"I have lived too long in foreign parts"

Wilted Daisy

These words are spoken by Winterbourne at the novella’s close, and he is correct. He has become a settler, not a traveler, and throughout the work he is constantly preoccupied with what the native customs and expectations are while his subconscious is continually drawn to the one character in the book who pays no heed to them – Daisy Miller.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Henry James’ novella Daisy Miller, the title character (for she cannot be concretely identified as the protagonist in this piece) “is the victim of a ‘social rumpus’ that goes on either over her head or beneath her notice.”

Hers is a willful ignorance if anything, and she seems at various stages of the short work to take great pleasure from causing a stir. Whether it is through lonely rides across the lake with Winterbourne or through her association with the lowborn Giovanelli, Daisy is aware that she is flaunting her false naivety to both her American roots and the European society that she is so eager to be a part of. In the end this proves fatal to her.

Perhaps it is this purposeful ignorance of how to act that makes Daisy the true traveler here, for she is one who is interested in the cultures that she views without allowing herself to become fully immersed in them and settle down (which a true engagement to Giovanelli would indicate) or to simply breeze by the land without coming into contact with the area, as fitting the tourist.

Whether either would be more beneficial to Daisy is beyond the point, for she doesn’t achieve a balance that results in her living past the novella’s end. Also a moot point is whether or not Daisy should be identified with or simply identified as a coquette, which she admits to being near the end of the book.

A better use of time would be to study Winterbourne’s frame of context as what is effectively an expat, our to examine his aunt’s circle of society as the kind of high-class tourist who tries perhaps too hard to become one with the land.

There is even plenty of subtext to be found in Randolph’s jingoistic exclamations during his first conversation with Winterbourne. Just leave Daisy to wilt as all pretty, purposeless flowers do.