"Sir are you not my father?": The Effect of the Presence of the Father on the Identity of the Daughter in Shakespeare's The Tempest and Plath's "Daddy" Regan Snyder
The relationship between the sorcerer Prospero and his daughter Miranda in Shakespeare's The Tempest is an example of the traditional father-daughter relationship, set on a fantastic, mystical island. Prospero has power and authority that is typical of the traditional father figure, but it is manifested through his magical powers. Miranda, who has never known another man during her life other than her father, is a quiet, obedient young woman who is willing to do anything that her father believes is best. One of Prospero's goals throughout the play is to secure the happiness of his daughter by matching her with the prince of Naples, Ferdinand. Prospero puts Miranda and Ferdinand under various spells using his magical powers, manipulating them into falling in love and becoming engaged. With Prospero's fatherly power that he uses to secure her a happy future, Miranda does not even require emotion or to develop her own identity. Sylvia Plath's poem, “Daddy”, from her book of poetry, Ariel, expresses the speaker's feelings toward her own father who died when she was a young girl, as well as a husband who she has recently grown apart from. Instead of the mystical world that Miranda resides in, the speaker of Plath's poem has experienced a genuine loss that could only exist in the real world. Even though the speaker's tragedy is one that would not occur in Miranda's perfect existence, Plath creates in the poem a strange fantasy constructed from the details of her own life. She has lived almost her whole life without the presence of a father figure, longing to know him, whereas Miranda has never known anything but her father. Plath's father was never able to show her the attention that Miranda receives from Prospero. The absence of a father has caused Plath to be trapped by a memory, as well as by her rage at her own father, and now husband, for abandoning her. The two characters of Miranda and the speaker of “Daddy” both actually reside in fantastic lands created by Shakespeare and Plath, and are being manipulated by figures that represent the same power. Unlike Miranda, though, whose father is always present to save her the trouble of making her own decisions or developing her own identity, Plath, in “Daddy”, molds her own identity independently by throwing out the influence of her father's memory, while also redefining the role of the traditional daughter and wife through her expressions of rage. Prospero, unlike the father portrayed in “Daddy”, lives entirely for his daughter, Miranda. She also lives completely to please him because she has never known any other human in the whole course of her life. The two were banished to the mystical island that is the setting of the play, The Tempest, when she was no more than a baby. The role of Prospero as a father is characterized more than anything by his constant presence in his daughter's life, a presence that would not exist in contemporary reality. For example, Prospero magically arranged the meeting of Miranda and Ferdinand, and looks on in secret as they fall in love with one another. Pleased with the results of his arrangement, he says to himself, “Fair encounter/ Of two most rare affections” (Act III, Scene II, ll. 74-75). Later, when their engagement has been agreed upon, Prospero still makes himself present in every affair of his daughter's. He warns Ferdinand of breaking Miranda's “virgin-knot” (Act IV, Scene I, l. 15) before their wedding, and at the closing of the play, rather than going elsewhere, Prospero will return to Italy with his daughter and her future husband. Miranda has thus been ensured throughout her entire life of her father's unrealistic commitment to her, possessing a carefree, amiable personality, but never really expressing any real emotion or feeling about the position she finds herself in. In the poem, “Daddy”, Plath creates a mythology similar to The Tempest out of her own experiences and mental images of her father and husband. The speaker of the poem's role in the mythology is that of a Jew, whereas the father, in her memory is portrayed as a Nazi. This analogy creates a clear picture for the reader of the speaker's feeling of imprisonment, while the image of the Nazi, or Hitler, points directly to the issue of power. Plath writes, “I have always been scared of you…/… your neat mustache/ And your Aryan eye, bright blue” (ll. 41, 43-44). Later in the poem, the speaker suddenly brings up the figure of the husband when she says, “And I said I do, I do” (l. 67). Then Plath's speaker alludes to her belief that her husband tried to take the place of her father for the seven years they were married, comparing him to a vampire. She speaks to the father about, “The vampire who said he was you/ And drank my blood for…/ Seven years…” (ll. 72-74). These lines help portray Plath's apparent rage at both important male figures in her life.
Plath's speaker in “Daddy” shows the feelings that have plagued her for years. She explains in her own beautiful language the conflict of having a father who is absent and a husband who tries to replace him. Unlike Miranda, Plath never got to know her father and this fact continues to haunt her, as she writes, “I never could talk to you./ The tongue stuck in my jaw” (ll. 24-25). All the speaker of “Daddy” has is a faint memory of his death. She says, “I was ten when they buried you” (l. 57). Although the speaker's position of being alone in the world is completely opposite to that of Shakespeare's Miranda, the two overlap in their trapped state. The speaker of “Daddy” is trapped by the memory of her father as well as her rage at her husband, whereas Miranda is trapped by the constant presence and commitment of Prospero. Miranda is set apart from Plath in “Daddy” by her attitude toward her father's role in her life. Miranda respects and loves her father for his meddling in her life, rather than despite it. Not only is this likely because the story of The Tempest takes place on a perfect island, but on this mysterious island, Miranda is a perfect depiction of the traditional, obedient daughter. It would be inappropriate for her to disagree with her father's wishes or be ungrateful for anything he has done for her. In the play, Miranda never goes against her father's wishes without reproaching herself, like when she tells Ferdinand her name when her father has told her not to do so. Miranda states her name and then exclaims, “O, my father,/ I have broken your hest to say so!” (Act III, Scene I, ll. 37-38). The fact that Miranda does not have any feelings concerning her trapped state by her father points to her lacking a real identity. Plath, on the other hand, expresses numerous complicated emotions in her poem, “Daddy”. She expresses her feeling of entrapment by her father's memory, comparing her father to a black shoe, “In which I have lived like a foot/ For thirty years…” (ll. 3-4). The power that her father has held over her, even in his absence, has helped shape Plath's identity as a daughter in a way that Prospero's power over Miranda has not. Plath is able to feel emotions that she expresses through her poetry, whereas Miranda seems unable to feel anything. The most prominent emotion in “Daddy” is anger, or even rage that seems to build as the poem goes on, both of which are very real emotions that would not exist in the perfect world of The Tempest. The final line of the poem displays her rage, but subsequent resolution with her independence from both father and husband when she says defiantly, “Daddy [father], daddy [husband], you bastard, I'm through” (l. 80). Miranda does not play a huge role in the play, The Tempest, but she almost completely vanishes during the final scenes of the play. It was not needed for Miranda to have a last, defiant speech, like that of Plath's. She simply went away with Ferdinand after their marriage was completely arranged by her father, Prospero. Her final lines in the play, in fact, simply express her innocence and amazement at the many new figures around her. She exclaims, overwhelmed, “O brave new world/ That has such people in't!” (Act V, Scene I, ll. 84-85). Prospero now sees that his job of securing his daughter is done, and he can step aside to some degree, giving Miranda away to Ferdinand, although he intends to continue his presence in her life. Miranda's passive exit from the plot of the play is not only a reflection of her role as the ideal, devoted daughter and wife, but also of her lack of true identity separate from the two figures of Prospero and Ferdinand. Miranda represents simply Prospero's daughter and Ferdinand's wife, rather than her own independent self, like the speaker of Plath's “Daddy”. The significance of Plath's defiant lines at the end of the poem is essential in deciphering her individual identity as a daughter, as well as a woman going through a divorce. Unlike Miranda, Plath is able, in the poem, to free herself from the memory of her father that has haunted her for her whole life. Her own emotions also trapped her, as she felt resentment toward her father for not being there for her as Prospero is for Miranda. In “Daddy”, it is clear that all she ever wanted was to know her father, and for him to shelter her the way traditional, powerful fathers, like Prospero, are supposed to. pHowever, throughout the poem, she hints at her eventual ability to escape from the trap of her father, stating, “Daddy, I have had to kill you./ You died before I had time…” (ll. 6-7). This ability of Plath to defy her father sets her apart from the figure of Miranda more than perhaps anything other than the obvious absence of a father that in Miranda's case is so present. The fact that Plath's father died, and, from the point of view of the voice of “Daddy”, abandoned her, is extremely paramount in shaping her identity as an independent woman, full of emotions like regret and rage. An interesting idea that surfaces in both The Tempest and Plath's “Daddy” is the idea of marriage and divorce. In The Tempest, Miranda is deprived of her own identity by her father's constant efforts to match her with a fortunate husband. However, although from a modern point of view this Shakespearian relationship seems problematic, it really serves to put Miranda in a truly secure place. Plath in “Daddy”, on the other hand, has been allowed the choice of her own husband not only because of her father's absence in her life, but mostly because of the fact that, in the contemporary world, even if her father were present, he would not likely be making the decision for her. Plath, though, unfortunately was not granted success in her marriage, as is expressed in the poem. The institution of marriage for the speaker of “Daddy” has turned out to be an unsatisfying union, but she manages to come to a satisfying conclusion in which she can be independent of the men who made her unhappy, as Miranda also comes to the happy conclusion of a future life with Ferdinand.
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