Harper’s Magazine, December 1878: “Daisy Miller is an impossible daughter, who regards her mother as a cipher, and who, besides, is an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence, elegance and vulgarity. A young person of bad manners.”

HJ himself in an August 1880 letter: “Poor little Daisy Miller was, as I understand her, above all things innocent. It was not to make a scandal, or because she took pleasure in a scandal, that she went on with Giovanelli. She never took the measure really of the scandal she produced, and had no means of doing so: she was too ignorant, too irreflective, too little versed in the proportions of things. She was a flirt, a perfectly superficial and unmalicious one….I did not mean to suggest that she was playing off Giovanelli against Winterbourne–for she was too innocent for that.”

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1. What do we learn about the narrator in the opening sections–and what don’t we learn? How is his “character” useful in permitting the unwinding of the plot?
   • In the opening sections of the story, we learn that the narrator is in the third person, and is limited.  He is a character outside of the story, focusing on Winterbourne.  All of the perceptions and assumptions we learn about Daisy are through Winterbourne’s eyes (but, it’s important to remember that Winterbourne is NOT the narrator).  This is important as we never truly know Daisy as a character onto herself.  Everything we learn is tainted by Winterbourne’s interpretation of her actions.  As readers, this forces us to pay close attention to what is actually happening.  While it is easy to judge Daisy as “loose” or promiscuous based on how Winterbourne perceives her, we have to remember that we are working with LIMITED information (this is the repercussions of a LIMITED Narrator).
2. To what extent is Daisy responsible for her own fate, and to what extent is she an innocent crushed beneath a corrupt civilization? Discuss Daisy’s character in detail. Did you find her a sympathetic character or an irritating one? What points of European civilization does she fail to understand?
   • Mostly Innocent: Her mother didn’t teach her properly, not born and raised in Europe.
     • She had no role model/mentor to the social interaction btwn. men and women (In NY she had both girl and guy friends)
     • Some responsibility for her own fate: She was warned by Winterbourne not to go with Giovanelli and of the dangers of catching Roman Fever.  She should know better to take advice from people that have been in Europe longer (but, is there any evidence in this text that she ever LEARNED to take advice?)
   • Overall Character:
     • Independent, oblivious, naive, ignorant
     • James says in his 1880 letter that she had no bad, malicious intentions
     • Simply enjoyed flirting and talking about herself
   • We think she is mostly an irritating character, too stupid for her own good.
   • Failure to understand European civilization
     • never learned the approved social standards for interactions between men and women of a certain class in Europe (and, I would argue, in America).  Has been allowed to choose her own course in life while being provided with enough privilege to make it this far (ie. there were no negative consequences to her behavior until, of course, the fever which claims her life)
3. James uses language carefully in this novella as in all his works; certain words (“pretty”) and dominant images (flowers, for example) are repeated with variations throughout. Choose a few of the most important examples that you have seen in this work and discuss their significance.
   • “American”: a negative association
     • describing a non-traditional woman:  Daisy was flamboyant and flirty
     • wasn’t the stereotypical (or socially accepted/proper) woman that Mrs. Walker was so she wasn’t included in their social circle (also, came from “new money”, probably upper middle-class, not the aristocracy Mrs. Walker and Winterbourne represent).
   • There are actually quite a few instances where images repeat themselves (making them Dominant Image Patterns).  For instance, flowers and certain colors are mentioned throughout the story.  This would be an interesting Response topic if you wanted to take it further.
4. Two of the most crucial words in this story are “innocent” and “intimate,” especially because the characters define them in various ways and apply them to Daisy’s relations with others. Find the places in which these words are used and discuss the ways in which these loaded terms help to create tension (and misunderstandings) in the story.
   • (1st section) Back then women were considered very innocent, confined, and kept together.
   • (2nd Section) Winterbourne’s aunt implies that he is innocent, but Winterbourne finds this amusing and disagrees.  They describe Daisy as innocent and intimate at the same time.  They may just be close friends, but Winterbourne sees their “intimacy” more sexually than Daisy.  While they use both words to describe one another, the words mean something different from each perspective.
5. To what extent are manners and morals conflated in the society represented in this story? Is it possible to separate these two within the plot–or does the narrator also see them as nearly identical?
   • Manners and morals play a large part in James’ “Daisy Miller”.  Manners were based on society’s opinion of their morals.  For example, Daisy walking alone with men was frown upon (and was dangerous to her social standing…which could ruin a woman during this time period).  Winterbourne , as depicted in the carriage scene, was more worried about his social standing than Daisy’s well-being.  The fact that Winterbourne, as a man, had more freedom to interact with the opposite sex and was still worried about disobeying his aunt (to the point where he abandons Daisy in what he deemed an “inappropriate situation”) illustrates just how debilitating a fall from high society could be to one’s life.
6. In “Daisy Miller: A Study,” Does James follow the precepts of realism and of art as he describes them in “The Art of Fiction”?
   • James does follow the precepts of Realism in “Daisy” because he attempts to describe life as it really would have happened.  He illustrates the expectations of society in a real way, without embellishment–it would be expected for society to ostracize Daisy for her behavior and to perceive her as welcoming her own scandal and eventual “ruin.”  Daisy’s death at the end is inevitable, since a woman like her had no place in James’ current society.  Despite the setting not being typical for the average American (an upper middle-class girl), the characterization and social settings correspond with the aspects of Realism James outlines in “The Art of Fiction”
7. What does it mean to be an American in this story (it would be useful to connect to some of our past discussions on “identity” and the “American” voice here)?
   • Men:
     • Double Standard in viewing women
     • Men’s freedom and power in Western culture (both in America and Europe) is celebrated.  Winterbourne’s aunt comments on this saying essentially that Daisy’s behavior is prohibited while, if she were male, her behavior would be accepted and even encouraged.
   • Women:
     • An American woman (outside of her own country) is a strange sight and was often viewed as an outsider, someone “lesser” than a woman in the upper classes of England (despite how much money the American tourist has, he/she would never be equal in the eyes of an aristocratic European).  This has to do with a lack of social structure in America.  Don’t get me wrong, America definitely had CLASSES, and things were not necessarily any easier for women across the ocean; however, the concept of family and lineage was very important to the old school of European Aristocracy.  Since America was a new country, this lineage did not exist, so for Europeans, it was difficult to see an American (with or without money) as an equal.
     • For Daisy, it was even more difficult since she doesn’t even attempt to play the game (though I’m not sure how much she even knows about this “social game” since her mother and father seem to be MIA).  She lives by her own set of morals, which, I would argue, are more “true” and “innocent” than Winterbourne thinks, despite her running off into dangerous situations and surrounding herself with men who want to take advantage of her.