Miranda is around the same age as Juliet and, although she has no memory of her life of nobility, the way she treats her slave Caliban (which was at one time full of pity) indicates that she knows her standing as Prospero’s daughter. Miranda falls in love with Ferdinand as quickly as young Juliet falls in love with Romeo, but her naiveté is far more untainted than the latter maid. Upon casting eyes upon Ferdinand, Miranda says, “I might call him/A thing divine; for nothing natural/I ever saw so noble” (I.ii.419-421). This line is an interesting play on the word “natural,” since nobility has a top echelon seat in the hierarchical, “chain of being” that defined “nature” in Elizabethan society. 
If Miranda is the goddess of light of the natural world, Sycorax is the feminine energy that hides in the shadows; Sycorax represents the basest and vilest elements of nature. We never meet Sycorax, but only know her through representation, which is primarily revealed through her son, Caliban. The “foul” “damned witch,” the “blue-eyed hag,” Sycorax, is spoken about with disdain, and Caliban’s sins are stem from having been a “hag-born,” a mere “hag-seed.” Caliban is a villain by birth. Sycorax is noted to have tortured the benevolent Ariel, and for having worked with black magic. Like Prospero, Sycorax was banished from society and landed on the the same island, however, she uses supernatural forces destructively while Prospero uses them for the good. Written following a forty year span of witch trials in Elizabethan England, The Tempest’s contrasts the epitome of a despicable woman with the idealistic picture of a devoted ingénue daughter, illuminating the disparate gradations of a Renaissance woman.
