Audrey Karnycheff

Daisy Miller is a novella written by Henry James in 1878. It tells the story of an Europeanised man  (Winterbourne) who struggles to accept his attraction for a young American girl nicknamed Daisy. Daisy is an unabashed party girl, a pleasure-seeker. This light-hearted quality of hers is what attracted Winterbourne to her in the first place, but he’s ashamed of it.

The turning point of the story happens when Daisy rides in a carriage with two men, something that, at the time, is seen as scandalous. She’s mainly caracterised as a care-free girl, and in this passage especially, she asserts her freedom through her ever giddiness. Her freedom clashes with the morals of that era, embodied by the stiff Mrs Walker. Winterbourne then has to take a side, and either continue on riding with Daisy and Mr Giovenelli, or going back to the hotel with Mrs Walker. The dramatic issue of the scene is to chase away Winterbourne from the love triangle, but I’d argue that there’s more at stake here. It’s a matter of female sexuality’s representation.

In a narrative that deals with love, the first thing that comes to mind is to read the extract through Winterbourne’s jealousy of Giovanelli. Winterbourne is indeed jealous. Giovanelli is seen as a devil, rubbing his hands and smiling. This gesture especially calls to mind the imagery associated with the christian Devil. Giovanelli is unbearable and overly polite, which is regarded as downright suspicious (« Mr. Giovanelli bade him farewell with a too emphatic flourish of the hat ») . Everything that is related to him is irritating, down to his hat.

Kenneth Graham, in Daisy Miller, Dynamics of an Enigma, points out that « the later revision of the story degrade poor Giovanelli even further : ‘that man’ becomes ‘that thing’, ‘he’ becomes ‘it’ and is ever glossy and greasy ». In Henry James’s mind, Giovanelli was always meant to be an antagonist to Winterbourne. That is especially jarring if one suscribes to the theory that Winterbourne is an avatar of James himself – he shares with him an adoration for European culture and mannerism.

But to me, Winterbourne’s jealousy is not exactly the focal point of the extract. This is about the conflict between Mrs Walker and Daisy. Mrs Walker finds Daisy’s behaviour shocking and improper.

It’s kind of funny that Mrs Walker’s carriage is refered to as a « victoria ». She’s indeed a very Victorian character. The Victorian society is remembered as moraly repressed and prude, two adjectives that also fit Mrs Walker’s characterisation. It’s even mentionned a bit earlier in the story that she wears a bonnet (« I ordered the carriage and put on my bonnet and came here as quickly as possible »), a detail that underlines just how old-fashioned she is. She thinks of herself as a moral guardian. She wishes to protect Daisy – and rightfully so, because Giovanelli is a fortune-hunter. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What she’s doing here would nowadays be called « slut-shaming », a system in which a woman who wears revealing clothes, or a promiscuous woman, is considered a lesser woman – as Mrs Walker would say, a « ruined girl ». It’s definitely a sexist thing to do, and it isn’t respectful of one’s individual freedom. Daisy, being a free woman, albeit a reckless one, is offended. But she’s also disappointed as she hoped Mrs Walker wanted to talk to her to make her accointance. To a newcomer like Daisy, having the privilege of being accointed to Mrs Walker would be a godsent. It would settle her in society.

There’s a paradox here, around Mrs Walker. And truly this paradox is an American one – it’s especially true today. Mrs Walker is an American, a land that has often been called « the New World », but here she represents the old ways.

In that spirit, it’s tempting to see Daisy Miller as her polar opposite. Mrs Walker herself points out that Daisy is very un-American. So it wouldn’t be totally wrong to think of Daisy as a character truly representing a New World. We’re told the story through Winterbourne’s eyes, and he later says in the story : « the poor girl’s only fault is that she’s very uncultivated ». Daisy Miller is a air-head. But pretty much all adolescent girls are, at least in the collective mind. It’s a bit of a cliche to make fun of a rebellious teen who’s learning to embrace the changes of her body and doesn’t quite understand the « less is more » seduction mantra. Daisy Miller is a proto-lotita, a type of character that will have a tremendous posterity in the Western culture. The word « lolita » was coined by Nabokov.

To quote Kenneth Graham again : « There are two ways of judging Daisy, and each is allowed its validity : the external way of a traditionnal and stereotypical social ethic ; and the internal way of intuitive personal response ». Mrs Walker reflects the former, whereas the reader (especially a reader of the XXIst century, I’d say) reflects the later. Winterbourne is caught up between the two, as he’s jealous and petty ; but also fascinated by Daisy’s  beauty. Through and through, he’s obsessed with her « prettiness ». It could be argued that he’s also fascinated with her recklessness. He wants to see how far she can go, because part of his attraction for her is linked to that riddle she is to him.

Henry James deals with a very sexual matter – a young woman losing her reputation, or even losing her vertue. But still, he stays on the surface : nothing really crass is said about Daisy Miller. Henry James cared to distance himself from French naturalist writers, for he thought the themes overed by thoses authors were somewhat dirty.

In conclusion, in this scene, Winterbourne deeply disappoints Daisy. She was already alone, snubed by every person of the good society, but now she’s losing the respect of someone she thought of as a friend. In the end, Winterbourne gets into Mrs Walker’s carriage, literally and figuratively. He’d rather side with experience because that’s the posture he likes for himself. But as we see in this scene, experience can come off as bitterness. Innocence, of course, is meant to be protected. It’s however difficult to determine how much of the « concern » expressed by the novel’s moral guardians is valid and how much it is just society’s way to repress abnormal behaviour. And that repression leads Daisy to push her scandalous behavour even further, as a dare. And that would eventually lead her to die of exposure, continuing the line of women in fiction killed by having sex.