explain how Prospero's interest in books and study was both a good and bad thing
Answers
Explanation:
At first, Miranda seems very young. When Prospero tells her of his exile from Italy, it is her passionate but also restless youth that the reader sees in her exclamations of concern (“O the heavens!” I.ii.116; “Alack, for pity!” I.ii.132). In this scene the reader sees a relationship that is tender but also astonishingly one-sided. Prospero has lived alone with his daughter for twelve years and not told her why they live alone on the island. After he has told her, he charms her to sleep so that he can set about the new plan of getting her a husband, which he has not discussed with her. When that future husband, Ferdinand, arrives, Prospero continues to dominate her by directing her gaze toward Ferdinand, but then quickly steps between the two. When Miranda begs him to have mercy upon Ferdinand, Prospero is strikingly harsh.
Prospero’s love for Miranda is most evident in his willingness to remain quiet while Miranda talks to Ferdinand in Act III, scene i. Though Prospero enters, unseen, at the same time as Miranda in this scene, he does not say a word until she and Ferdinand have left the stage. During that time, Miranda remembers that her father has given her “precepts” (III.i.58) against talking with Ferdinand—and then breaks them by trusting her desires and proposing marriage to him (III.i.77–86). By the end of the scene, Miranda seems almost to have forgotten her father entirely, and she seems much older, in control of her destiny. By leaving her alone for perhaps the first time, Prospero has allowed Miranda to leave behind her childhood. The transition is not complete, however, and may not become complete, even by the end of the play. In Act IV, scene i, Miranda speaks only two and a half lines, standing completely silent while her father and Ferdinand discuss the details of her marriage. And while Miranda speaks first, and forthrightly, when she appears in Act V, scene i, she appears only after being revealed behind a curtain by her father. Her final lines, “O brave new world / That has such people in’t” (V.i.186–187) while gloriously hopeful, are also painfully ironic. The isolation her life has forced upon her has made her mistake for “brave” a cast of characters that the audience knows only too well to be deeply flawed.