Finding a woman this humble in the world of Shakespeare is almost impossible. One does not have to look farther than her last line in the play to realize her purpose in the plot. Miranda states:

"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures there are here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't"
(Tempest,5.1,185-7)

Through this passage and many of her others Miranda shows a positive attitude which is almost uncanny when compared to the other characters. In all of the collected works of Shakespeare not one character is as overwhelmingly pure as Miranda. Even the nun Isabella in "Measure for Measure" wouldn't perform the virtuos act of sacrificing her virginity to save her brothers life. Miranda certainly would perform this act, becuase unlike Isabella she would place value on another persons life before protecting her own ego. In this and all the facets of her character Miranda appears almost Christ-like, and it is this extreme propensity towards goodness and purity which enables Miranda to become a unreplacable and unforgettable character.