Saunders sees another correlation here with a stereotype of transgender women who are thought to put on a “false form” to attract “unsuspecting males.” In another scene, Prospero asks Ariel to take the form a sea nymph to lure a potential suitor for Prospero’s daughter. “Ariel is a bit like us insofar as there's a person of science who is telling us what kinds of bodies we can have, pushing normative embodiments on us, telling us what kind of women we can be or what kind of men we can be,” said Saunders. She likens the character of Ariel, who is at the whim of Prospero’s command, to transgender individuals who depend on medical practitioners to allow them to present in the embodiment they choose. “What would happen if instead of approaching the character of Ariel through the lens of the dominant culture,” said Saunders, “ from the perspective of someone who actually inhabits a body like that and who finds this body a beautiful body, not a grotesque body?”Įxploring this idea in her paper, Saunders found a number of revelations and parallels between Shakespeare’s work and the transgender experience. Recognizing similarities between Ariel's depiction in the film and the bodies of herself and other transgender women, Saunders sought to approach the interpretation from a different perspective. While analyzing a paper on the film in a course she was teaching, Saunders was struck and offended by the language the author used to describe this depiction of Ariel - including phrases such as “grotesque,” “monstrous” and “an impossible embodiment.” In Julie Taymor’s 2000 film adaption of The Tempest, Ariel is played by Ben Whishaw, a male actor who was portrayed with female breasts in scenes when the sprite was ordered to take the form of a woman. “People read Ariel's gender in a variety of ways.” “In Shakespeare's original play, it's not clear - and hasn't been clear through the centuries - what Ariel's gender is,” said Saunders. In the play, Ariel is a spirit indebted and enslaved to the protagonist Prospero, who takes advantage of Ariel’s supernatural and shapeshifting abilities. However, Pocahontas is more attached emotionally to the tree than to her father, while in The Tempest, Ariel is closer emotionally to Prospero.What does Shakespeare have to do with the transgender movement? Perhaps more than we think, proposed a UBC professor.Īt the Moving Trans History Forward conference at the University of Victoria last weekend, Mary Ann Saunders, an English professor at UBC, presented her paper exploring the character of Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a lens into the struggles of transgender individuals. Nevertheless, both relationships are not approved by their respective fathers.Īriel is also related with the old tree’s spirit in Pocahontas. The relationship between Pocahontas and John Smith is similar to the relationship between Miranda and Ferdinand both women teach their culture and language to them. There is another allusion in The Winter’s Tale when Perdita finds out about her royal status, as Miranda does in The Tempest. The obsession that Prospero has with his daughter’s sex life and choice of husband is equivalent to the behavior that Polonius has with Ophelia in Hamlet. The big tempest which occurs in Act 1, during the first scene, can be related to the storms in King Lear and Macbeth. We can also find this influence in other Shakespeare’s plays. The storyline follows The Tempest’s plot, since the female character Miranda falls in love with a boy at first sight. The Tempest served as an inspiration for the novel Sea Change as well. While in Shakespeare’s play, Ariel obeys all of Prospero’s demands (because he was saved by Prospero) and is eventually granted freedom.

In Andersen’s tale, Ariel is a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul. The character of Ariel was created by Shakespeare in The Tempest. – The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Andersen. It is a Marxist and postcolonial interpretation of the Caliban’s myth. Roberto Fernandez Retamar wrote Caliban Speaks Five Hundred Years Later. Both writers agree in the way that they explore ideas about the power of art and the nature of humanity. One example could be John, who is influenced by Caliban. How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,Īlso, there are characters that are inspired by others. The title of Brave New World is derived from the speech of Miranda in Act V, Scene 1: This play has influenced different branches:

Ariel in the tempest