"Daisy Miller," or "It's All About Me"

One can wonder, when reading classic fiction, how relevant a work is to contemporary life.

Henry James, an American author who lived and worked mostly abroad, wrote the novella "Daisy Miller" in 1877-78. Highly controversial in America, where many readers were scandalized by his description of the behavior in Europe of a young American girl coming of age, the story, more than anything he had previously written, put him on the literary map.




The novella is notable in several respects: the depiction of Daisy as a free-spirited young woman scornful of restrictive conventions foreshadows James' most well-known heroine, Isabel Archer, in "Portrait of a Lady," published in 1881.  And the novella's male protagonist, known only as Winterbourne in the original edition, prefigures Chad Newsome in "The Ambassadors," published in 1990.  Both are depicted as young American men living in Europe who are involved with older European women.

"Daisy Miller" is essentially a novella of manners, exploring differences in behavior and values between Americans and Europeans, of certain social classes, and between the young and the old.

But, one can argue, it is also a depiction of a type known all too well in contemporary society: a person who views life as "all about me."

Daisy, an attractive and appealing young woman in many respects, exhibits during the course of the story no interest in any other person except for how that person relates to her. And she is quick to take offense if events proceed on a basis other than the manner in which she thinks they should go.  Other people's values, good or bad, count for nothing as far as she is concerned and not unexpectedly, she refuses to take advice from anyone.  In the end, that shortcoming leads to her untimely death from malaria, then a risk in certain parts of Rome when mosquitoes from near-by swamps ventured out at night.

Accused of putting her in danger by allowing her to visit the Colosseum one evening, Daisy's then constant companion, an Italian named Giovanelli, responds: "I told the Signorina it was a grave indiscretion, but when was the Signorina ever prudent?"

Readers. by that time, will be in agreement: she never was. Her excuse?  She was fundamentally an innocent, we are told.

Are there any Daisy Millers around today?  Well, not in ruffled, beribboned white muslin dresses, but in other respects, very much so.