Tempest

The Tempest

According to Elizabethan beliefs an individual's social position was more or less fixed. The King was King as he had been given a mandate by God, and all positions below this were based on a rigid social hierarchy, which were also dictated by birth.

This ideology was decidedly conservative and used politically as a means of social control: forcing people with less status to internalise their inferiority and subservience, assuming it part of the natural order of the universe. Any rebellion, personal or collective, was therefore seen as an act of defiance not only against the State but God. This can be seen as a highly effective means of keeping order and perpetuating the power structures already existing in society.

We can read literature as expressions of universal themes and investigations into human nature and the human conditions, but we can also give alternative readings that question natural assumptions and investigate the 'silences' in a text. In essence, reading the 'politics' of the play. A traditional reading of The Tempest would position Prospero as the victim of unjust betrayal, who stranded on an island with his beautiful, virtuous daughter, uses his magical powers to right the wrong done to him. It is the old story of the 'rightful' ruler who is disposed by the bad guys, but manages to get back his power and live happily ever after.

A post-colonial reading, which foregrounds issues of race and power inequalities, would give quite a different interpretation.

The play contains rebellions, political treachery, mutinies and conspiracies. There are many challenges to authority, however, the text resolves these problems in the end by having peace, harmony and order restored, with the rightful ruler placed back in his position of power. In this way any disruption to order is seen as evil and those who dare question it need to be punished, thus perpetuating the social values of the time.

It is true that Antonio seized power from his older brother, Prospero, and that this usurpation is viewed as wrong by the dominant values of the time and by the text. This viewpoint is constructed by presenting Antonio as a treacherous, evil character who is willing to murder Alonso and Gonzalo. This is the view foregrounded by the play, but little is mentioned about why this state of affairs arose. The silences of the story, involving Antonio being ...

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... values demand restraint, controland self-discipline (as seen later in Prospero's warnings to Ferdinand and Miranda) and the text equates indigenous values as barbaric and violent. In essence the European colonialist has invaded a new country, taken possession and set up their systems of values as the only legitimate code of behaviour. Through this Caliban has been dispossessed and forced to give up his ways of living and language.

Caliban is constructed as innately inferior and savage because of his race. This is articulated by the supposedly sweet and tender Miranda: 'But thy vile race -/Though thou didst learn - had that in't which good natures/Could not abide to be with ..'(31) In these lines Caliban's race is seen as the reason for his barbaric behaviour - it is his very nature that makes him savage and dangerous. In this the text constructs other non-European races as savage, less human, incapable of so-called 'civilisation' all because of their race: this is a damning indictment of non-Europeans as it positions them as naturally inferior and unable to change their ways so that they will never be able to develop the fine sensitivity and refinement of Western civilisation.