The
Collector
of John Fowles who is generally attributed as a Post-Modernist writer
was published in 1963. While writing to book, Fowles was inspired
from a real story of Bartok’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle with a
contemporary newspaper report. He says in Woodcock (1984; 27) that:
“ a boy who captured a girl and imprisoned her in an air-raid
shelter at the end of his gar- den ... there were many peculiar
features about this case that fascinated me.” In the novel some
characteristics of Post-Modernist Literature is used such as
intertextuality . Shakespeare's play The
Tempest,
The
Old Man of The Sea
in
story of Sinbad
the Sailor
from One
Thousand and One Nights, Jane
Austen's novel Emma
are
some of the most significant literary works which are mentioned in
The
Collector.
The
first inter-text in The
Collector is
Shakespeare's play The
Tempest, which
is obvious through the Miranda' s and Fredrick Clegg' s names.
Firstly, Miranda is the daughter of the Prospero in The
Tempest. She
is stucked in an island, because his father is exiled from Milan
where he was a duke in the play. Similarly, Miranda in The
Collector is
abducted by the anti-hero of the novel and stucked in a cellar. The
lowering standards of being in an island is not so different than
being kept in a cellar. They both are isolated from the civilization
where they are supposed to belong because of their gender. While
Miranda in The
Tempest
reaches to happiness and gets married to man she loves, Miranda in
The Collector
dies because of malaria without seeing the light which she looks
forward to from these quotations: “
The thing I miss most is fresh light. I can’t live without light.”
and “
I could see daylight through a keyhole.”
Secondly, the name of anti-hero Fredrick Clegg is also an inter-text
to the Shakespeare's play since the first name of Fredrick Clegg is
Ferdinand, who gets married to Miranda in The
Tempest
,and Clegg hopes to make Miranda falls in love with him. In the novel
it is seen in this quotation:
“What’s
your name?” she said. Clegg, I answered.“Your first name?”
Ferdinand. However,
unlike Ferdinand, Clegg never achieves his aim. Furthermore, after he
reads Miranda's diary and learns what actually she thinks about him
and hates her.
In
addition to his first name, Clegg is called Caliban in Miranda's
diary, which creates another inter-text to The
Tempest. Prospero
tries to teach Caliban religion and language, but after Caliban tries
to rape Miranda, he is treated like a monster. In The
Collector, Clegg
is tried to be educated by Miranda. She tries to increase his
humanity and intellectuality.“You
have money - as a matter of fact, you aren’t stupid, you could
become whatever you liked. Only you’ve got to shake off the past.
You’ve got to kill your aunt and the house you lived in and the
people you lived with. You’ve got to be a new human being.” He
is given a book which he stops reading. He also uses bad English
which can be easily understood when his writing and Miranda's diary
are compared. Clegg doesn't rape Miranda while Caliban in The
Tempest
tries it. However, he is still called as Caliban because of his
narrow-mind, and psychological disorder by Miranda.
Lastly, G.P whom Miranda loves in the novel can be linked with
Prospero in The
Tempest .
They both are not young characters. Prospero has a daughter and lives
in an island for years. G.P is earns his own money and he is elder
than Miranda. Both of the characters are well-respected. Miranda
praises G.P' s ideas about the collectors in the novel. “
G.P. saying that collectors were the worst animals of all. He meant
art collectors, of course. But of course, he is right.”
Prospero is the play's protagonist and he is a moral man. He admits
to stop spell after he takes what he deserves and gives lesson to
everyone. G.P 's name might also refer to Prospero as Great Prospero
because sorcerers are generally called as great.
The
second inter-text in The
Collector is
Jane Austen' s Emma.
The heroin of Austen's novel is described as “handsome,
clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition.”
Miranda
thinks herself like Emma and states her admiration that a few time in
the novel. “I
am Emma Woodhouse. I feel for her, of her and in her. I have a
different sort of snobbism, but I understand her snobbism.” In
this quotation, Miranda feels an instant connection between her and
Emma because sometimes she looks down on Clegg who doesn't understand
neither art nor literature like Emma's behaviors to lower class
people. Miranda also tries to justify Emma's wrongs, which shows how
she feels close herself to Emma.
“I
know she does wrong things, she tries to organize other people’s
live.Creative, determined to set the highest standards. A real human
being. Her faults are my faults: her virtues I must make my virtues.”
After
finishing to book, Miranda matches the people in her life to the
characters in the novel Emma.
“Emma. The busi- ness of being between inexperienced girl and
experienced woman and the awful problem of the man. Caliban is Mr
Elton. Piers is Frank Churchill. But is G.P. Mr Knightley?”
Finally,
the third inter-text in the novel is to the story of Sinbad
the Sailor
and One
Thousand and One Nights.
In one of Sinbad's quest he is captured by Old Man of the Sea and
makes him drunk to kill him. Miranda thinks Clegg is like Old Man of
the Sea because he doesn't let her go. “I
know what you are. You’re the Old Man of the Sea. The horrid old
man Sinbad had to carry on his back. That’s what you are. You get
on the back of everything vital, everything trying to be honest and
free, and you bear it down.”
To sum up, Fowles
uses interxtuality in The Collector thanks to The Tempest,
Sinbad the Sailor and Emma, which can be seen in the
examples that I mentioned.
