The Collector: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Collector: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the complex dynamics between two central figures, Frederick Clegg and Miranda Grey, set against a backdrop of class disparity and personal obsession. Frederick Clegg, a clerk who suddenly acquires wealth through a lottery win, embodies the struggles of the uneducated working class and harbors a deep-seated desire to possess Miranda, a cultured art student from an upper-class background. Clegg's misguided belief that he can win her affection leads him to kidnap her and confine her in a makeshift cellar, where he misinterprets his intentions as love despite the disturbing reality of his actions.
Miranda Grey, in contrast, represents resilience and self-discovery, as she documents her thoughts and experiences in a diary during her captivity. Her introspective writing explores her relationships, particularly with her mentor George Pastan, as well as her beliefs about morality and sexuality. Miranda's initial pacifism is challenged by her circumstances, leading her to grapple with her identity and the societal expectations placed upon her. Through this character analysis, the text highlights themes of power, obsession, and the struggle for agency in the face of domination, inviting readers to reflect on the complexities of human relationships and societal norms.
The Collector: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: John Fowles
First published: 1963
Genre: Novel
Locale: London and Sussex, England
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: The early 1960's
Fredrick Clegg, a clerk in the Town Hall Annexe in Southhampton, England, until he wins seventy-three thousand pounds in a lottery and quits his job. He is painfully diffident and ashamed of being a member of the uneducated working class of British society. When Clegg wins the lottery at the age of thirty-seven, he has both the determination and the financial power to realize his greatest ambition: He wants to possess Miranda Grey, the daughter of a doctor and a member of England's cultured, educated upper class. Believing that once Miranda spends time with him she will see that he is worthy of her interest and affection, Clegg purchases a secluded house several miles outside Lewes, England, decorates it the way he mistakenly thinks Miranda would like it, and remodels the cellar and equips it with plumbing and electricity so it will be habitable. He next purchases clothes, records, and books, and he places these in the cellar apart-ment—not for himself but for Miranda. After he kidnaps her, the cellar of his house becomes her prison for two months, until she dies of pneumonia, at which time Clegg buries her body in his backyard. Throughout his retrospective account of his time with Miranda, he frequently assures the reader that he never meant to harm her, that his interest in her was nonsexual, and that he would have gotten a doctor for her if she had not proved herself to be unworthy of his trust and admiration. What he never says directly but shows by his actions and attitudes is that he hates women; if they arouse his otherwise repressed sexual desire, he perceives them as disgusting and worthless whores. He ultimately views Miranda as such a woman, consequently allows her to die, and then, after burying her, begins to stalk his next victim, a young woman who physically resembles Miranda.
Miranda Grey, a second-year art student at the Slade Art School in London. Twenty years old when Clegg kidnaps her, Miranda begins writing a diary that makes up approximately half of the novel's narrative. In her diary entries, she attempts to analyze Clegg and her predicament as his prisoner as well as to understand her religious faith, her sexuality, her talents as an artist, and her relationships with her family and various men in her life, most specifically with George Pastan. Pastan was an artist twice her age whom she had begun to view as her mentor but whom she had refused as a lover; her ongoing analysis of this relationship serves as a significant means by which Miranda is able to unveil and embrace the person she is instead of the person, according to her society, she should be. When Clegg captures her, Miranda is a pacifist who believes in nonviolence at any cost; although she strays from her belief in pacifism when she physically attacks Clegg several weeks after her abduction, she is filled with disgust at herself for stooping to his level and letting herself down. She realizes with certainty that she is a moral person unashamed of being moral. She also discovers that her morality should not preclude a sexual relationship with her mentor-friend George Pastan.