Scan barcode
A review by howlsmovinglibrary
Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey
3.0
Miranda is a lonely child. For as long as she can remember, she and her father have lived in isolation in the abandoned Moorish palace. The wild boy Caliban is a lonely child, too; an orphan left to fend for himself at an early age, all language lost to him. When Caliban is summoned and bound into captivity by Miranda’s father as part of a grand experiment, he rages against his confinement; and yet he hungers for kindness and love.
I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Miranda and Caliban is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Tempest, which is a) a really good play, and b) a colonialist fantasy told from the perspective of a powerful white man. The play’s protagonist is Prospero, a magician who can control all of nature and bend it to his will, which he uses to ‘civilise’ the Moorish (read African) island on which he is shipwrecked, and its inhabitants, in order to enact his revenge on his evil usurping brother. He has a daughter, Miranda, and a slave called Caliban, who is the son of a demon worshipping witch. Prospero explains in one scene that he tried to ‘civilise’ Caliban, but was unable to due to Caliban’s inherently evil blood, which led Caliban to attempt the rape of Miranda, the crime which is now used to justify his slavery.
Miranda and Caliban¸ as the name obviously suggests, takes this play and rewrites it without the colonialist ideology of Prospero – Miranda is now the narrator, and we see the world through her eyes, rather than her father’s. Some chapters are also written from Caliban’s point of view, and that means we get to see Prospero specifically as a slave master and coloniser. I really enjoyed this choice of focalisation, as it takes a critical stance on Prospero: he is made into the antagonist of the narrative, stubborn, racist and set in his ideals of Western civilisation, which he uses to dictate both Miranda and Caliban’s behaviour against there will. When Miranda, rather than her father, is allowed to tell her story, what happens is a romance: one that Prospero cannot understand because he has placed his daughter, the only figure of feminine gentility on the island, on a pedestal, and it is unthinkable that she would have feelings for a ‘monster’ like Caliban. It attempts to take a postcolonial stance on the play, criticising 16th Century ideas of femininity and of race.
Things I liked about it:
· The writing style is really beautiful. The dialogue is written in a semi-Shakespearean tone but still makes sense, which lent it authenticity.
· The book draws on a lot of postcolonial/feminist theory surrounding the play, which as a lit graduate made me very happy. But specifically, ideas of womanhood – like Miranda having to be a gentle and feminine noblewoman despite living on a freaking island with no one but her father to judge her – are interrogated, and giving Caliban a voice means that he’s no longer just the evil black demon worshipping slave. Making Prospero the antagonist was awesome, as it is portrayed all the damaging influences of patriarchy and embodied them in one character.
· Miranda has a lot of agency. She’s a magician in her own right, and strong willed. This is nice, because in the play she’s a little bit of a wet blanket, and not one of Shakespeare’s best written heroines. Similarly, some of the twists in the Carey’s plot explain away the problems with her character, specifically, the instalove between Ferdinand and Miranda.
Things I didn’t like about it:
Generally, I just I don’t think it goes far enough as postcolonial retelling. The first half of the book is amazing and merciless in picking apart Prospero’s version of events, but then things start to go downhill….
· A lot of this book deconstructs the racist image of Caliban as an animalistic, uncivilised slave. However, some stereotypes endure: for instance, he is more overtly and crudely sexual than Miranda. Oversexualisation is obviously a huge issue and I feel like Carey should’ve avoided it, particularly if you look at Othello, where Othello’s overt sexuality and sexual desire are portrayed as part of his inherent violence as a black man. And then the murder plot of The Tempest is kept in the book, which is basically just perpetuating this stereotype of violence.
· Further in this vein, the second half of the book is pretty much just a straight forward rehash of The Tempest, but from Miranda’s POV. The first half of the book is really interesting, as it offers something additional to the Tempest plot, looking at Miranda and Caliban’s childhood and the friendship they develop – stuff that Prospero only talks about, but we never see, in the play. But after that it just reverts to the Shakespeare story: it just felt a bit dull and boring to simply go through the play scene by scene. If I wanted that, I could reread the play.
· The ending. This book just kind of…finished. It’s not just that not much from the original plot was changed, or scrutinised in any way. It isn’t even the position the characters are in at the end, which is definitely not happy. It’s just that….nothing new happened. The book pretty much finishes where the play finishes, in a way that places Caliban at a serious disadvantage. It kind of undid all the work the first half of the book: Miranda is given more agency, but Caliban is left a powerless slave, and I just don’t get why no one saw how super problematic that is.
I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Miranda and Caliban is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Tempest, which is a) a really good play, and b) a colonialist fantasy told from the perspective of a powerful white man. The play’s protagonist is Prospero, a magician who can control all of nature and bend it to his will, which he uses to ‘civilise’ the Moorish (read African) island on which he is shipwrecked, and its inhabitants, in order to enact his revenge on his evil usurping brother. He has a daughter, Miranda, and a slave called Caliban, who is the son of a demon worshipping witch. Prospero explains in one scene that he tried to ‘civilise’ Caliban, but was unable to due to Caliban’s inherently evil blood, which led Caliban to attempt the rape of Miranda, the crime which is now used to justify his slavery.
Miranda and Caliban¸ as the name obviously suggests, takes this play and rewrites it without the colonialist ideology of Prospero – Miranda is now the narrator, and we see the world through her eyes, rather than her father’s. Some chapters are also written from Caliban’s point of view, and that means we get to see Prospero specifically as a slave master and coloniser. I really enjoyed this choice of focalisation, as it takes a critical stance on Prospero: he is made into the antagonist of the narrative, stubborn, racist and set in his ideals of Western civilisation, which he uses to dictate both Miranda and Caliban’s behaviour against there will. When Miranda, rather than her father, is allowed to tell her story, what happens is a romance: one that Prospero cannot understand because he has placed his daughter, the only figure of feminine gentility on the island, on a pedestal, and it is unthinkable that she would have feelings for a ‘monster’ like Caliban. It attempts to take a postcolonial stance on the play, criticising 16th Century ideas of femininity and of race.
Things I liked about it:
· The writing style is really beautiful. The dialogue is written in a semi-Shakespearean tone but still makes sense, which lent it authenticity.
· The book draws on a lot of postcolonial/feminist theory surrounding the play, which as a lit graduate made me very happy. But specifically, ideas of womanhood – like Miranda having to be a gentle and feminine noblewoman despite living on a freaking island with no one but her father to judge her – are interrogated, and giving Caliban a voice means that he’s no longer just the evil black demon worshipping slave. Making Prospero the antagonist was awesome, as it is portrayed all the damaging influences of patriarchy and embodied them in one character.
· Miranda has a lot of agency. She’s a magician in her own right, and strong willed. This is nice, because in the play she’s a little bit of a wet blanket, and not one of Shakespeare’s best written heroines. Similarly, some of the twists in the Carey’s plot explain away the problems with her character, specifically, the instalove between Ferdinand and Miranda.
Things I didn’t like about it:
Generally, I just I don’t think it goes far enough as postcolonial retelling. The first half of the book is amazing and merciless in picking apart Prospero’s version of events, but then things start to go downhill….
· A lot of this book deconstructs the racist image of Caliban as an animalistic, uncivilised slave. However, some stereotypes endure: for instance, he is more overtly and crudely sexual than Miranda. Oversexualisation is obviously a huge issue and I feel like Carey should’ve avoided it, particularly if you look at Othello, where Othello’s overt sexuality and sexual desire are portrayed as part of his inherent violence as a black man. And then the murder plot of The Tempest is kept in the book, which is basically just perpetuating this stereotype of violence.
· Further in this vein, the second half of the book is pretty much just a straight forward rehash of The Tempest, but from Miranda’s POV. The first half of the book is really interesting, as it offers something additional to the Tempest plot, looking at Miranda and Caliban’s childhood and the friendship they develop – stuff that Prospero only talks about, but we never see, in the play. But after that it just reverts to the Shakespeare story: it just felt a bit dull and boring to simply go through the play scene by scene. If I wanted that, I could reread the play.
· The ending. This book just kind of…finished. It’s not just that not much from the original plot was changed, or scrutinised in any way. It isn’t even the position the characters are in at the end, which is definitely not happy. It’s just that….nothing new happened. The book pretty much finishes where the play finishes, in a way that places Caliban at a serious disadvantage. It kind of undid all the work the first half of the book: Miranda is given more agency, but Caliban is left a powerless slave, and I just don’t get why no one saw how super problematic that is.