You're Only Immortal Til You're Dead

Chateau ChillonFor all the scandal about Daisy Miller, Henry James never lets us get inside her. All we have is speculation; the book is about gossip to the same degree as it is about travel and innocence. James leaves us no choice but to judge her by her actions instead of her motivations.

My judgment is that Daisy is not all that innocent. She just does what she wants. She is so wrapped up in her “society” in Rome that she only understands that aspect of the place she is in: her society and the pretty scenery. She is naïve to the point of stupidity. Why else would she linger at night in a festering bed of malaria? She says it’s beautiful. Then she dies.

Though Daisy is upset by the cold shoulders given her by the ladies from Geneva, they are bound up in a set of customs and rules that she finds oppressive. She won’t be told to stop what she’s doing because it’s not “proper”. I respect that disrespect. It shakes things up. Things should be shaken up. But it makes her more headstrong, and because she knows she is flouting the social rules of Rome, she thinks she can flout the physical ones. When she takes it too far is when she won’t even listen when what she’s doing is deadly. There was plenty of folklore about the Colosseum at night. What is innocent about her character is that she doesn’t think the danger is real, not for her.

What’s funny is Daisy’s death plays perfectly into the nattering of the old women of Geneva that she was locked in some kind of downward spiral, that her social conduct would ruin her. In a way it did.