Introduction

John Fowles' creative work holds a unique place in twentieth-century American literature. In his works, we see themes of searching for lost personal values, personal freedom, and social inequality. Fowles seeks to address these issues through art and literature. His works highlight concerns about freedom, life, and universal human values. The psychology of characters plays a crucial role in J. Fowles' creative work; the author vividly describes the experiences and emotions of his characters as the plot unfolds.

One of the author's most acclaimed novels is The Collector, published in 1963, which brought Fowles widespread recognition. In this novel, with its intense plot, conflicting ideas such as life and death, art and pornography, love and selfish desires clash. The ambitions and traits of the characters in The Collector vividly reflect the ideology of the era (Hawkins-Dady, 1996, p. 302). Fowles provided the reader with a psychological portrait of a lower-class clerk who is emotionally fragile, potentially aggressive, and psychologically primitive (Rackham, 1972, p. 91). By highlighting these issues, the author issued a warning to society that all of this could become reality.

William Shakespeare and his play The Tempest play a significant role in the novel, whose values are reinterpreted differently in Fowles' postmodernist world. Renaissance philosophy and art are mainly based on the idea that there exists some absolute truth, while in postmodernism, reality is much more imaginary and depends on context (Brooke, 2008, p. 51). The Renaissance pays great attention to humans, their individuality, and unlimited possibilities; postmodernism implies the disruption of universally recognized norms and conventions and the search for alternatives to traditional thinking (Procházka, 2015, p. 109). While The Tempest is a symbol of true nobility and celebrates the victory of good over evil, Fowles' novel leaves only a sense of injustice, when all noble values are defeated and the main character becomes the defenseless victim of a psychologically unbalanced executioner. Accordingly, we can say that Renaissance ideology serves to change the world for the better, an example of which is W. Shakespeare's works, while postmodernism, as J. Fowles' The Collector demonstrates, questions universally recognized truths and points to the abstractness of human relationships.

Methods

The theoretical and methodological foundation of this article is the existing critical literature, research, and scholarly works about John Fowles, in which the writer's creative work is examined from various angles. The comparative method has been chosen for the research, the identification of similarities and differences between the studied subjects, more specifically analogy, which allows seeing similarities between non-identical objects. In our case, the objects of study are the main characters of John Fowles' novel, which serve as analogues to Shakespeare's characters in The Tempest.

Parallels with William Shakespeare's The Tempest

The novel is intertextually linked to William Shakespeare's The Tempest— its main character is named Miranda, while her captor is Frederick Clegg, who calls himself Ferdinand because he considers the name more noble: "I always liked the name Ferdinand, even before I knew Miranda. There is something foreign, distinguished about this name" (Fowles, 2017, p. 45). However, Miranda calls him Caliban, who is a character from The Tempest representing dark forces. When presenting two different and opposing worlds of characters, the author borrows the personal traits of the characters from Shakespeare's works, Miranda and Caliban. The novel represents a re-analysis of Shakespeare's worldview, based on which many moral values and an entire system of views have been re-evaluated. The Collector seems to represent a reflection of The Tempest in a distorted mirror; Miranda, isolated in complete isolation in the basement of an abandoned house in the London suburbs, is on an island cut off from the entire world, from which the most precious thing—freedom—has been taken away (Kobeshavidze, 2000, p. 31). Additionally, both works are based on the archetypes of the universally known fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. However, Fowles transforms his novel's characters through the prism of the postmodernist epoch and presents us with a completely different, more terrifying and tragic interpretation from his predecessor heroes. All this is the result of Fowles' contemporary social existence, which has a tragic influence on people and drives them toward terrifying, inhuman actions.

Freud's ideas and existentialism play a significant role in Fowles' work. The plot of his novel touches on many serious issues that can be read subtextually. One such issue is the confrontation between 'Few' and 'Many' in the form of Miranda and Frederick's characters (Bechvaia, 2010, p. 99). Fowles believes that although people are born under unequal conditions, the boundary between the so-called 'Few' and 'Many' passes through the individual personality itself (Kharbedia, 2013, p. 2). Confrontation with the "masses" is only possible through education and striving for art. This is exactly how Miranda established her place in chosen society, while Frederick remained part of the "mass"—he has never taken responsibility for his own crimes, never thought about mistakes, he lacks the ability to see and understand. In Shakespeare, the distribution of roles happens more directly: the nobility represents the 'Few', while their subordinate people are the 'Many' (Nostbakken, 2004, p. 92). This boundary is obvious and clear, while Fowles' contemporaneity is much more complex, requiring from humans the ability to see and understand.

The novel's plot, like Shakespeare's play, is built on the personal diaries of two main characters, Miranda and Clegg, where they describe reality as seen from their perspective. By conveying their internal monologues, the author brought us closer to the characters and made us participants in their personal experiences. It is clear that Miranda is a victim of her own situation, while Clegg is a victim of existing social inequality (Woodcock, 1984, p. 66).

As the work's plot develops, it seems to give us hope that Miranda will finally be able to escape from the clutches of her violent captor and gain freedom, as happens in Shakespeare, but the reader realizes that this is Miranda's punishment and she will never be able to escape her executioner. This is a story about the impossibility of relationship: where two completely different worlds collide, mutual understanding and sharing of common opinion is impossible (Kharbedia, 2013, p. 1). The novel's similar development resembles a journey in closed space, where only fear and hopelessness reign. The reality created by Clegg is suffocating and deadly. The characters' internal monologue brings the reader even closer to the horrors of captivity, first to the depths of Clegg's psychopathic mind, then to Miranda's inner world, which is full of constant disappointment and despair. Unfortunately, despite her rich and diverse nature, Miranda is powerless against Clegg's dark intentions. The main characters seem to move in one circle, as Clegg systematically and mercilessly violates Miranda's constant and irrepressible striving for freedom.

It is no coincidence that Clegg collects butterflies for his collection (Tarbox, 1988, p. 176). In ancient Greek civilization, the butterfly is identified with the human soul. Accordingly, Frederick appears as a captor of souls. Living butterflies do not exist in the collection, this is a kind of indication that Miranda also becomes a lifeless specimen of this collection.

Childhood traumas locked Clegg in a world filled with complexes, instilling in him feelings of introversion and lack of self-confidence (Loveday, 1985, p. 70). He cannot adequately perceive reality; he lives in a world created by himself, where it is impossible to distinguish between real and unreal and to have sound judgment.

The reader has an ambivalent attitude toward Clegg. On one hand, he evokes great aggression due to his cowardly and executioner-like nature, on the other hand, Frederick's past, personal tragedy, and his deification of Miranda also evoke some sympathy. Clegg's world is arranged in such a way, surrounded by such people, that for him the only bright spot is Miranda, who for him is associated with everything desirable and unattainable. For him, Miranda embodies everything that no woman has ever been familiar to him (Axelrod-Sokolov, 2018, p. 81). By his very being, he represents a soulless exhibit, a personality isolated and abandoned by everyone, whom everyone treated the way he treats Miranda (Pifer, 1986, p. 92). This seems to be the result of the transformation of negative forces that ultimately caused deadly harm to Miranda, an innocent member of society; which is completely logical in the postmodernist world.

Clegg, like Caliban, is possessed by dark forces and desires. Shakespeare's character is also externally deformed and disgusting, "A freckled whelp hag-born—not honoured with a human shape" (Shakespeare, 2007, p. 21). In Fowles, however, Clegg has ordinary appearance; the author focuses attention on his inner deformity, possessive aspirations, and violation of art (Kobeshavidze, 2000, p. 32). He constantly tries and manages not to reveal the thoughts existing in his subconscious even to himself. He cannot accept his contemporary world, which is why he lives in a world of his own representations and illusions (Aubrey, 1991, p. 142). He firmly believes that he can create a different parallel world for Miranda and himself, where they will live happily and carefree as a wonderful couple: "...I was only going to keep her captive, take her somewhere with my van, to an isolated house and then keep her there as a prisoner, though I would treat her well. She would gradually get to know me and fall in love with me, and then we would live together in a beautiful, modern house. We would get married, then children and everything." (Fowles, 2017, p. 21). The more he thinks and delves into this issue, the more he loses his sense of reality and considers Miranda not his prisoner, but a guest.

Clegg's hypocrisy and self-confidence make him an even more dangerous and disgusting personality. He always thinks he is right, and his actions are just: "In my opinion, if there were many like me, the world would be better" (Fowles, 2017, p. 15), he says when he begins telling his story. Frederick also prides himself on managing to capture Miranda without any complications or leaving traces: "...as if I had accomplished some great deed, climbed Everest or performed heroically behind enemy lines" (Fowles, 2017, p. 15). At the same time, he compares Miranda's capture to butterfly hunting, which once again confirms that he cannot perceive the girl as an independent personality with completely different goals and desires from his own: "It happened—the way it sometimes happens when hunting butterflies. You go to a certain place where you know there are rare specimens, you try, but they don't appear, and then, when you're no longer looking, there it is, sitting on a flower in front of you, as if someone had placed it there with tweezers" (Fowles, 2017, p. 31).

The worst thing about Clegg's case is that he does not consider himself guilty of what he committed; Miranda's death is, for him, what his hypocrisy deserves. The girl's diary makes it clear to Clegg that she considered him a cowardly and disgusting creature, so he wants to connect his future to a salesgirl who is equal to him in class and will not cause him so many problems. It is sad that Clegg will never understand that violence against a person, regardless of their status and class, will never be justified, and through this terrible act, he will neither achieve the desired result nor end his loneliness.

In Shakespeare, as befits Renaissance principles, Caliban is punished for his actions. In the first act, second scene of "The Tempest," there are clear hints about the fact that Caliban tried to rape Miranda: "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" (Shakespeare, 2007, p. 35). For this, Prospero severely punishes him, which is completely natural—in the Renaissance epoch, good always triumphs over evil.

The second part of the work represents Miranda's internal monologue, through which we become acquainted with her deep and diverse world, personal experiences, desires, her past, friends, and the most significant figure, G. P., with whom she has deep feelings. From the diary, Miranda's humanity is clearly visible, which brings her very close to Shakespeare's character, her tolerant attitude toward Caliban himself, in whose captivity she finds herself (Aubrey, 1991, p. 76). Similarly, in Shakespeare, Miranda is a symbol of purity and innocence, "perfect and peerless, created of every creature's best" (Shakespeare, 2007, p. 48), who does not have rich life experience, her relationship with Ferdinand is the first experience of love, which she is very careful about and which she values very much: "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" (Shakespeare, 2007, p. 51). No dark force in the world can diminish Miranda's sincere feelings. In the postmodernist world, Miranda's noble world is the direct antithesis of Clegg's base aspirations; she is a multifaceted and creative young artist who thirsts for freedom. Miranda can express her pure feelings, desires, and dreams in the dark and airless basement. She constantly strives for life, for everything that is full of life, and captivity breaks her heart: "I love honesty, freedom, and the desire to give. I love creation and creativity. I love a life full of blood. I love everything that opposes passive observation, imitation, spiritual exhaustion" (Fowles, 2017, p. 315). Like Shakespeare's character, Miranda is gifted with the ability to perceive the harmony and beauty of nature. She is devoted to light, sunbeams, and everything that is valuable for art (Thompson, 1991, p. 142). Miranda is also special because she cannot hate Clegg or seek revenge on him; she wants to help him and show him the world through different eyes: "I suddenly felt how miserable his life was, just like his aunt's, his cousin's, and his Australian relatives' lives. I felt the heavy, dull, all-encompassing hopelessness of such a life. Similar to what Henry Moore has in his painting: people in the dark carriages of the metro during bombing. People who will never see, feel, dance, paint, cry when listening to music, feel the world, the west wind. They never live, in the true sense of these words" (Fowles, 2017, p. 270). Analogously, the Tempest's character Miranda is also initially filled with pity toward Caliban: "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not" (Shakespeare, 2007, p. 35). She even tries to teach language to the monster, but pity turns into hatred after the cannibal attempts violence against her.

Miranda becomes even more appealing in the reader's eyes when she shares her own views on art and strives to become a better artist. For her, literature and painting are the means by which she establishes contact with reality and tries not to lose herself in Caliban's dark world (Pifer, 1986, p. 138). The purity and refinement of Miranda's nature becomes yet another reason why the reader's heart aches so deeply at her death.

Miranda does not want to fully face the reality in which she finds herself, because here everything is lifeless, dark, and withered, and the only person with whom she has a relationship is for her "...not a human being. It is emptiness trying to have human form" (Fowles, 2017, p. 277). Miranda's mistake is that she tries to educate Clegg, engages in a battle of ideas with him, when she should have fought for her own survival (Aubrey, 1991, p. 76). In Shakespeare's world, Miranda also fails to succeed in the matter of Caliban's education; Shakespeare's character cannot read Prospero's books, on the contrary, he expresses hatred toward education and wants to burn the books: "They all do hate him as rootedly as I. Burn but his books" (Shakespeare, 2007, p. 55). Similarly, the books that Miranda offers are completely foreign and incomprehensible to Clegg (Kobeshavidge, 2000, p. 32), which indicates that Clegg only desires her physical captivity and gaining power over her, while emotional-intellectual connection is completely meaningless to him (Nostbakken, 2004, p. 75).

In Miranda's diary, along with significant events or people in her life, we read about her suffering from becoming a victim of a heartless person. She knows perfectly well that she became the weakness of a psychopathic person, as she writes as a result of analyzing her own situation: "He is a collector. Collecting – something dead and lifeless that fills his entire being" (Fowles, 2017, p. 194). She also realizes that in this dilemma she is doomed to death, like one of the butterfly specimens: "I too am sitting in the [butterflies'] bottle, fluttering my wings between glass walls, and because the glass is transparent, I still think it's possible to escape from the bottle. That there is still hope, but all this is just an illusion" (Fowles, 2017, p. 252). Miranda is so intelligent that she knows she will never be able to escape from her executioner's hands, but despite everything, she fights until the last minute of her life.

It is clear that Miranda's deep feelings connect her to G.P., the same George Paston who became her idol in a short time. Miranda is enchanted by G.P.'s views on art, society, and politics; in her diary, she mentions how he spoke negatively about collectors, which proved to be completely true through the tragic example of her own life. The character of G.P. can be connected to Shakespeare's Prospero through contradictory characteristics, who is also a contradictory character. He seemingly "forgives" his enemies, but only after taking revenge on them (Mabillard, 2010, p. 4). Both characters are distinguished by knowledge and education, they have power and can exert great influence on those around them. In Shakespeare, Prospero's magical abilities help him control the characters and their fate, as well as regain his lost status (Zabus, 2002, p. 211), while in Fowles, G.P.'s main weapon is his knowledge and experience, his ideas have enormous influence on the formation of Miranda's worldview. It is clear that he belongs to the social elite, the 'few,' whose views inspire Miranda's admiration; she dreams of a future when she will live happily with G.P., but G.P. is far away and cannot help Miranda escape from captivity. The basement of the old house is an island, without art, cold and inaccessible, just like Fowles' contemporary world, to whose cruelty Miranda is sacrificed (Kobeshavidge, 2000, p. 32).

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be said that in the novel The Collector there is a clear confrontation between two characters with different views and ideologies, which takes on a frightening form and ultimately ends with tragic results. The Tempest is a play in which true culture and high moral values triumph over false values and corrupted principles (Kobeshavidge, 2000, p. 31). The ending of each work is completely logical considering the spirit of their contemporary epochs; in the Renaissance, justice triumphs, good intentions prevail over evil instincts, while in the cruel world of postmodernism, the dark force remains unpunished. Miranda's gentle nature, her aspiration toward art, and Caliban's primitiveness are directly borrowed from Shakespeare's play. However, in Fowles' contemporaneity, the triumph of high ideals is impossible because here everything is an imitation of the original; there is no longer a happy ending because in such existence, the birth of a feeling that defeats evil is unimaginable. In Shakespeare, the theme of class confrontation is directly related to human origin, while in Fowles, belonging to 'Few' and 'Many' can be changed by the individual himself if he so desires. Despite the fact that Frederick became materially wealthy, his inner world will never reach the state of the 'Few' (Van der Zanden, 2017, p. 21). In the postmodern world, the relationship between the contemporary beauty and the beast is radically different; in contemporaneity, Miranda cannot see beyond Clegg's personality another much more attractive person, she does not betray her own principles and is even sacrificed to them, because in this time, love is replaced by acquisition, which not only does not diversify people's inner world but destroys them.