Henry James : Daisy Miller

As Azar Nafisi puts it:

"I had just begun "Daisy Miller" and was reading about that Europeanized young American, Winterbourne, who meets in Switzerland the enchanting and enigmatic Miss Daisy Miller. Winterbourne is fasinated by this beautiful - to some shallow and vulgar; to others innocent and fresh - young American woman, but he cannot decide if she is a "flirt" or a "nice" girl"

And that's about all there is, since we're not taken any closer to any of the characters.

Miss Daisy is as enigmatic as anyone we might see while passing through a hotel lobby.

This novella is only concerned with a social milieu: status-conscious wealthy Americans living in Europe -- and though the story is only 72 pages - I'm not sure it's worth even that.

Or, if we are to make something of the heroine as that "child of nature and freedom" which James mentions in his introduction, it is only as a fantasy of a morbidly lonely man's imagination.



Though Azar makes more of it:

"Daisy and Catherine (from "Washington Square") have little in common, yet both defy the conventions of their time, both refuse to be dictated to"

and

"from the very first moment she appears with her parasol and her white muslin dress, Daisy creates some excitement, and some unrest in Winterbourne's heart and mind. She presents herself to him as a puzzle, a dazzling mystery at once too difficult and too easy to solve"

Though, I don't think there's much of a mystery here.

These are just people with plenty of time on their hands and nothing else to do other than flirt or gossip about those who do. The attractions of the old world (the castle in Switzerland, the colloseum in Rome) are just backdrops for ennui.

And when Azar condemns Mr. Giovanelli as "an unscrupulous Italian who follows her everywhere to the chagrin of her correct countrymen", she's attributing far too much to a phantom, since the reader has not been taken inside that relationship.

She's bought into the reactionary attitude of Winterbourne & Co. -- which is only natural since the author has shown everything through their eyes -- or more accurately -- through their suspicions.

But I want to hear more about Daisy!

And I wish James hadn't executed her so summarily.

She was apparently a high-spirited, though un-educated girl -- with the many opportunities that wealth could offer her.

And she seemed to be following the wise course of hanging out with Romans while in Rome -- in order to learn something about the world beyond Schenectady.