| The Collector | |
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1st edition |
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| Author(s) | John Fowles |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror, Thriller |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape (UK), Little, Brown and Company (US) |
| Publication date | 1963 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
The Collector is the title of a 1963 novel by John Fowles. It was made into a movie in 1965.
Contents |
The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his spare time. The first part of the novel tells the story from his point of view.
Clegg is obsessed with Miranda Grey, a middle-class art student at the Slade School of Fine Art. He admires her from a distance, but is unable to make any contact with her because of his nonexistent social skills. One day, he wins a large prize in the British football pools. This makes it possible for him to stop working and buy an isolated house in the countryside. He feels lonely, however, and wants to be with Miranda. Unable to make any normal contact, Clegg decides to add her to his "collection" of pretty, petrified objects, in the hope that if he keeps her captive long enough, she will grow to love him. After careful preparations, he kidnaps Miranda by drugging her with chloroform and locks her up in the cellar of his house. He is convinced that Miranda will start to love him after some time. However, when she wakes up, she confronts him with his actions. Clegg is embarrassed, and promises to let her go after a month. He promises to show her "every respect", pledging not to sexually molest her and to shower her with gifts and the comforts of home, on one condition: she can't leave the cellar.
Clegg rationalizes every step of his plan in cold, emotionless language; he seems truly incapable of relating to other human beings and sharing real intimacy with them. He takes great pains to appear normal, however, and is greatly offended at the suggestion that his motives are anything but reasonable and genuine.
The second part of the novel is narrated by Miranda in the form of fragments from a diary that she keeps during her captivity. Clegg scares her, and she does not understand him in the beginning. Miranda reminisces over her previous life throughout this section of the novel, and many of her diary entries are written either to her sister, or to a man named G.P., whom she respected and admired as an artist. Miranda reveals that G.P. ultimately fell in love with her, and subsequently severed all contact with her. Through Miranda's confined reflections, Fowles discusses a number of philosophical issues, such as the nature of art, humanity and God.
At first, Miranda thinks that Clegg has sexual motives for abducting her, but as his true character begins to be revealed, she realises that this is not true. She starts to have some pity for her captor, comparing him to Caliban in Shakespeare's play The Tempest because of his hopeless obsession with her. Clegg tells Miranda that his first name is Ferdinand (eventual winner of Miranda's affections in The Tempest).
Miranda tries to escape several times, but Clegg is always able to stop her. She also tries to seduce him in order to convince him to let her go. The only result is that he becomes confused and angry. When Clegg keeps refusing to let her go, she starts to fantasize about killing him. After a failed attempt at doing so, Miranda passes through a phase of self-loathing, and decides that to kill Clegg would lower her to his level. As such, she then refrains from any further attempts to do so. Before she can try to escape again, she becomes seriously ill and dies.
The third part of the novel is again narrated by Clegg. At first, he wants to commit suicide after he learns of Miranda's death, but after he reads in her diary that she never loved him, he decides that he is not responsible and is better off without her. Finally, he starts to plan the kidnapping of another girl.
Fowles explained in his follow-up book The Aristos, that the main point behind the novel was to show what he felt to be the danger of class and intellectual divisions in a society where prosperity for the majority was becoming more widespread, particularly power (whether by wealth or position) getting into the hands of those intellectually unsuited to handle it.
There have been numerous presentations and adaptations of The Collector, including film and theatre. The Collector also appears in various songs, television episodes, and books.
The novel was made into a film in 1965. It was adapted by Stanley Mann and John Kohn and was directed by William Wyler (who turned down The Sound Of Music to do it). It starred Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar.
The basic plot of "The Collector" - a lonely maladjust kidnapping the object of his or her desire - has become a standard plot device of a number of TV shows, ranging from soap operas to crime series. Some more explicit references to John Fowles' book are:
There are several cases in which serial killers, spree killers, kidnappers, and other criminals have claimed that The Collector was the basis, the inspiration, or the justification for their crimes.[4]
In 1985, Leonard Lake (with help from Charles Chi-Tat Ng) abducted 18 year-old Kathy Allen and later 19 year-old Brenda O'Connor, in hopes of fulfilling his fantasy of owning his own "Miranda". He is said to have been utterly obsessed with The Collector and plotted the abduction and holding of the women. Lake and Ng subsequently abducted, raped, and tortured the women. Lake described his plan for using the women for sex and housekeeping in a "philosophy" videotape. The two are believed to have murdered at least 25 people, including two entire families. Although Lake had committed several crimes in the Ukiah, California area, his "Operation Miranda" did not begin until after he moved to a home in remote Wilseyville, California, owned by his ex-wife's family. There he built a bunker into the side hill which included a soundproof cell with a disguised entrance. It was at this point fellow ex-Marine Charles Ng joined Lake following Ng's release from Ft. Leavenworth Prison. The men videotaped some of their milder interactions with Allen and O'Connor in a tape labeled "M Ladies" using a camera stolen from the Dubs family, whom they kidnapped and murdered in the early stages of their crime spree. Lake's "Miranda" plan was cut short after only three confirmed females (Dubs, Allen, and O'Connor) had been held (and then murdered) because Ng was caught shoplifting a vise in San Francisco. Lake was arrested when linked to a car belonging to one of their murder victims, Paul Cosner. At that point, Lake committed suicide taking a cyanide capsule and Ng escaped to Canada. Ng was subsequently extradited back to California. The videotapes and a diary written by Lake were found buried near the bunker in Wilseyville. They revealed that Lake had named the plot Operation Miranda after the character in Fowles's book.[5]
Christopher Wilder, known as a spree/serial killer of young girls, had The Collector in his possession when he killed himself in 1984.[4]
In 1988, Robert Berdella held his victims captive and photographed their torture before killing them. He claimed that the film version of The Collector had been his inspiration when he was a teenager.[6]
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