Miller, Daisy | Introduction
Daisy Miller
Henry James
The following entry presents criticism of James's novella Daisy Miller (1879). For information on James's complete career, see TCLC, Volumes 2, 11, and 47; for discussion of his novella The Turn of the Screw (1898), see TCLC, Volume 24; for discussion of his novel The Portrait of a Lady (1881), see TCLC, Volume 40.
INTRODUCTION
Considered among his finest works of fiction, Daisy Miller was James's earliest "international novel" to achieve popular and critical success. Lacking much of the narrative complexity for which James would later become known, the story recounts the exploits of a young American girl in Europe and dramatizes the theme of innocence beset upon by modern society. Likewise, the novella traces many significant themes that James explored in his other early works, including the contrast between American and European culture and the constraints that society places on individual freedom.
Plot and Major Characters
The plot of Daisy Miller centers on two individuals, Daisy Miller, a pretty and headstrong young woman from Schenectady, New York, and Frederick Winterbourne, a young American expatriate residing in Europe. Winterbourne first encounters Daisy in the Swiss resort town of Vevey, where she is vacationing with her ineffectual mother and sickly nine-year-old brother Randolph. Charmed by Daisy, Winterbourne—who is prone to circumspection rather than action—categorizes her as a "pretty American flirt," and when he returns to Geneva looks to his aunt, Mrs. Costello, for advice in dealing with the situation. After a brief excursion with Daisy to the Castle of Chillon back in Vevey, Winterbourne again returns to Geneva, and while there receives some letters from his aunt, now in Rome where she has recently made the acquaintance of Daisy. In her letters, Mrs. Costello hints at some impropriety on Daisy's part, claiming that she has become "very intimate with some third-rate Italians." In reality Daisy's Italian acquaintance is Eugenio Giovanelli, who suffers more from poor judgement than low character. Winterbourne, nonetheless, travels to Rome to meet his aunt and to visit Daisy, who has been seen more and more with Giovanelli. About her behavior Daisy is confronted by Mrs. Walker, another American socialite residing in Europe like Winterbourne's aunt. Daisy refuses to listen to the older woman and agrees to go with Giovanelli to the Colosseum at night—an unseemly act in the eyes of Walker, Costello, and Winterbourne. In addition, all fear that Daisy might contract malaria from being out in the city at night. When Winterbourne goes to retrieve Daisy, he finds her and Giovanelli at the Colosseum, where Daisy—angered by the assumptions made about her character and by Winterbourne's easy acceptance of the gossip—defiantly claims that she does not care if she falls ill. Shortly afterward Daisy shows signs of exposure to the disease and soon dies. Later Winterbourne goes to Daisy's grave in the Protestant cemetery in Rome where he meets Giovanelli, who proclaims Daisy's innocence.
Major Themes
According to most critics Daisy Miller is a work primarily concerned with the nuances of character and the effects that social values and manners have on individual actions. James himself declared the novella to be about innocence, specifically Daisy's innocence in conflict with the sophistication of the modern world. Yet critics have observed that he portrays her character with a tone of irony that highlights her willful and reckless behavior. These ambiguities of character were also commented on by James, who claimed to have produced a poetic, rather than a strictly critical, portrait of Daisy. General consensus has since aligned Daisy with the natural world, and made her a personification of spontaneity and freedom. Contrasted with this is the character of Winterbourne. Overly deliberate and superficial, he has come to represent the stultifying and deceptive qualities of Victorian society. And, while Winterbourne appears to be forthright and honorable, James reveals that he is having an affair with "a very clever foreign lady"—a gender-related hypocrisy that forms another theme in Daisy Miller. Commentators also have speculated as to who is the real protagonist of the novella. Many have argued that Daisy is merely the object of other people's perceptions and that the work is really about Winterbourne. As a result, much of the recent criticism on Daisy Miller has focused on Winterbourne's self-deceptive enslavement to Puritanical standards of behavior, his misogyny, and his complicity in destroying Daisy.
Critical Reception
While James initially had great difficulty finding a publisher for Daisy Miller, when the novella made its appearance in The Cornhill Magazine in 1879, it created a huge uproar among the American reading public. William Dean Howells observed that the country was split between "Daisy Millerites and anti-Daisy Millerites." The latter were scandalized by Daisy's behavior, which was thought to flout Victorian standards of womanly conduct. Nevertheless, the ensuing publicity brought James to the forefront of the American literary scene. And, while contemporary critical appraisals of the work were generally positive, twentieth-century critics have since elevated it to the status of a minor masterpiece. Such praise has focused on James's incisive portrayal of character and his compelling investigation of the cultural differences between the Old and New Worlds, a theme that he was to more fully dramatize later in The Portrait of A Lady.
Navigate
