His attempts to try to show her who is boss eventually cost the girl her life. He kidnaps the girl of his obsession, but does not exactly know what to do with her. She leaves for Australia at his expense, but then he is left to himself, a situation he has yet to conquer. When he wins a vast sum in the lottery, he may have found a way to escape his aunt’s bossy nature. Drilled into submission by his aunt, Frederick never learnt to be himself, fend for himself, always living in someone else’s shadow. When fate throws him a boon worth over ₤70,000, he materializes an obsession to have and to hold a living object of collection.įrederick (Ferdinand) Clegg is an eccentric young man, who, from his early youth, had lived with his Aunt Annie and her disabled daughter Mabel. The title refers to Frederick Clegg, a 25-year-old civil servant who likes to collect butterflies. Miranda’s tragic death in captivity and Frederick’s rekindled interest in another object of collection shows that his madness has full control over him and it will probably take several other living creatures to satisfy his lust for collecting. This harsh condemnation shows how lowly Miranda though of Frederick. She depicted him as a mean-spirited idiot, a Caliban, who had to prove himself, despite the apparent awareness that he did not possess a single inch of compassion. Miranda, before her sanity left her for good, saw through Frederick and denounced him. Frederick, a collector of butterflies by hobby, never considered Miranda more than an object of collection, to be at his disposal whenever he liked and to be treated in whichever way he deemed necessary. He never really understood why the girl’s desires clashed with his egocentric and narrow-minded wishes. Miranda lost her senses for being his prisoner and Frederick’s madness was amplified by his failure to gain control over the girl. In the three months he held the girl captive he ruined two lives: Miranda’s and his own.
He never fully comprehended that love is something that needs to nourished and nurtured in order for it to grow. Miranda’s unfortunate life ended in Frederick’s house as his prisoner for life. The disgust the girl felt for him kept the gap between them wide open.
Miranda was the object of Frederick’s mad obsession: he wanted to possess her, yet once she was in his grasp he failed to make her his own and he had no control over her. The Collector tells the sad story of Frederick Clegg and Miranda Grey, whose fates are intertwined and bound by ill luck.
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