Daisy Miller by Henry James

Daisy Miller was first published as a magazine serial in 1878. During Henry James' lifetime, it remained his most popular work, outselling Portrait of a Lady twice over. 

Wes: 

           Daisy Miller is a short story by Henry James, an American expatriot writing in the late 19th century. A close observer of existing mores among the mid-to-high societies in Europe, James wrote this tale apparently as a precautionary story of what might happen if one adopted a care-free attitude in social dealings that disregards the accepted ways of doing things in then-current human society.

            The story opens in the vacation town of Vevey in Switzerland. The observer in the story is a 27 year-old bachelor, Frederick Winterbourne, an American who has lived in Europe for some time, who is vacationing from his studies in Lucerne, while visiting his aunt, Mrs. Costello, in a favorite lakeside hotel. He meets Ms. Annie P. Miller, ("Daisy") and is immediately smitten by her "direct and unshrinking glance", Paris dresses, fondness of society, and agreeable conversation. Winterbourne, who James notes likes older women, does his best to interest Daisy in the local scenery and takes an interest in Daisy's younger brother, Randolph. We meet the rest of the Miller family and Eugenio, the "courier" who consistently flunks his role as escort and/or baby-sitter. Daisy shockeningly invites Winterbourne to escort her alone to a local castle and even wanted to go for a boat ride with him in the early evening. Winterbourne, flattered as he is, sees a "laxity of deportment" or an "American flirt" even though he loves her company to the castle.

            When our hero has to get back to school, he is shocked when Daisy accuses him of deserting him and asks him to come to Rome during the American family's next stop. He agrees to come the following January and does make the trip though making his first Rome stop to Mrs. Wagner's home, another American expatriot, who turns out be friends with the Millers and Winterbourne. Winterbourne is trapped at the Wagner home by Daisy who arrives suddenly and complains of his failing to see her first even though he had just arrived. Things spin out of Winterbourne's control and he is shuttled into the background by Daisy's relentless need for society - especially the Roman courtier society. We meet Mr. Giovanelli, a playboy-like character, who ends up paying constant attention to Daisy to the exclusion of poor Winterbourne who constantly marvels at Daisy's complete lack of what is considered good responsible behavior.

             Daisy and her completely acquiescent mother are soon banished from the American and European social scene because of the heedless actions of Daisy and the ubiquitous Giovanelli. We see Daisy and Giovanelli all over Rome as Winterborne meets them in various odd places. The final odd place is the very bottom of the Roman Colosseum late at night at a place and time where a dangerous miasma is known to strike. Sure enough, Daisy catches a fever and soon dies, While this is tragic, the inescapable conclusion is that Daisy brought it upon herself through an "inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence."

            Never really committing to Giovanelli who clearly was looking for a rich heiress, Daisy's last word to Winterbourne were that she really wasn't engaged to him but Winterbourne could not escape agreeing with Mrs. Costello that it would be doubtful whether she would ever reciprocate anyone's affection.

            The subtitle of the story is "a Study". Obviously James' point is that this is a tragic story of the dangers of naivety, probably frequently observed by him in many of the Americans traveling in Europe with a lot of money but little discretion. The story clearly makes the point that there are penalties to social recklessness and flirtacious innocence. The ways of the Victorian era, i.e., escorts in mixed company, never walking abroad after hours, women wearing particular garments at particular times, etc., might be inhibiting but have a basis in good sense and are always observed by those with proper breeding. Mrs. Costello sensed this immediately, refusing to meet the Miller family back at Vevey, considering them "completely uncultivated", just a little better than Winterbourne's wry comment that they were certainly not "Comanche savages." The best term I think James used for her was Winterbourne's observation of her flitting about the terraces and verandas of the Vevey hotel like an "indolent sylph". Looking that strange word up gave me an impression of James' real outlook on some of the young American rich girls he apparently has observed in his wanderings around Europe at the time.

             I enjoyed this story as it has a lot of the descriptions of the Victorian authors of the era like Trollope, Austin, Thackeray, and others. A good story with a lot of interesting dialogue. It is my first story by James. I will probably tackle some more. 

Allison: 

             I don’t often read  books with a dictionary handy. Part of the adventure of reading is growing my vocabulary with words I only half-understand, and pronounce with abandon.  Kidding, of course, yet an inevitable truth.  Like most New Yorkers, I read in commute and even a pocket dictionary is too much to balance on a moving train. That said, I insisted on reading Henry James with a dictionary because from the very first page it was important to me that I know his precise meaning. I was so charmed by the descriptive cadence, I would leave nothing to my own fashioning. Take for example, this introduction to Miss Miller’s young brother Randolph:

"Presently a small boy came walking along the path – an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his poor little spindleshanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything that he approached – the flower-beds, the garden-benches, the trains of the ladies’ dresses. In front of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with a pair of bright, penetrating little eyes.

‘Will you give me a lump of sugar?’ he asked, in a sharp, hard little voice – a voice immature, and yet, somehow, not young.

Winterbourne glanced at the small table near him, on which his coffee-service rested, and saw that several morsels of sugar remained. ‘Yes, you may take one,’ he answered; ‘but I don’t think sugar is good for little boys.’

This little boy stepped forward and carefully selected three of the coveted fragments, two of which he buried in the pocket of his knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another place."

It would be impossible to read this and not want to know exactly what spindleshanks entails. Turns out the word simply means long, thin, legs, which could likely be extrapolated, but now that this definition is solidified, you can be sure I am confidently commenting on all the spindleshanks  around me.

                This isn’t a story about Randolph, although he is as crude and as gorgeous as a little boy should be. This is a story about Daisy Miller, his effervescent older sister. When I met Daisy, I thought of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. The MPDG was coined by AV Club film critic Nathan Rabin in a scathing review of Elizabethtown, and is described as such:  “TheManic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitivewriter-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and itsinfinite mysteries and adventures.” Daisy doesn’t fit perfectly into this mold, as her existence is not only about awakening our hero Winterbourne to the sparkly and shiny side of life—but she does maintain one very important feature of the MPDG: her availability to Winterbourne, and what his trepidating obsession with her ultimately reveals about him. Winterbourne has never met a girl like her, so pretty (indeed, I wish I had the patience to count how many “pretty”s we find in the slim work), and more importantly, literally unguarded. The young American woman roams various European resorts without the requisite older matronly-chaperone, enjoying immensely the company of “gentlemen’s society.” It is this very open accessibility, her freespiritedness that is so confounding and intoxicating to Winterbourne. He cannot resist the urge to partake in company with Daisy, alone, even though he knows this is frowned upon and potentially damaging to her reputation. In the first section, his intentions with Daisy are what we might expect. He is smitten and fantasizes about elopement. But, in the second half of the story, when Winterbourne discovers he is not the only (nor the most preferred) of gentlemen company Daisy is keeping, his mission becomes rescuing her dignity. Winterbourne, hardly short of stalking, and not without an interesting internal debate about the constraints of society, attempts to reform Daisy. To align her into a proper lady. Spoiler alert, I am about to tell you how this all works out.

                Daisy wants nothing of it. Of course she doesn’t, because if she did, wouldn’t she be another stuffy, highcollared ex-patriot, holding parities in rooms much too small for dancing, only large enough for gossip? All of her exotic, bald intrigue would dissipate. Manic Pixie Dream Girl turns Yates’ housewife. A tragedy, but not the one James gives us. Instead Daisy dies because she goes out walking with a Roman gentleman to the Colosseum past midnight. She catches the Italian ‘pernicious’ fever, which inexplicably, her suitor Mr. Giovanelli was never concerned about catching himself. Did he give it to her? Is this fever euphuism for something else? What should we, the reader, conclude about Daisy’s behavior and subsequent fate? For Winterbourne: “He asked himself whether Daisy’s defiance came from the consciousness of innocence or from her being, essentially, a young person of the reckless class. It must be admitted that holding oneself to a belief in Daisy’s ‘innocence’ came to seem to Winterbourne more and more a matter of fine-spun gallantry.”

                I read the Penguin Classics version of Daisy Miller which includes notes and an introduction by David Lodge. Lodge doesn’t give much attention to the ultimate death of Daisy. I think he was hesitant to give away the final blow of the story and maybe too classy to announce a Spoiler like myself. He does, however, give us some insight into the controversy that burgeoned with the publication of Daisy Miller. (Incidentally, much to his chagrin, Daisy Miller was James’ bestselling work in his lifetime. People were really arguing about this story, friendships were lost, angry letter were sent, etc). What sprung were two camps that fell on either side of the question Winterbourne poses of Daisy’s “innocence”—which earlier I implied as sexual, but in fact is not. Winterbourne means innocence as: Did Daisy know she was defying convention—was she ignorant, or was she simply not bothered by what others have to say about her? James answers this question in a letter to a friend, included in the Penguin edition. I won’t tell you what he said here, because I think that is the true suspense of the story.  Maybe we can get into it in the comments, if you really want to know. Regardless of the intention of James, despite the hurried tiding of Daisy’s reputation in the final pages, when he kills Daisy off, we gather that Daisy’s unabashed rejection of societal constraints confirms a common didactic message with which every woman is familiar, all the way up until modern day: Young pretty girls, if left untethered, are dangerous. Dangerous to themselves for their magnetic allure, and dangerous to men, who simply cannot ignore them.  Because all women know this—it’s as sure and as unambiguous as the nose on my face—I fall into the camp of “Daisy doesn’t give a damn”.