John Fowles, uses the classic fairy tale represented by other literary works to structure his narrative in The Collector. He tells his own version of a fairy tale by creating the characters of Clegg and Miranda to mirror Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, the Prince and Belle in Beauty and the Beast. The Collector and the above tales are similar not in the circumstances of the narrative, but in the traditional dichotomy of captor and prisoner, good and evil, love and hate, that Clegg and Miranda's characters portray. Fowles is inspired by the classic Beauty and the Beast story of a delightful princess held captive by her malevolent admirer. He also infers a similarity to The Tempest: the protagonist is called Miranda and Clegg's character sees himself as Ferdinand, although his tendencies point more towards Caliban. According to Sherrill E. Grace, Fowles explored Bluebeard's story and it influenced the dynamics of his writing. He states that “in reading Fowles and Atwood we court Bluebeards who continually escape our reforming impulses, into castles that are subtle verbal traps” (Grace 247). The theme of female captivity by a male alluded to in the story of Bluebeard is adopted to narrate The Collector. Fowles tells and refines the story of Bluebeard by structuring The Collector around characters with genuinely distorted perspectives of good and evil and in this sense indicates a breakdown of moral and social structures in the social order they describe. In The Tempest, Prospero is the one who lives for the arts while, in Fowles' novel, Miranda is the one devoted to the arts. Clegg's lust for power and control is represented by the aristocrats in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Fowle... center of paper... or the character, Miranda, her tendencies of undaunted optimism and superiority best explain why she talks to Clegg in the fairy tale. As Zipes says, “old wonder stories” often depicted the conflict to overcome or humanize the frightening monsters that terrorized individuals and societies (Zipes 1). Works CitedCooper, Pamela. "The Fictions of John Fowles: Power, Creativity, Femininity." Hutcheon, Linda. Preface. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1991. 241.Fowles, John. The Collector. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc, 1963.—. The Collector. Vintage. New York: Random House, 2010.Grace, Sherrill E. “Courting Bluebeard with Bartók, Atwood, and Fowles: Modern Treatment of the Bluebeard Theme.” Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 11, no. 2 (1984): 245-262. Zipes, Jack. When dreams came true: classic fairy tales and their tradition. New York: CRC Press, 1999.