Prospero's Daughter

Trinidadian-American author Elizabeth Nunez’s novel Prospero's Daughter (2006) is a loose retelling of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, transplanting the action to a leper colony off the coast of the Caribbean island of Trinidad. It tells the story of fifteen-year-old English girl Virginia whose father files a false rape allegation against the mixed-race boy she loves.

In the 1940s, the English doctor Peter Gardiner performs complex and controversial experiments on human cadavers. His goal, he states, is to grow human organs and other body parts in a lab. The character is loosely modeled after Prospero from William Shakespeare's The Tempest. In that play, Prospero is a vengeful and megalomaniacal sorcerer who is cheated out of his rightful title, Duke of Milan, by his brother, Antonio, who exiles Prospero and his daughter, Miranda. Their ship encounters a horrible storm and the two are marooned on an island. Throughout the play, Prospero manipulates both the forces of nature and the other characters for the benefit of his schemes to reclaim his dukedom.

In this version of the story, Gardiner is exiled by British medical authorities who, sneaking into his heavily guarded lab at night, are shocked to discover the grotesque human experiments before them. Along with his baby daughter, Virginia, Gardiner is escorted to a ship headed for the Americas.



While aboard the ship, Virginia suffers from such intense seasickness that virtually everyone believes she will die. Gardiner believes that his daughter, despite being only a toddler, somehow made herself survive through sheer force of will. However, the ship becomes enveloped in a terrible storm, and Gardiner and Virginia wash up on Chachacare, the island leper colony located off the coast of Trinidad in the Caribbean Sea. There, Gardiner meets a recently orphaned child, Carlos, a boy of mixed-race descent whose parents were killed in the same storm that wrecks the ship Gardiner and Virginia are aboard. Gardiner ingratiates himself with Carlos's family servant, Lucina, proceeding to move into Carlos's home, where Lucina and her daughter, Ariana, also live.

As Virginia grows older, she begins to recognize how tyrannical and racist her father is. Dr. Gardiner's white supremacy is reinforced by his colonial, imperialist attitude toward the "natives" on Chachacare. In part, because she is a good person, but also as a way of rebelling against her father's racism, Virginia strikes a close friendship with Carlos. As the two become teenagers, their relationship becomes increasingly romantic in nature. This predictably enrages Dr. Gardiner who is disgusted at the thought of Carlos touching Virginia. Compounding matters is Dr. Gardiner's sick obsession with taking his own daughter's virginity. Gratefully, Dr. Gardiner holds himself back from acting on this incestuous fantasy. Unfortunately, he takes out this sexual aggression by raping Ariana instead. Each night, Lucina is forced to listen through the walls as Dr. Gardiner rapes her daughter. Owing to her lower social status as a Trinidadian, Lucina feels powerless to call the authorities or otherwise stop the attacks.

After Virginia and Carlos finally make love, a livid Dr. Gardiner summons Inspector Mumsford, an investigator called in from England. Dr. Gardiner wants Mumsford to find—or manufacture—evidence that substantiates the false allegation that Carlos raped Virginia. Instead, Mumsford quickly discovers that Dr. Gardiner is the rapist and Ariana is the victim. Nevertheless, beings as racist as Dr. Gardiner, he is conflicted about whether or not to file charges against his compatriot in colonialism and white brotherhood. So tormented by what he views as an unsolvable moral conundrum, Mumsford almost opts to commit suicide rather than make a determination in the case. Ultimately, Mumsford leaves Chachacare without filing charges against either Dr. Gardiner or Carlos.



Foiled in his attempts to have Carlos imprisoned, Dr. Gardiner develops a new strategy for keeping Virginia and Carlos apart. He promises Virginia's hand in marriage to a wealthy planter in the area. Rather than be forced to marry someone other than Carlos, Virginia and Carlos run away to a faraway town. There, the reader learns, they elope, live together, have children, and experience a long and happy life, never to encounter the wicked Dr. Gardiner again.

By casting the eccentric but ultimately not outwardly villainous Prospero as a character of supreme evil in Dr. Gardiner, the author creates a fascinating interpretation of the toxic sexism and racism at the heart of one of literature's greatest control freaks. Rather than being a mischievous trickster, Prospero is seen through this lens as a wicked gaslighter of both women and people of color.

 Kirkus Reviews called Prospero's Daughter, "Simply wonderful."