Review: Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller by Henry James
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have a strange relationship with this novella. I saw the Peter Bogdanovich film when I was all of thirteen and I was puzzled by the fact that it was called a comedy of manners because it didn't seem very funny. I promptly read the novella and was certain it wasn't a comedy but, if anything was a tragic story of clashing cultural norms and the double standards visited upon women. (Yes, I was hung up on that even at age thirteen.) My take on the story evolves with time, or more accurately, with maturity.

We meet the eponymous Annie "Daisy" Miller in Vevey, Switzerland where she is traveling with her mother and her younger brother Randolph. Randolph encounters Mr. Frederic Winterbourne, an American expatriate (like James himself) living on the continent in Europe. Winterbourne is struck by Daisy's beauty and by her unusual, to him, manner. Rather than the reserved manner of the European women that Winterbourne has grown used to, Daisy is rather brash, openly flirtatious and saying what she thinks. After visiting the atmospheric Chillon Castle* (of Byronic fame), they part and Daisy hopes to see him again in Rome.

After traveling to Rome Winterbourne encounters Daisy at a gathering in the home of his friend Mrs. Walker some time later. Daisy has further ensconced herself in her willful ways and has taken up with a handsome young Italian man, Mr. Giovanelli. She goes about with him at all hours of the day and night in what is considered to be a scandalous fashion. Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne's aunt, find Daisy and her family crass and "common." The clear implication that the Millers are nouveau riche and their perceived vulgarity mars Daisy's ability to socialize and drives her to a fatal error. Winterbourne meanwhile is alternately drawn to Daisy and repelled by her. Winterbourne meets with Daisy's mother to warn her of her daughter's waning social standing but encounters a woman as hapless and inappropriate as Lizzie Bennet's mother. Encountering Daisy and Giovanelli in public, he is relieved he no longer has to act as if she is a lady. He mentions her going about with Giovanelli as a shocking thing for an unmarried woman and Daisy pointedly, with her American pragmatism, says to her it would be far more inappropriate were she married. (A reference to the fact that married ladies frequently went about with men who were not their husbands in this era as if the marriage itself was a shield.) This collision of Daisy and Winterbourne's cultural sense of propriety culminates in tragedy, as Daisy flaunts not just convention but common sense, visiting the coliseum late at night during mosquito season, and falls fatally ill with malaria.

There are many levels to this story but to me the heart of it is Winterbourne's callousness. He finds Daisy beautiful but does not understand her. He is unwilling to risk anything to gain a better understanding. The point at which he is relieved that he no longer has to think of her as a lady is poignant for Daisy, who is clearly hurt by his manner. In her subsequent communiques to him while ill, the reader sees how much his opinion mattered to her. Winterbourne's ability to later brush off what he himself owns to his aunt as being a great mistake is the final straw. He returns to his regular life and Daisy is all but forgotten. Daisy may not have always comported herself as a young lady should but Winterbourne is no true gentleman, since he lacks character.

This is a fascinating novella when examined from the perspective of both cultural norms but also in terms of one's tendency to minimize one's mistakes and judgmental attitudes, reverting to the same state of living that led to such mistakes. It's hard to break out of familiar behavior. Reading Daisy Miller about a half dozen times over the past few decades has shown me how much my own judgment of a person's choices can evolve. Now I look at Winterbourne with considerable distaste.

*One of the times I reread this novella was actually in Vevey! I went to Chillon thinking about Daisy and Winterbourne.

I still have to post my sci-fi classic review of Neuromancer from back in September. The past six weeks has been crazy and that book is so BIG it requires quality time to write about it properly.

November's classic read will be Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, winner of the Great American Read. Why don't you join me in reading/rereading it?



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