ABAW: Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller by Henry James, New York Edition, 1909

I picked up Daisy Miller because it’s used to frame a section of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. FCC disclosure: Henry James did not pay me to write this response or provide me with a free copy of the text because he’s been dead for almost a hundred years.

Daisy Miller is the story of two Americans who encounter one another in Europe, first in Switzerland, then in Italy. Winterbourne, a sober and well-mannered young man, has been living in Geneva for some time, supposedly studying, but rumored to be in love with a “foreign woman.” Daisy, a vivacious girl in her late teens, is traveling with her mother and young brother, while her father continues to run his business in the United States.

My first reaction to Daisy Miller was not positive. Interesting girl doesn’t play by social rules, girl dies, guy who liked her goes back to his empty routine unchanged. I’m still uncertain that anything or anyone actually changed in the story. There is something trivial about Daisy—the flower that blooms freely in springtime but suffers under the heat of summer and dies at winter’s touch. Winterbourne (bourne, borne, burn; ie intermittent Winter stream or Winter-Carried or Winter-Burned) likes Daisy very much, but after his initial crush seems unable to overcome her violations of convention. He can’t get over the fact that she is an outgoing and outrageous flirt. He throws off his feelings for her at the same time she contracts the disease that will claim her life (Roman Fever, which is just as much Flirting-With-Foreign-Men-In-Dark-Places Fever as it is Malaria).

The chief spark that keeps me thinking about Daisy Miller is Daisy’s unwillingness to be swayed by the oppressions of convention. Unlike her oblivious mother, Daisy notices the social slights and admonitions and the direct caution of Winterbourne (the flush of her cheek, the note to Winterbourne in which she says, “she would have appreciated [his] esteem”) but still behaves exactly as she wishes. She knows that her actions are innocent, and that is all that counts for her. Even faced with the real (and fulfilled) risk of contracting a dangerous illness (which suddenly and surprisingly alarms her Italian companion, but seems obvious to Winterbourne), she laughs. Until her death, Daisy defines herself FOR herself and lives according to her own whims and an internal set of conventions.

Bonus Extraneous Pondering: In my mind, Daisy Miller is also ripe for supernatural parody. Imagine Daisy as a Buffy-like vampire hunter, slaying demons across Europe under the supervision of a disenchanted expatriot, Winterbourne as Angel-like watcher or vamp, then dying or succumbing to vampirism in the Roman Coliseum. No? Ah well, it was worth the ponder.