Add to that that many critics see Caliban as a brute who is not capable of restraining himself and so the offence is turned into a matter of colonisation and Caliban becomes the victim. Some critics even believe that Caliban cannot be blamed for his acts, as does Lorie Jerrell Leininger who argues that "anyone who is forced into servitude, confined to a rock, kept under constant surveillance, and punished by supernatural means would wish his enslavers ill" (Leininger, quoted in Slights 2001: 373). When she is seen as a person, she is often seen, like her father, as the oppressor. Miranda was, according to many of them, only important to help realise her father's goals. Postcolonial critics emphasised the relationship between Prospero and Caliban, and again often ignored Miranda or labelled her irrelevant. In the twentieth century, postcolonial readings of the play came to dominate the field. They hardly mention her, or like Hazlitt perceive her as some goddess or natural woman. According to Slight, it is common for the critics of this period to remain silent on the subject of Miranda. One would think that the attempted rape of Miranda is a clear example of one of his gross acts, but Hazlitt does not even mention it, nor does he say anything else on the relationship between the two. It is the very purity of love." Most of his discussion of The Tempest deals with Caliban, according to him one of Shakespeare's masterpieces, and the "essence of grossness". William Hazlitt, for example, in his work Characters of Shakespeare's Plays describes Miranda as a "goddess of the isle" and says that "he courtship between Ferdinand and Miranda is one of the chief beauties of this play. In the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, there were mainly sentimental readings of The Tempest. This paper will give a short overview of how Miranda has traditionally been regarded by Tempest critics and evaluate the way she is represented in two well-know Tempest adaptations: Davenant and Dryden's The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island and Derek Jarman's screen adaptation of The Tempest. Initially, I must confess, I did the same thing: I was so focused on Caliban and Prospero that I took Miranda for granted, but I became aware of this after reading Jessica Slight's essay "The Rape and Romanticization of Shakespeare's Miranda" and decided that indeed the role of Miranda was interesting enough to investigate. Stephen Orgel's Prospero's Wife, most scholars seem to forget Miranda or are of the opinion that she is not relevant, that she is only an object of exchange in Prospero's schemes to regain his position and get back to the mainland. Although there are of course articles or books on the other characters of The Tempest or characters that are not even visible in the play, e.g. Of course, in the light of recent events (decolonisation and changing views on racism) and the flourishing field of postcolonial studies it is not strange that most attention goes to these two characters, but it does mean that some of the characters get less attention than they deserve. What is remarkable though is that most of these books and articles focus on Prospero and Caliban. There are books and articles on every imaginable aspect of it and on that of its adaptations. Like all the works of Shakespeare, The Tempest has been studied in great detail. I wrote this paper a while ago, I think it sucks, but maybe any of you can find something interesting or useful in it.
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