Miranda is the only female character in The Tempest and remains passive due to being solely under her father Prospero's control. Prospero manipulates Miranda and views her primarily as a means to gain political advantages through her virginity and marriage to Ferdinand. While Miranda appears simple and innocent, she displays moments of strength in confronting Caliban about attempting to rape her and in proposing marriage to Ferdinand. However, Miranda's role is limited and she serves to further her father and the male characters' interests and ambitions.

1. Character Analysis
of Miranda
• Name: Anuj Kumar Karmakar
• Class: XII
• Section: Science
• Roll number: 06

2. A brief analysis of
Miranda’s character.
Her external
resemblances and inner
disparities are a matter
of discussion.

3. 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”. 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.
Miranda: A Brief Introduction

4. 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”. 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”.
Her proposal comes shortly after Miranda has told herself to remember her “father’s precepts” 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.
Miranda: A Brief Introduction

5. “Miranda has been reared in solitude from her childhood. Miranda has grown up in company of
her father alone, so her nature has not developed naturally.”
“Miranda’s simplicity is due to external circumstances.”
“Miranda’s simplicity is not tested by fire: it does not encounter any conflict
with worldly wisdom. We see her only in the first stage of development.”
“We know Miranda chiefly through her amour with Ferdinand. We also
see her distressed pity in her anxiety for the shipwrecked mariners during
the tempest. “
Miranda’s character: As described by Rabindranath Tagore
“In Tempest, Miranda is constituted of graceful simplicity, having endured wrongdoing,
suffering, experience, patience, and forgiveness, is mature, sober, and permanent.”
--- By Rabindranath Tagore. Written originally in Bengali. Appeared in
Selected Writings on Literature and Language. Translated by Sukanto
Chaudhuri.

6. We see Miranda in the midst of a wave-lashed shore, desolate, mountainous island; but she has no intimate
relationship with nature on that island. If she were to be plucked from the maternal soil where she has lived since
infancy, it would not cause any wrench to her being. Her state of being on reflects the lack of human company in
such a place; we find no mental affinity with the ocean and mountains there. We see the lonely island only through
the poet’s description or in course of events; we do not see it through Miranda’s eyes. The island was only required
for the plot, it was not essential to the character.
In, The Tempest, nature takes on human shape in the figure of Ariel but keeps away from any kinship with man. When
Miranda leaves the island, she exchange no tender farewell with Ariel.
Miranda: The Girl who did not love NATURE

7. Aside from the Goddesses Iris, Ceres, and Juno, who are non-human
projections created by the male spirit Ariel, the only female character
with an active role in the play is Miranda. Miranda remains passive, as
she is subject to her father’s command. Even though she feels sincerely
attracted to Ferdinand, Prospero manipulates her psychologically in
order to stoke the fire of her attraction further. The fact that Prospero
manipulates Miranda like a pawn in his larger political game indicates
how men in The Tempest subordinate women to their desires. His
speech, in blessing the upcoming wedding, indicates Prospero sees his
daughter as his property: “Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition /
Worthily purchased…”. For Prospero, Miranda’s value lies mainly in
her virginity, which makes her politically advantageous marriage to
Ferdinand possible. Miranda’s marriage represents the promise of a
new beginning, which Prospero desperately wishes for himself.
Prospero’s future therefore depends on Miranda’s virginity, which is
why he must guard against all sexual advances, whether from Caliban
or Ferdinand.
Miranda’s Virginity Serves as Prospero’s new Beginning

8. At the end of The Tempest, Miranda says, “O brave new world / That has such people in’t.” However, the only human beings she’s
seen so far are men, and, in fact, Miranda is the only female human character the audience sees in the whole play. The lack of
female characters in The Tempest says a lot about how the men in the play imagine the role of women in society. Perhaps the most
obvious instance where a male character explicitly situates women in a broad social vision occurs when Gonzalo describes how he
would run the island if he had an opportunity to rule. Gonzalo outlines a society defined by leisure and the lack of commerce: “No
occupation: all men idle, all. / And women too, but innocent and pure”. Gonzalo’s inclusion of women seems like an afterthought,
as if he had all but forgotten about them, then remembered that they play a necessary role in society, if they are “innocent and
pure.” Just as Gonzalo consigns women to the social background, so too does The Tempest keep its female characters backstage.
Thus, The Tempest clearly depicts the status of women in society during the Elizabethan Era.
Women during the Elizabethan Era

9. References:
• Miranda: A Pinnacle of Femininity and Object of Patriarchal
Power (A Study of Shakespeare‘s ―The Tempest‖) Mrs. Divya
K.B, Associate Professor, Dept of English, Jindal First Grade
College For Women Jindalnagar, Bangalore, India. Special
Issue Published in International Journal of Trend in Research
and Development (IJTRD), ISSN: 2394-9333, www.ijtrd.com
• Character analysis: Miranda in The Tempest
• Article written by Lilla Grindlay
• Theme: Gender, sexuality, courtship and marriage
• Published:19 May 2017
• Lilla Grindlay explores the character of Miranda in Act 3,
Scene 1 of The Tempest, considering language, form and a
feminist interpretation.
• Selected Writings on Literature and Language by
Rabindranath Tagore, edited by Professor Sukanta
Chaudhuri, and Sankha Ghosha
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare