Daisy Miller, Henry James - Robert Weisbuch (essay date 1993)
Robert Weisbuch (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: "Winterbourne and the Doom of Manhood in Daisy Miller," in New Essays on Daisy Miller and the Turn of the Screw, edited by Vivian R. Pollak, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 65-89.
[In the following essay, Weisbuch analyzes Winterbourne's flawed perception of Daisy and the world around him, and compares him to other bachelors in modern literature.]
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Henry James is like the modern jazz masters in this: He begins with the simplest romantic themes, then builds intricacies upon them until the once-clichés speak to all the subtle richness of social existence. With Daisy Miller and her reluctant suitor Frederick Winterbourne, the theme is no more than "opposites attract," and the trick is that one pole of that opposition is so constructed as to make the attraction deadly. "Stiff" Winterbourne brings doom to Daisy and a different doom to himself; through him, James tallies the...
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