....And She Speaks More Than Four Words of Affirmation

MIRANDA

I do not know

One of my sex, no woman’s face remember—

Save, from my glass, mine own. Nor have I seen

More that I may call men than you, good friend,

And my dear father. How features are abroad

I am skill-less of, but, by my modesty,

The jewel in my dower, I would not wish

Any companion in the world but you,

Nor can imagination form a shape

Besides yourself to like of. But I prattle

Something too wildly, and my father’s precepts

I therein do forget.

……

MIRANDA

At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer

What I desire to give, and much less take

What I shall die to want. But this is trifling,

And all the more it seeks to hide itself

The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning,

And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!

I am your wife if you will marry me.

If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow

You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant

Whether you will or no.

Wow. Miranda sounds quite conflicted in this internal battle of monologue coupled with her previous two. She is really quite obviously talking to herself. Talking herself in and out of things, or really, out from under her father’s thumb. Even in her finally emboldened speech of proposal, her father, Prospero, lingers in the corner rejoicing in scheming glee at this love affair which falls so accordingly into his plans. Of course, in her defial of him, she plays into his hands perfectly. “But I prattle Something too wildly, and my father’s precepts I therein do forget ”, Miranda worries before asking Ferdinand to marry her.

            A balanced irony lies in her counter proposition that should he deny her, she will be his ‘servant’, because it is Ferdinand, a prince, who at present so eagerly and willingly serves her as her servant. The irony of course is that Ferdinand is doing Prospero’s bidding, just as Miranda is.

            Miranda, in a single moment, both claims to having never seen the face of another man or woman aside from her own and her father’s, and to having decided to never marrying anyone else but Ferdinand. In that moment she loses all desire to ever meet another soul. She meets the first man of her life, and that’s it, he is the love of her life. She relinquishes all the other men of the world she know not of, for the first man she lays eyes on.

            Even more bizarre than her proposition is Ferdinand’s acceptance in the words of “Ay, with a heart as willing As bondage e’er of freedom: here’s my hand.”. In an analogy of a slave seeking freedom he accepts marriage to her. His motives sound rather sketchy, but in the end, it’s his loss, because Ferdinand has just become another puppet of the puppet master, Prospero.

            Shakespeare’s use of language in Miranda’s speech “The jewel in my dower” foreshadows to Prospero possibly using their marriage to his own gain, to ascend the throne once again. In her “plain and holy innocence” Miranda weeps at her “unworthiness”, not realizing her weight in the grand scheme of things that Prospero has planned. In this portrayal of herself, Shakespeare has emphasized a reflection of the perception of the women of his time. Shakespeare made the female characters docile, pretty, senseless, and smitten, not to mention, considerably clueless in some cases. 

           The length of Miranda’s speech in itself is in contrast to her usually half lined response or agreement to anything someone says. She is gullible and naive. But who could blame her, after all, she has only known one man in her whole life, her self absorbed, controlling father, and one half man, Caliban, with whom her experience was not fantastic in the least, and the only woman she knows, is herself. Because of this position, she allowed men impose their portrayal or stereotype of women on her, much like one a feminist critic would disprove. Her ‘silly’ “prattling” as Miranda describes it, is the only time she has spoken something of her mind, and even then, in that moment of liberating self expression, thoughts of her father caused her to clamp up and doubt herself, putting a damper on the moment, hampering her own power and voice.