The Tempest and A Long Fatal Love Chase
Alcott’s Uses Many Themes from Shakespeare’s Play
May 20, 2009
Louisa May Alcott wrote A Long Fatal Love Chase in the short time frame of two months. The novel was intended for serial publication and required dramatic pacing with a cliffhanger at the end of every installment. Pressed for time and most likely space, Alcott relied on popular themes and references to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest as a short cut to create character, tone, and mood.
Shakespeare’s Play The Tempest
Philip Tempest’s last name provides a direct link to William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. The play opens with a scene on the deck of a ship during a terrific storm or tempest. The ship’s mast is struck and everyone prepares to die.
In the next scene, the inhabitants of a nearby island, Miranda and Prospero look out at the shipwreck. Prospero reveals to his daughter that he arranged storm and the subsequent shipwreck. After a long story explaining why he would do such a thing, he puts a spell on his daughter so that she sleeps and he meets with his familiar, Ariel.
The rest of the play reveals Prospero’s manipulations in order to get what he wants, including a royal wedding for his daughter to a prince.
Rosamond Vivien and Miranda
When Miranda first meets the Prince Ferdinand, she falls in love with him. He is, after all, the only man she has ever seen besides the bestial Caliban and her father. While Rosamond’s island life was not as isolated as Miranda’s, she too lives a life of limited experience with her grandfather as the only male figure in her life.
After Rosamond first meets Philip Tempest, she leaves him with her grandfather. She then sits alone in a darkened room watching a storm come up. She is startled out of her reverie by their guest and she excuses herself saying, “I was so absorbed in watching the sea I did not hear you come out. I love tempests and—“ Tempest responds that he is pleased that Rosamond’s grandfather has invited him to spend the night since the beautiful young hostess “has a taste for tempests.” (5) Later he reveals that his name is Tempest and that storms seem to follow him wherever he goes.
Both Rosamond and Miranda are almost unbelievably innocent and have a propensity for thinking the best of other people, which makes them easy victims for the mechanizations of the villains in their lives.
Ariel and Baptiste
Both Ariel and Baptiste are loyal helpers in the plots of their masters, Prospero and Tempest respectively. Both Ariel and Baptiste are loyal because of the freedom that their masters gave them. Ariel had been imprisoned in a tree by a witch who then died. When Prospero arrives on the island, he frees Ariel in exchange for his loyalty. Baptiste is an escaped convict who is rescued by Tempest who keeps his identity a secret in exchange for his loyalty and assistance.
Ariel is a magic creature who works spells in behalf of his master. Baptiste is a skilled tracker and is able to outmaneuver others by uncanny insight into their motivations and what their intentions might be. While Baptiste’s skills are not supernatural, he is so adept at what he does that his work sometimes mystifies his victims.
Prospero and Tempest
Both Prospero and Tempest are control freaks. Prospero manipulates everything that happens on the island to his benefit. No one has freedom unless he gives it to them. Tempest similarly arranges the situations in his life to work towards his advantage and when someone refuses to play into his hands he kills them, puts them away, or ruins their life. Prospero’s manipulations place his daughter in an arranged marriage. Tempest’s manipulations place Rosamond in the grave.
While the plot of A Long Fatal Love Chase doesn’t resemble that of The Tempest, the use of character types and certain themes in addition to the obvious references make it evident that Alcott wanted her reader to recall the play.
Alcott, Louisa May. A Long Fatal Love Chase. Dell Publishing. 1995. ISBN 0-440-22301-6
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