Daisy Miller by Henry James

Daisy Miller by Henry James

Set Up (summary):

The story begins in Vevey, Switzerland where “in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteristics of an American watering place.”  The protagonist, Winterbourne—not the narrator who remains an unnamed first person—meets Daisy Miller, an American free spirit, unencumbered by societal rules. Winterbourne falls for his countrywoman while abroad and tries to educate her in the customs of Europe, which she ignores. At first, she seems to insist on his attending to her, perhaps suggesting her interest, but that changes when an Italian, Giovanelli, courts her without a chaperone, which is scandalous to everyone except Miller’s family. There are hints that maybe if her father had left Schenectady with his family, this would not have occurred, but that’s hard to say. It may be just Winterbourne’s jealousy or the narrator’s opinion.

Discussion with spoilers:

Daisy Miller seems to string both of these young men along although initially she seems to have no interest in Winterbourne. Once she secures Winterbourne’s interest, she mostly ignores him but even then she would entertain both gentlemen at the same time. Although she spends more time with Giovanelli, he doesn’t think she ever loved him, either—at least not enough to marry.

She gets sick and dies. The narrator, Winterbourne, and perhaps Giovanelli himself to a degree think this is due to taking her out on the town during late hours. If only she’d been chaperoned....

This could be read as a morality tale: Follow the ancient customs of the foreign land you find yourself in. In fact, some critics put James into that category, pointing out that the author defended writing about customs:

“[I]t takes an old civilization to set a novelist in motion – a proposition that seems to me so true as to be a truism. It is on manners, customs, usages, habits, forms, upon all these things matured & established, that a novelist lives – they are the very stuff his work is made of.”

But this doesn’t take into account the frame story. Why develop the frame story at all? Keep Winterbourne the protagonist and have him lament at the funeral. Instead, there’s more complexity here. Furthermore, just because an author prefers European customs in his fiction doesn’t mean he has to follow them in his theme.

The narrator’s identity is shrouded, but perhaps he is not American and/or not young, saying of the protagonist: “in whatever fashion the young American looked at things.” At one point, describing details about the protagonist, he writes, “I hardly know” although later writes commandingly about the details. He speaks for instance of the man’s friends who would say he is “studying” at Geneva—the narrator’s quote which suggests he knows the young man intimately although intriguingly. He writes:

“When his enemies spoke of him, they said—but, after all he had no enemies; he was an extremely amiable fellow, and universally liked.”

It’s possible that Winterbourne has no enemies, but consider his name and that Daisy Miller found him “stiff.” Perhaps the narrator knows what the enemies would say and catches himself and feigns that Winterbourne has none. Certainly, the author wants us to catch the hiccup or he’d have cut this from the story (unless James were too lazy to edit, which seems improbable for a writer held in high regard).

This dialogue with Daisy Miller’s young, little brother suggests his family’s attitude toward Europe or at least a key interpretive passage (Winterbourne has just told the child to be careful with his teeth, eating sugar):

“I haven’t got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out. I have only got seven teeth. My mother counted them last night, and came out right afterward. She said she’d slap me if any more came out. I can’t help it. It’s this old Europe. It’s the climate that makes them come out. In America they didn’t come out. It’s these hotels.”

How do we take this? Is this a natural process that would happen anyway, no matter where he was?  Given that his sister dies due to climate, does the boy have a grain of truth? Yet he says “I haven’t got any teeth to hurt” while admitting he still has seven teeth. He, perhaps like his sister, discounts his own actions as having an effect on his predicament.

James himself discussed the story with people who spoke of the Daisy-Miller type. It seems to surprise him that his character has been typed. Sociologically, it’s interesting that Miller typified the behavior of some other women—perhaps a woman unready to settle into a marriage but very keen to develop multiple admirers (see Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind although Scarlett did have a man she wanted to marry, but was more than willing to encourage multiple admirers)—but James’s reaction seemed more surprised that his character was not a character but a type, suggesting that the morality was not necessarily his aim.

Giovanelli, for instance, thinks she was “innocent.” This seems likely in multiple senses since when she first encounters Winterbourne she hates European society and doesn’t understand why she didn’t have all the attention she received in the U.S. Like her brother Randolph, she doesn’t see how her actions affect her reception. Before she passes, she tells her mother to tell Winterbourne that she wasn’t engaged to Giovanelli. The mother doesn’t know why that was important to share. There are two possibilities: 1) She realizes belatedly that Winterbourne was the man for her all along, or 2) Winterbourne is her moral conscience and she wants to be remembered as innocent.

The latter seems more likely since she never really seems fully invested in Winterbourne. When she first meets him, she keeps looking around for something else—perhaps the society she has been looking for. Interestingly, at this encounter, Winterbourne is willing to bend the rules of etiquette to pretend they were formally introduced so that he can talk to her (which suggests that breaking societal rules is not really what killed Daisy):

“It seemed to Winterbourne that he had been in a manner presented.”

The narrator says that Winterbourne’s real reason to be in Geneva was being “extremely devoted to a lady who lived there—a foreign lady—a person older than himself.” What is meant here by “foreign”—American? Swiss? neither? Could it be referring to Daisy Miller at this point? Or someone else? This is also how the novel ends: “he is much interested in a very clever foreign lady.” Is this the same foreign lady or a different one? Again, what is “foreign” to an ex-pat living abroad? He does say, “I have lived too long in foreign parts” (yet continues to do so). This indicates that foreign to him is anything not American, perhaps.

Perhaps this indicates that Daisy Miller was more exciting to him than the foreign lady—that he abandons her yet returns when Daisy passes. Perhaps Daisy is the only remarkable episode in his life.

Who is Daisy Miller? She’s a simple flower, ground up and/or who grinds others up. Perhaps they are all ground to a useful purpose to become flour. However, it isn’t clear that these events made anyone wiser.