| Chapter 1: | Caliban, Shakespeare’s Transformative Other |
|
|
a series of exaggerated qualities on the native/colonized subject, which then enhances the inflicting of control and manipulation by the colonizer. Regardless of the adjectives used to describe Caliban, one common threat pervades: He is an inferior being, uncivilized and barbarian based on the colonizer’s perception, which was often reflected in the various representations of Caliban on stage. The images that this native conjured for audiences supported the changing view of the world promoted by chaotic events. However, Caliban was always described as the lowest form of life, a breathing representation of the vile qualities Europeans had overcome; among these characteristics were “theft, rape and murder” (Virginia Mason Vaughan 143). Caliban was often portrayed with bestial qualities with references made about his insatiable sexual appetite. The native of the New World represented everything that the European was not. It was his savage nature, his lack of belief in civilized behavior and irrational thinking that controlled him. Therefore, for the European colonizer, Caliban was everything he was not (Takaki 899). These personality traits or flaws are present in The Tempest when Prospero accuses Caliban of attempting to rape his daughter Miranda:
PROSPERO. Thou most lying slave, Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee, Filth as thou art, with human care: and lodged thee in mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate The honour of my child.
CALIBAN. O ho, O ho! would’t had been done! Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled else This isle with Calibans. (The Tempest 1.2.348–355)
Caliban’s reaction is both retaliation and an adaptation of characteristics that the colonizer has identified and yet imposed on the colonized subject. For Prospero, the representation of the colonizer who believes he is Caliban’s salvation, his daughter’s