Forgetting One’s Place

In Henry James’s Daisy Miller (1875), Winterbourne is an American ex-pat whose lived abroad in Europe for most of his life. He becomes fascinated with the eponymous character, an American tourist who refuses to assimilate into European cultural standards. As a result, she is judged by European society for her (lack of manners) perceived impropriety and coquettishness. By forgetting his own American origins, Winterbourne ignores Daisy’s individuality and “studies” her with a Eurocentric lens that reduces her into a caricature: a girl devoid of moral fortitude and reasoning, the product of their shared homeland. Winterbourne’s failure to recognize his American culture—to understand Daisy as her own person—alienates her and catalyzes her downfall.

Winterbourne’s European socialite aunt, Mrs. Costello, warns him against pursuing a “relationship” with Daisy because of her inappropriate (in a social-cultural context) comportment. She reminds Winterbourne is out of his depth since Daisy is an American girl: “You have lived too long out of the country. You will be sure to make some great mistake” (James, Project Gutenberg). Having inhabited Western Europe for so long, Winterbourne is not only tuned to the cultural standards and social hierarchies of places like Geneva and Rome, but detached from American society. He reserves judgement for Daisy based on her behavior in relation to their current environment, without making much of an attempt to understand where she’s coming from when she displays her affability towards suitors and resistance to the oppressiveness of European rules. Winterbourne’s mistake is that he misinterprets Daisy as being indifferent towards him—because she is friendly with other European men, or because she doesn’t listen to his “advice”—which comes off to her as him not sharing her romantic attraction.

In Remembering, Repetition and Working-Through (1924), Freud argues that “repetition is a transference of the forgotten past;” (Freud 151) the more one tries to forget their past experiences—the circumstances and actions relating to their origin—the more they are prone towards repeating those same actions (or drawn to semblances of such). Obsessed over this ‘pretty little American girl,’ Winterbourne constantly inspects the qualities of Daisy that are a product of her motherland from a Eurocentric lens. He reasons that “American women—the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom—were at one the most exacting in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness” (James, Project Gutenberg). This generalization contains gendered and nationalistic (pro-Europe, anti-American) biases. Winterbourne’s explains away Daisy’s ‘lack of proper morals or education’ as a result of her appearance, gender and nationality; to control her by showing her a ‘better way’ through European codes of conduct. In repressing his own ties to America, Winterbourne identifies his European environment as moral and correct. He associates Daisy’s impropriety with her Americanness. Unable to sympathize with her—to understand her behavior as okay, albeit in a different cultural context—he judges Daisy doing her own thing as much as his European peers do.

Rather than accepting that Daisy can be friends with male suitors, Winterbourne interprets Daisy and Giovanelli’s relationship as romantic. He critiques Daisy for being flirty and displays faux-indifference towards her. In turn, this communicates to Daisy that he doesn’t care about her, or does only if she follows his script. She rebels against his ‘rules’ and ends up dying from malaria after a reckless outing meant to spite him. Had Winterbourne made more of an attempt to reconnect with his American identity, he and Daisy might’ve reached a mutual understanding. Healthier communication could’ve resulted in a less tragic ending.