Homepage | University of Chicago Law School



Kidnap, Credibility, and The CollectorSaul Levmore* The practice, and then the criminal law, of kidnapping enjoys a long history. There was bride kidnapping by those who sought not to pay, or simply could not afford, bride-prices. There have been abductions in advance of enslavement, sale, and impressment to military service or piracy, as well as some designed to put heirs and other rivals out of the way. There was and remains hostage-taking by repeat players seeking political or commercial gain. There is abduction for the purpose of rape or murder, in which case the kidnap label is usually dropped, as it is where the nabbing is by a parent dissatisfied with the law’s award of child custody. And then there is ransom kidnapping, the crime that most comes to mind when the more general term is used. Kidnapping, and especially ransom kidnapping, imposes enormous costs on victims and potential victims and yet, setting aside the case where the abducted party colludes with the kidnapper, the perpetrator is rarely successful. It is a difficult transaction to complete, and the crime carries a severe penalty.Ransom kidnapping, like its cousins, blackmail and extortion, is essentially a threat. Its infrequent success is best traced to the difficulty the kidnapper experiences in avoiding apprehension, and not to the inherent incredibility of the threat. Nevertheless, because the crime imposes great costs, especially when it involves a child, it continues to capture popular as well as literary attention. It is not as common a subject of detective novels or literary classics as is murder or rape, perhaps because it is less often successful or, more likely, because it is especially unlikely to occur in serial fashion. Many murders and rapes are unsolved and many perpetrators of these crimes need to be apprehended or they will strike again. The same cannot be said of kidnapping, where copycat crimes are probably more of a risk than are serial perpetrators. For these and other reasons, kidnapping is under-theorized, and one goal of this essay is to think through the threat it represents.Literature can play a role in reforming law, in developing public opinion about the operation of a legal system, and in exploring the real or imagined characteristics of wrongdoers and their victims. It has surely performed these roles with respect to murder, rape, and the treatment and punishment of those arrested and convicted for these crimes. Early novels about kidnapping focused on the struggles and eventual triumphs of victims who were abducted by competitors who wished them far out of the way. The cornerstone of the present essay, however, is John Fowles’ chilling novel, The Collector, about an abductor and kidnapper who seeks not distance, but rather closeness and affection. This 1963 British novel is about class, sex, and possession, with love entirely absent from the characters’ lives. Inasmuch as the abductor seeks benefits that we associate with consensual relationships, the novel quickly focuses attention on the ways in which people control or even possess one another. In turn, one wonders at the dividing line between the controlling behaviors and relationships that are criminalized and those that are enabled or even celebrated. Along the way and in uncanny fashion, The Collector suggests many interesting features of threats and of kidnapping in particular.* * *The Collector is not a detective novel. It describes a crime from the perspective of the wrongdoer, as narrator, and then from that of the victim, through her diary. The narrator and abductor, Frederick Clegg, stalks Miranda Grey, an art student, and regards her as he would a beautiful butterfly. Clegg collects butterflies, and is accustomed to collecting at the expense of his prey’s freedom. He uses his winnings from a betting pool to buy a van and a secluded country house, and then abducts Miranda by force as well as deceit. She recognizes him because his picture was in the newspaper when he won the pool, and she sees through his claim that he is an agent of another. He seems surprised that she is an outraged captive rather than a willing guest in the cocoon he has prepared, and whom he tries to please with small purchases. She categorizes him as a scientist, who collects things and takes artless photographs, and herself as an artist who, the reader understands, would eventually be at the mercy of other collectors were she to pursue that line of work.Miranda tries to escape by pretending to have appendicitis, by secreting a note to the outside world, and by digging her way out of thick walls and locked doors. These attempts fail. She bargains with Clegg and secures a promise from him that he will release her after one month. On what was to be the last night of captivity, and armed with gifts, he proposes marriage. When she refuses, he reveals that he will not release her. She again tries to escape and, after subduing her with chloroform, he photographs her in a state of undress. Subsequently, and more desperate, she tries to kill him and, when that fails, seduce him. He takes the first in stride and is repulsed by the second. When Miranda takes ill, Clegg is afraid to call in a doctor, and feels justified in his inaction.We then read Miranda’s diary, which tells of the captivity from her point of view, and largely confirms what we know from Clegg’s narration. The diary reveals some things the abductor does not know, including Miranda’s past relationship with G.P., a painter, mentor, and sophisticate who is two decades older than she. He was critical of her family and her taste in art, and she was eager for his approval. Their relationship ended after he confessed a romantic interest in her, but now, if freed, she plans to rekindle the connection and marry him. Clegg’s narrative resumes in the novel’s final sections. He realizes that Miranda is quite ill, but he is unable to obtain help from a pharmacist. He goes to a doctor whom he had earlier eschewed, but Clegg is frightened off by a police officer. Miranda dies after calling out in her delirium for G.P.; Clegg understands this to be a call for a doctor, or general practitioner. Clegg thinks of suicide, and fantasizes about a Romeo and Juliet conclusion. He arises the next day with a fresh view, and decides that his error was in kidnapping someone from a higher social class. He knows better now and, with Miranda disposed of, he has his eye on a more appropriate woman whom he has seen working in town behind the candy counter at a Woolworth’s. She reminds him of Miranda, though not as pretty and, of course, more of his own social class. The novel ends with Clegg’s musing, “this time it won’t be for love, it would be just for the interest of the thing” (305). * * *Only at the very end of Miranda’s captivity is Clegg under pressure. Although there are advertisements asking about the missing art student, there is no indication of a manhunt or of widespread concern about kidnap or sexual assault. Nor does Miranda wonder whether her family, G.P., or her other friends are out looking for her. When Clegg is in town, there is no evidence that citizens are in fear of a serial kidnapper. The reader feels greater urgency for a search than do Miranda’s neighbors and fellow students. The reader’s fears substitute for those unmentioned in the novel. The Collector is like most detective novels in its focus on the criminal and the victim, as it sets aside the costs imposed by criminals on those who fear becoming the victims of future crimes. These precaution costs on the part of potential victims may well form the most important reason to criminalize theft and abduction, and certainly to impose extreme punishments on many felons. The rapist and kidnapper not only traumatize their direct victims but also chill the behavior of many others who learn of the crimes and fear that they too will be victimized; indeed, law might work harder to overcome the collective action problem among potential victims who fear crime. There is a good case to be made for calibrating the punishments meted out by criminal law to include consideration of these costs. For example, a street assault is not usually regarded as terribly serious, but if precaution costs were included in the calculus, the assailant might receive a more severe penalty than an embezzler. Moreover, the special circumstances that judges assess in determining the punishment for the convicted assailant do not include consideration of whether the crime was one that would cause others special fear. If precaution costs were taken more seriously, an assault on a stranger would, for example, be punished more severely than an assault on an acquaintance.One of the interesting things about ransom kidnapping is that publicized cases of child kidnapping, most famously the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932, generated change in the law. In the aftermath of the Lindbergh episode, kidnapping with an interstate element became a federal crime. As a result, there would be more federal participation in investigating kidnaps. There was, however, no sudden literary interest in kidnapping, although there are detective novels that were influenced by the sensational Lindbergh event. It seems more likely that a spate of earlier kidnaps encouraged the Lindbergh crime itself. Authors who traded on crime were already aware of the mechanics and difficulties in carrying out and solving kidnaps. Somewhat similarly, a serial murderer attracts attention and then stimulates investment by police departments in solving the crimes. It might also give ideas to potential murderers who lust to kill or crave the attention normally given to murders. The police might be motivated by the public relations attached to unsolved and solved crimes, but it is not a stretch to say that the level of enforcement rises with precaution costs. These costs are often hidden, but in the extreme, as when a serial strangler is thought to be about, the increase in precaution costs is so great that political pressure is inevitable. The Collector is a carefully constructed novel and it is likely that the lack of any signs of widespread concern about Miranda’s absence, and any hints that the police are closing in on Clegg’s stronghold, is intentional. Precautions and investigation might distract from the focus on the protagonists’ motives. They might also have detracted from the metaphor or reality of the title. Clegg is as free to capture and hold Miranda as he is to catch and pin one of “his” butterflies. In neither case are there consequences to the collector or, for all we know, to the victim’s peers. * * *The kidnapper who aims to benefit by putting some competitor out of the way or by collecting a ransom, gaining political advantage, or obtaining the release of prisoners, seems rational to the normal observer, as does the murderer who wants his victim out of the way or stands to collect a sum for carrying out the crime. In each of these cases, the motive is plain. In contrast, the serial murderer who targets strangers captures our attention because the impulse is unfamiliar. Psychiatrists and police look for patterns in the choice of victims and the method of killing, and expect to find some connection or cause in the criminal’s personal life. Occasionally, the serial killer keeps his victims alive for some time, enjoying his control over them in life as in death. The long-term kidnapper may share this motive. The kidnapper may want access to sex or simply someone over whom he can exercise power. In the process, he objectifies his victim. It is difficult to know whether The Collector presents a typical kidnapper of this sort or, rather, an unusual specimen. Clegg wants and expects Miranda to like him. He tells himself, and then her, that he has no chance with her in London, where she would surely ignore him in favor of members of her own social class (39). He abducts her so that she can get to know him. She responds in a manner that mirrors basic tenets of criminal law, which is to say she has been forcibly abducted and cannot possibly develop affection for her abductor. At times she tries to understand him, occasionally she pities him (108), but mostly and understandably she loathes him. There are, to be sure, cases where an abducted victim develops an attachment to her captor, but there is no indication that Clegg is motivated by an expectation of “capture bonding,” a psychological and perhaps adaptive behavior that became known as Stockholm Syndrome a decade after The Collector appeared. The Collector is disturbing in part because Clegg is not a particularly violent or cruel captor, though of course he uses force (not to mention chloroform) to abduct and maintain control over Miranda. He claims to want affection and to win her over, and he is eager to be respectable and to respect his hostage, at least in his own mind. He announces himself before entering her room, gives her time to dress, keeps himself clean, dresses for dinner with her, cooks for her, responds to her needs and desires, converses with her, buys gifts for her, and makes no attempt to force himself on her sexually. There are times when she is in control of the relationship – setting aside the obvious fact that she is there against her will and that he can gag, bind, and knock her out when he pleases. The novel is known and titled to emphasize the analogy between Clegg’s capture of his precious butterflies and his treatment of Miranda, but it is plain and far more disturbing to observe the similarity between their relationship and those experienced within the confines of many perfectly legal relationships. He keeps her and controls her, and occasionally loses small battles -- words that could be written about many marriages. The point is not that The Collector’s theme is marriage-as-kidnap. For one thing, the “problem” of control in relationships is hardly limited to marriage. Parents kidnap their children, in a manner of speaking, and virtually all of us try to control our friends and family (as well as employees, if any) on occasion. Criminal law is not unaware of the danger of a broad definition of kidnap, and no legal system criminalizes power struggles or tries to define and criminalize “excessive control over others,“ though this forms the core of most understandings of kidnap, rape, bullying, discrimination, and enslavement. Miranda insists that she was forced to Clegg’s place and is forced to remain; the law takes these facts as reason to regard him as a criminal and her as a victim. But it is also plain that many other victims do not meaningfully consent to the control exercised over them by others. They, too, are like butterflies in a collection, though the law offers them no help, which is to say about as much help as it offers the butterflies. The Collector goes much further when it reveals Miranda’s diary. From the perspective of control, her report is nearly as unsettling as Clegg’s narration. Her view of love and her reasons for seeking a relationship with G.P. are not just shallow but comparable to Clegg’s pursuit of her. Each wants a specimen from a higher social class; each separates sex from love; each is a collector. To be sure, the parallel has its limits, much as most controlling men do not go so far as to chloroform “their” women, or the objects of their desire. Miranda, like Clegg, wants approval, but hers must come from G.P. who disapproves of everything about her, until slowly she changes her own tastes one at a time until he wants her. Of course she never told G.P. that she finds him ugly and old. She is now willing to have sex with G.P., and even to marry him, but only for instrumental reasons. “I will give myself to G.P. He can have me. And whatever he does to me I shall still have my woman-me he can never touch” (267). At first it is absurd to think of Miranda’s interest in G.P., or his for her, as anything like Clegg’s for hers. There must be a huge gap between manipulative seduction and forcible abduction. But is there? Clegg uses force on a number of occasions, but he, like Miranda, is only occasionally dishonest. He lies about a dog in need of help in order to get her to look into his van, so that he might abduct her. And then, later, he lies about mailing a contribution that she has urged. Of course, he also breaks his promise to limit the captivity to one month, though he might have intended to keep his word on that matter. Remarkably, Clegg’s abduction of Miranda might not rise beyond wrongful imprisonment to the level of kidnap. He demands no ransom and intends no other felonies. It is arguable that he does her bodily harm, with his gags and chloroform, but with a little lawyerly and poetic license it is also arguable that his methods fall short of that requirement of some kidnap statutes and definitions. Thus, a nightclub hypnotist who draws a mark onto the stage with false pretenses or without full disclosure, and then blindfolds her and causes her to stumble out of the room only to return in a daze at the end of the show with an undergarment on her head, would hardly be guilty of kidnap. Clegg is certainly guilty of wrongful imprisonment, and while we have no doubt that he would be convicted of kidnapping (and perhaps felony-murder), his actions come close enough to the line to be interesting in this regard. In turn, the courtship between Miranda and G.P. comes close to criminal fraud. She will profess love and offer sex, and we can be confident that he would reject these offers if he knew how unattractive she found him. Her behavior will hardly be out of the ordinary because most relationships involve some fraud, as the controlling party seeks to acquire admiration, sex, parenting skills, housework, and much more. Clegg’s aims are chaste and his means are wrongful, whether or not they amount to kidnapping, at least during the early days of captivity. Miranda’s intentions are far more manipulative, and yet the tools she would deploy would never lead to a fraud conviction. The lesson is not that Clegg’s behavior is normal and undeserving of criminalization, but rather that many relationships involve control over another through wrongful means – but we simply and unthinkingly regard those means as normal and, certainly, as noncriminal. * * *Unlike terrorism, assassination, many murders, and perhaps political kidnaps, ransom kidnapping is a crime that the perpetrator is unlikely to regard as successful if he or she is apprehended. Professional ransom kidnappers are virtually unknown in Britain and in the United States. However well executed the abduction, the kidnapper faces the difficult task of convincing someone to pay a ransom and then the more difficult task of obtaining the ransom in a way that does not lead to apprehension, especially if the target has involved the police. In films, the kidnapper sometimes instructs that the ransom be flung from a moving train at a particular spot (to be communicated while the target is in motion) or left in a public park in a trash pail to be identified by a caller to a public telephone but, in most of these cases, the plot is flawed. The target must find the kidnapper’s threat credible at several levels, and then must either face a separate credible threat that serves to keep the police out of the picture or participate in an untraceable payment scheme. There are ways to make threats more credible, but the problem of ransom collection is usually insurmountable. Moreover, the two intersect. The kidnapper can try to solve the second problem by holding the hostage until payment is safely received and found to be in untraceable form, but this weakens the credibility of the promise to release the hostage once payment is made. It should be noted that most threat-makers need to build primary credibility (“Comply with my demand or I will carry out an act injurious to you.”) and also develop secondary credibility (“If you comply I can be relied upon not to injure you anyway, and also not to repeat the threat for further gain, now that you reveal that you are a complying type.”). In the case of kidnapping, primary credibility is in doubt until the kidnap actually takes place. A criminal could demand money by threatening to kidnap if no money is transferred, but most victims will apparently prefer to take precautions and not give in to this threat. The threat of harming the hostage is much greater, or simply more credible, once the nabbing is accomplished or it is established that the kidnapper has abducted and proved credible on previous occasions. At this point it is secondary credibility that is in doubt; the target needs to believe that the hostage will be safe if the target complies – knowing that compliance will be complicated by the kidnapper’s need to avoid apprehension.The Collector deals with these matters brilliantly. From the outset, Clegg does not abduct and imprison for money, but rather to gain affection, insight, love, or a specimen. There will be no ransom for the police to track. Indeed, it becomes clear, to the reader and then to Miranda, that there will be a tragic ending. After failing to convince Clegg that if he simply lets her go she will tell no one and be his friend (35, 38), Miranda bargains with her abductor and he promises that he will let her go after one month, but it is plain that Clegg cannot keep his word. The fact that the parties bargain over the period of captivity is itself interesting. When the abductor seeks affection, such bargaining is plausible. The parties can be understood as earning one another’s trust. If they “agree” on a time period, then perhaps each appears more trustworthy; negotiators and hostage-takers often try just such a step, establishing some small exchange so that each can see that the other is in control of events on one side and then the other. The sub-bargain also promotes trust – to a degree. Clegg might think that Miranda has implicitly agreed to be cooperative and even to see whether she can feel affection for him in return for the promise that if she does not like him within the month, the experiment is over. He thinks that abducting her “was the best thing I ever did in in my life” (28), and that “I wasn’t really worried, I knew my love was worthy of her (27). When, for example, she asks to be allowed out of her cellar room to bathe upstairs and says “If I gave you my word, I wouldn’t break it,” he responds and observes: “I’m sure. . . . So that was that” (48).Bargaining is more difficult when the kidnapper threatens death unless a ransom or other favor is received. The target might say explicitly or implicitly, “Lower your demand from $3 million to $1 million, and I will gather the funds and not go to the police. At the higher price I will take my chances with the police.” Miranda’s bargain over the period of captivity is just such a bargain. It is not like one where the kidnapper demands $1 million, the target accedes, and then the kidnapper raises the demand to $2 million. Nor is it like one where the parties agree on $1 million, and then the target tries to reduce the ransom. These last two maneuvers lead to distrust as the parties can see that re-opening the terms after apparent agreement destabilizes whatever bargain they reach. Miranda’s one-month bargain preceded any quasi-agreement to cooperate.Any promise that Miranda makes not to go to the police is incredible, and she has no extra hostage to leave behind. This is especially clear once Clegg finds out that Miranda recognizes him. It will be impossible to relocate and escape detection. Clegg might imagine a happy ending even after he is recognized. He might reason that if Miranda comes to know him and love him, as would be most unlikely in London where their class differences would keep them apart, then she will no longer seek to escape. He might imagine that she will truly accept his proposal of marriage and then, after some time, they can rejoin the world and say that she ran off with him in order to spend time together. Their elopement would seem romantic rather than criminal. In turn, his implied threat is that she must fall in love with him or be his prisoner forever, unless death intervenes, as of course it does. He knows he will not kill her and that having her is like “catching a specimen you wanted . . . coming up slowly behind and you had it, but you had to nip the thorax, and it would be quivering there. It wasn’t easy like it was with a killing-bottle. And it was twice as difficult with her, because I didn’t want to kill her, that was the last thing I wanted” (39). On the other hand, once he proposes marriage and she explains or frustrates him by saying that marriage, to her, requires mutual possession, and that she could never give herself to him, the bargaining atmosphere changes. “I said, that changes everything then, doesn’t it. I stood up, my head was throbbing. She knew what I meant at once, I could see it in her face, but she pretended not to understand” (89). And then, having understood that she will never be released, she gives it a try: “l’ll marry you. I’ll marry you as soon as you like” (89). But now “I don’t trust you half an inch, I said.” The way she was looking at me really made me sick” (90). A month has now passed and she sees that she is doomed. It is too late to feign love or a willingness to marry.The secondary credibility problem inherent in ransom kidnapping is not avoided by the novel’s lepidopetric device. The butterfly collector wants a new specimen or even affection, rather than ransom, but in true law-and-economics fashion the reader might imagine that every collector has a price at which he can be induced to part with his catch. We learn that Miranda’s father is a doctor, but there is otherwise no indication of the Grey family’s ability to pay an amount sufficient to cause Clegg to change course. In any event, Clegg has acquired funds through gambling, and no modest ransom will appeal to him, inasmuch as he has rather simple tastes. When he plans his next kidnap it is, again, of someone who will not command a significant ransom. Miranda reasons that Clegg may want sex rather than money. She is willing to trade sex for her freedom (99). Some abductors aim for sex of course; we penalize them as rapists. Their strategy is usually to hide their identities, to vanish after the crime, or to frighten the victim so much that she will choose not to report the crime or not to assist in the rapist’s capture. The last strategy seems most effective with minors or family members; most victims will feel more threatened by a rapist on the loose. Clegg is repulsed by Miranda’s offer, and yet more horrified when she tries to seduce him (105). He never sought loveless sex and now regards her as inferior to the woman he fantasized about and stalked. More generally, it is not credible for a victim of kidnapping to offer sex in exchange for freedom. If the abductor wanted sex, there would likely have been a rape and an attempt at anonymity. If non-anonymous, the kidnapper-rapist anticipates a long period of captivity. Once recognized, the victim has no way of making a credible promise to refrain from turning in the kidnapper for the crimes of kidnap and rape.Clegg’s negative reaction to her sex-for-freedom offer is made more interesting by the fact that it follows closely on the heels of his complimenting a drawing she rendered, and then offering to buy it (60-61, 131). She finds this mad and it is, to be sure, strange. If Clegg thinks of her as a guest on the way to a mutually affectionate relationship, he should ask politely for the creation, but not offer to pay. Moreover, why would an abductor ever pay a victim for an asset when both are in his control? Clegg may be trying to convince her that he expects that she will have a life after this captivity. Miranda toys with him and then refuses his offer and tears up the artwork. When he is repulsed by her offer of sex, it is clearer why she was similarly put off by his offer for the drawing. Each sought to commodify something the other regarded as precious and beyond trade. And, of course, the horror and criminality of kidnap itself reflects the view that human life and liberty are beyond commercial exchange.As Miranda comprehends that Clegg wants neither money nor sex, she resorts to the interesting, if unspoken, threat that she will starve herself to death (110). It is not simply that she threatens her abductor with a murder conviction, if the felonious abduction leads to her death, but also that she understands his need for company, affection, or collection. Presuming that he wants a live specimen, she reasons that as she diminishes her value as his hostage, he will be more inclined to end the hostage-keeping, inasmuch as it is costly for him to continue. Miranda’s tactic is of the scorched-earth kind, and it is clever. The novel has us wondering why kidnap victims do not try this strategy. Perhaps this is why many kidnappers choose children, who can be counted on to eat, rather than starve themselves, in the interest of short term preservation or other goals. When the kidnapping is of an adult, it is often to extract ransom or other benefit from a company or government, so that the person who is abducted has an incentive to improve rather than lessen his or her value as a hostage. In the case of hostages taken in order to compel the target to undertake some action, the abductor is often a professional agent of a sophisticated organization capable of force-feeding the hostage. Clegg is unlikely to have the means and knowledge to do the same. If kidnap victims tried this scorched-earth strategy, kidnappers would probably plan to force feed them. Why then does Miranda end the starvation plan? Perhaps she has thought of using violence against Clegg, as she will soon do; in a weakened state she is less likely to succeed and escape. Perhaps she has already planned to offer sex or marriage in return for freedom. Miranda must understand Clegg’s dilemma; if she does not develop affection for him, she cannot live, unless he loves her enough to suffer the consequences or end his own life. The latter possibility might have been viable in the early days of captivity. But once she repulses him with foul language and later with the offer of loveless sex, it will be clear that he does not like her enough to sacrifice his life or liberty for hers.How else might the captivity end, if there is to be neither love nor ransom? Clegg has the idea of holding another threat over her, so that if he releases her, or even if she escapes, she will not turn him in. His notion is to take obscene photos. “I got to protect myself. I want some photos of you what you would be ashamed to let anyone else see” (113). She recoils at his suggestion that she re-enact her attempted seduction. But Clegg is more prudish than Miranda, and he can reason that the existence of these photos, even if she were to pose or he were to force her into suitable position, would not prevent her from going to the authorities if she escapes or is freed. Perhaps he understands enough about university students, worldly enough to keep up with artistic trends and to protest the H-bomb, to know that a few pictures will hardly keep her quiet. Miranda might have tried to convince Clegg that pictures would indeed be enough to keep her from turning him in. She might, for example, have tried to outsmart her captor by writing in her diary that the photos frightened her, and that she hoped Clegg did not realize this because she would do anything in return for his promise not to release them. She could then allow him to discover her diary. Similarly, she might have written that she was wanted for murder in another jurisdiction and so could not go to the police even if she escaped. When Clegg found the diary with this planted information, it is possible that he would have thought he had a way out of the situation. Similarly, if she had written about some medical condition and then later feigned appropriate symptoms, she might have gained the upper hand. Miranda shows no such creativity, though she is “clever” and won prizes in school, and saw right through Clegg’s opening yarn about his working for someone else (33). In any event, the medical condition gambit is difficult to deploy; Clegg would head into town for the necessary medicine and likely find some holes in her story. Clegg likes the photos he takes of her seated and dressed in their early days together. But when he gets around to taking the sort of photos she refused, he likes them better after he cuts her head from them (118). Might this make her more like a butterfly specimen? Might the gag visible on her mouth make the lack of consent apparent, and the threat less valuable? Could he think that headless photos will be less valuable evidence against him in the future? Each of these is plausible and provocative. Each suggests the connection between kidnap and blackmail, and suffers from problems of secondary credibility.* * *The Collector is on to something when it toys with the idea of putting a second threat in the kidnapper’s hands. There is the implicit threat of death and then the threat of releasing photos or terrorizing her in London after her release. It happens that none of these threats is especially credible. The first suffers from secondary incredibility. Clegg says he wants her to get to know him and possibly to love him, but she cannot convincingly offer that. He might have imagined that once she loved him, the kidnapping would be successful because she would become his companion and have no interest in turning on him. But as he begins to see that love is out of reach, whether because there is too much of a class division between them or for some other reason, he cannot trust any claim of affection. If she dies and he disposes of the body, it is possible that the disappearance will never be solved. If she escapes or is released, there is the danger that she will report the crime, lead the police to him, and end his life as a collector. The photographs form an insufficient threat. Even if she could act as if the prospect of their release would be enough to keep her quiet, Clegg must recognize that she will fear that he will demand more in the future, and that she will never be safe. He has already broken his word about the one-month limit on her captivity, and they both understand that neither can trust the other. Similarly, she hints at the possibility that from time to time he could see her in London after her release, but they both perceive that she could use such occasions to have him apprehended. Both parties suffer from secondary incredibility.The idea of a backup threat does not seem to appeal to kidnappers. Thus, imagine a creative kidnapper who abducts two siblings. The criminal demands a ransom and promises to release one hostage upon receipt of the ransom, and the other some time later when it is clear that the ransom is safely received and that the target has not involved the police. The kidnapper could be long gone and simply send a message regarding the second hostage’s location. In theory the plan does not require two hostages, but the release of the first hostage surely adds to the kidnapper’s credibility. Indeed, the kidnapper might repeat the crime with other targets, and suggest they inquire of the previous target in order to learn that the kidnapper was reliable in releasing the first and then the second hostage. Of course, nabbing and holding two hostages requires more effort on the kidnapper’s part. The Collector twice hints at such a credibility-enhancing strategy, though not at the double kidnapping strategy. First, in an inept opening gambit, Clegg tells Miranda that he works for someone who is a serial kidnapper (29-31). As the novel ends, we can imagine Clegg asking his next victim whether she remembers reading about a missing art student. He might even show her evidence of his earlier crime. With each new specimen, the collector becomes more credible. Second, when Clegg contemplates acquiring a new specimen, we recall that when first stalking Miranda he observes that “she and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot” (3). There is a moment when one wonders whether he will move on to the sister, until we recognize that once he attributes his failure to social class divisions, the sister is probably safe. * * *The Collector is a haunting novel from two perspectives. At its unsettling best, it suggests that the lower class man’s forcible crime, that collector of butterflies who treats a woman like an insect or pet, may not be so very different from the educated person’s deceits. Miranda is as much a collector as is Clegg. The perspective is more provocative than convincing and, unfortunately, few readers seem to remember Miranda’s relationship with, and plans for, G.P. Perhaps we readers are too quick to take comfort in the dividing line constructed of chloroform and gags. It is Clegg’s narrative in The Collector that is iconic, though I have suggested that Miranda’s diary that is yet more provocative. The second perspective emphasizes the mechanics of a successful kidnap. It is not an easy crime and, once begun, its threats and counter-threats spin out of control. In this respect the novel succeeds the moment the reader understands that a happy ending is impossible. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download