The Collector

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1963

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1, Pages 5-48

Chapter 1, Pages 49-102

Chapter 2, Pages 103-166

Chapter 2, Pages 167-235

Chapters 3-4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Character Analysis

Frederick Clegg

Frederick is an orphan from a working-class background. His father had an alcohol addiction, and it is suggested his mother was a sex worker. His Uncle Dick, the only person who loves Frederick, dies when Frederick is 15. Frederick grows up with a deep resentment of his low-class status and bitterness that no matter how much money he has, English society will never accept him as bourgeois because of his lack of cultural education.

Frederick is defined feelings of inferiority tied up in being working class in a highly class-conscious society that condescends to social climbers. Frederick wants to be bourgeois and despises the bourgeoisie for condescending to him; he feels inferior to the bourgeoisie while simultaneously believing that he’s superior—more moral, less pretentious. He subjects himself to Miranda’s insults as a type of self-abasement characteristic that reenacts the way he perceives the world.

Nevertheless, he does his best to adopt a middle-class veneer. Miranda describes Frederick as gangly with mismatched body parts. His stiff hair and overly-formal clothes are manifestations of his overall rigid demeanor, which stems from his fear of speaking or acting contrary to bourgeois manners. Frederick fails to flawlessly adopt this bearing, producing an imitation that gives away his working-class upbringing.

Frederick is an antisocial prude disgusted by the physicality of sex; however, he’s aroused by pornographic photos of women. Women’s desire repels and frightens him—he cannot get an erection when Miranda tries to seduce him—but he does like nonconsensual domination and violence, becoming aroused when he chloroforms Miranda and strips her to her underwear. However, he doesn’t rape Miranda, much to her surprise: “I even find it frightening that he didn’t do anything. What is he?” (233). In restraining himself, Frederick clings to his absurd, perverted idea of chivalry and his delusion that he can still win over Miranda.

While Frederick has a lot to say about the morality of other people’s actions, he’s unable to tell right from wrong when it comes to himself. He’s an expert in rationalization and self-delusion, self-righteously sure that any decision he makes is the moral one. By thus creating his own system of morality, Frederick can always commend himself for refraining from evil. For example, he praises himself for not raping Miranda, while simultaneously seeing nothing wrong with knocking her unconscious, kidnapping and imprisoning her, and undressing and photographing her.

Miranda Grey

Like Frederick, Miranda comes from an unhappy home. Her mother is abusive and has an alcohol addiction, and both her parents oppose her dream to be an artist. Consequently, Miranda is defined largely by her rebellion against her parents and the conservative bourgeois culture they represent. She’s also largely defined in opposition to Frederick, each of them serving as foils to the other.

Unlike Frederick—who ends the book planning another kidnapping, stuck in a cycle of self-delusive assault—Miranda matures, transforming from a judgmental adolescent pretending to be someone she’s not to an equanimous adult attuned to her authentic self. Her trials and tribulations at Frederick’s hand catalyze this transformation: “I would not want this not to have happened. Because if I escape I shall be a completely different and I think better person” (279). Paradoxically, Miranda dies more fully realized than Frederick, who remains trapped in the prison of his mind. However, unfortunately for her, “bodies beat minds” (210) (as her friend Carmen says) and Frederick’s physical power wins out.

Miranda shares qualities with her namesake in The Tempest. Like Shakespeare’s protagonist, Miranda Grey represents the virtue of civilization over the boorish brutishness of primitive power. Additionally, both characters are beautiful and objects of desire for men. However, Miranda Grey is more complex than her perfectly virtuous Shakespearian counterpart. In Chapter 2, John Fowles allows his female protagonist agency and the ability to explain her perspective in her own words, a feature lacking in the courtly romances he satirizes and distorts. The first-person narration shows Miranda the way she sees herself, not through the eyes of her stalker. We see Miranda in the grips of an identity crisis, someone trying—and eventually succeeding—to distinguish her desires from society’s expectations.

George Paston

George is the 41-year-old artist Miranda worships for his opinionated views on art. Despite idolizing George, Miranda finds him unattractive in ways that betray her reactionary antisemitism:

[H]e is short, only an inch or two more than me. (I’ve always dreamed tall men. Silly.)

He is going bald and he has a nose like a Jew’s, though he isn’t (not that I’d mind if he was). And the face is too broad […] battered and worn and pitted into a bit of a mask, so that I never quite believe whatever expression it’s got on (154).

George often expresses the absurdity of taking life seriously, suggesting he has a nihilistic view of the world. George is a Lothario and misogynist who believes women are a “disease” (159). Miranda’s aunt warns her against him for this reason; however, Miranda is too enamored with George to heed her aunt’s warning. George has dogmatic opinions about art, condemning everything that he doesn’t consider good, such as abstract painting. He criticizes Miranda’s artwork as derivative—a cardinal sin in his eyes. However, after Miranda procures one of his paintings through Frederick, she realizes that George’s own artwork is derivative, an imitation of the British painter Paul Nash. George isn’t the firebrand artist of the new wave Miranda thought he was—he’s a dogmatist who judges art solely on its intellectual merit, ignoring its emotional resonance. His relationship with Miranda suggests that only 20-year-old art school students could mistake his pretension for artistic principles. By the time Miranda dies, she realizes that George isn’t the infallible god she worshipped him as.

Aunt Annie

Frederick’s Aunt Annie, along with his Uncle Dick, raises him from infancy after his father dies and his mother abandons him. After Dick dies when Frederick is 15, Annie continues raising him and her daughter Mabel, who has disabilities. Annie is a Nonconformist Christian, part of a religious minority that broke from the Anglican Church in the 17th century and subsequently suffered persecution in England. While she doesn’t raise Frederick to be strictly religious, this history of persecution adds another layer to Frederick’s sense of always feeling like an outsider in England.

After Frederick wins the pools, Annie warns him against young women, who can only want him for his money. She also worries that Frederick will spend his money rashly or use it for immoral purposes. Annie’s cynical internalized misogyny and her mistrust of Frederick hint at the role she played in making him into the resentful, insecure character the reader sees on page.