Category: Spring 2017

Class dynamic (and their relative morality) is a central theme in both Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre, yet these two texts display this theme differently. Dickens focuses his novel on the oppression of one group (working class) by another (the aristocracy) leads to revolution and the creation of an indiscriminate legal system. The working class characters such as Mr. Cruncher and the Mr. and Madam Defarge are less adherent to moralistic customs. Mr. Cruncher doesn’t approve of his wife praying and he is a body snatcher. The Defarge’s are planning a social coup, in which Madam Defarge is arguably the main organizer and after they succeed they are chief coordinators in the death of many individuals (the guard who gets his head cut off and the attempted execution of Charles Darnay, for example). The middle class individuals: Lucy, Charles Darnay, Miss Pross, Sydney Carton, and Mr. Lorry, are portrayed as socially upright. Miss Pross is a doting mother figure to Lucy. Lucy is the daughter-wife-mother trifecta of womanhood. Charles Darnay, Mr. Lorry, and Dr. Manette are all hard working business men who attempt to provide for the women (particularly Lucy). (I don’t mention the Marquis because he is an aristocrat and is likely shaped by growing negative sentiments towards the aristocracy.)

On the other hand, Brönte uses a first person “boundary” character (someone who straddles the class line due to particular socio-economic circumstances) in order to express the outright and subtle disregard for governesses (Poovey, 126). The moral interaction of class that is fairly well delineated in Dickens is undone in Jane Eyre. Jane is a moral character, one who does not tell lies, learns to be religiously minded thanks to her friend Helen, and is diligent in her work (if she is to be believed as a first person narrator, which is always questionable). While Jane is supposed to be of the middle class, many (upper) middle class characters such as Mrs. Reed, Mr. Brocklhurst, and Lady Ingram show disdain towards her. Her moral character seems to align with a middle class ideology. However, Jane is not fully within the middle or working class causing her to fall into a limbo from which (no matter her actual moral character) cannot fulfill middle or working class moral ideologies.

Some of the reasons this stark contrast may exist between Brönte’s portrayal and Dickens’ work is their biography. Dickens’ is more directly concerned with the notion of revolution and legal changes because he was a legal clerk, and Brönte is more concerned with the status of governesses because she was one. Another difference could be temporal. These two novels were written ten years apart. I have not yet decided on how these two depictions of class (and their appended morality) should be read but there is a question raised by the similarities and differences between these representations.

‘I am afraid your habits are those of a flirt,’ said Winterbourne gravely.

‘Of course they are,’ she cried, giving him her little smiling stare again. ‘I’m a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not? But I suppose you will tell me now that I am not a nice girl.’

One of the quotations I found striking in Daisy Miller was Daisy’s announcement: “I’m a fearful, frightful flirt!” While the other characters in the novel try to define themselves by their position and actions in society, Daisy definitively identifies herself as a “flirt.” She places herself outside of the upper class society norms that she enters into whilst in Europe. In a novel that otherwise avoids concretely labeling its characters, Daisy declares her identity with a level of self-awareness far more developed than any other character.

In contrast to Daisy stands Mr. Winterbourne. Although Daisy is ready and able to identify herself as a “flirt,” Mr. Winterbourne can only state his emotional reaction: “I am afraid your habits are those of a flirt.” He cannot tell directly her she is a flirt, only that he fears that she is. Further, after he states that he is afraid of her flirtatious habits, he contradicts himself in stating that he does not mind her flirtatious nature, if she directs it towards him: “I wish you would flirt with me, and me only” (James 49). Throughout the novel Mr. Winterbourne is constantly contradicting himself and his identity. For example, the narrator makes a claim that “he [Mr. Winterbourne] should never be afraid of Daisy Miller,” and yet his aunt blatantly tells him that he is “very much pre-occupied” because of Daisy (52).

On the other hand, Daisy does not suffer from this identity crisis. She demonstrates that she understands not only herself extraordinarily well, but also the two different societies she and Mr. Winterbourne come from. After disarming Mr. Winterbourne by her frankness regarding her character, she addresses the difference in what both she and Mr. Winterbourne consider to be a “nice girl.” For Daisy, being a “nice girl” in New York can also include spending copious amounts of time with gentlemen, such as attending “seventeen dinners […] three of them were by gentlemen” (11). She is free to be a flirt in her usual habitat, and even if it is to to the extent of being “fearful” and “frightful,” it is still possible that society considers her a nice girl. However, she also realizes that Mr. Winterbourne does not consider her a nice girl. For Mr. Winterbourne, a nice girl includes someone who does spend so much alone time with a single man. David Lodge writes that the “unspoken reason for this rule was to guarantee the woman’s virginity when she married” (xviii). Mr. Winterbourne’s upper-class society expects women to live a sheltered and covered existence.

Therefore, Daisy goes against this expectation quite strongly, even in her own name. She is a flower like the flower she is named after. She is meant to be seen and appreciated; this is a fact which she accepts and acknowledges.

Why is Daisy Miller a flirt?  Her tendency toward romantic levity and playfulness could be considered a part of her personality, but it seems to hint toward a complex and troubled childhood past.  Daisy Miller is unable to “grow up” in her society and act her age.  Daisy Miller’s age and maturity is framed for us right away—just before she is introduced to the reader, Mr. Winterbourne thinks of his own infancy (James 6).  Henry James’ language draws a focus toward age, as Daisy Miller is frequently referred to as the “young girl” and Randalph is dubbed a “vivacious infant” (6).  The youth and maturity of Daisy is a strong underlying theme.

To understood how past childhood experiences affect adulthood, let us turn to Sigmund Freud.   In Freud’s Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through, he states that: “There is one special class of experiences of the utmost importance for which no memory can as a rule be recovered.  There are experiences which occurred in very early childhood and were not understood at the time but which were subsequently understood and interpreted” (James 149).  It seems that Daisy has come to recall past traumatic childhood experiences, and this is the source for her childish tendencies.  She feels victimized by past occurrences in her life, and we see this with Daisy’s strained relationship with her overprotective mother, Mrs. Miller.  When Mr. Winterbourne and Daisy are out walking, Daisy tells him that her mother disapproves of her out walking with gentlemen, but she decides to do so anyway.  She tells him that their walk: “’isn’t for me; it’s for you—that is, it’s for her. Well; I don’t know who it’s for!  My mother doesn’t like any of my gentleman friends. . . . But I do introduce them – almost always.  If I didn’t introduce my gentleman friends to mother,’ the young girl added, in her little soft, flat monotone ‘I shouldn’t think it was natural’” (James 22).  Here we see the inner conflict in Daisy Miller between her and her mother.  She wants to rebel against her mother’s constraints, but she also feels she must conform with the norms of her society.  In this sense, Daisy Miller feels trapped in her own childlike self that her mother has constructed for her, but unable to rise above her society to escape it.

In Peter Brooks’ article “Reading the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative,” he argues “our lives are ceaselessly intertwined with narrative, with the stories that we tell and hear told… We live immersed in narrative, recounting and reassessing the meaning of our past actions…” (Brooks, 3).

In Henry James’ novella, Daisy Miller, narration plays an important role. Whereas in A Tale of Two Cities, the story is told by an all-knowing third-person narrator, in Daisy Miller, the story is told in third-person (objective), with bits and pieces of first-person narration. However, what I am really interested in are those moments of first-person perspective. Let’s take a look.

In the second paragraph of the novella, readers hear from, presumably, the narrator: “I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the ‘Trois Couronnes,’ looking about him, rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned” (James, 4).

In this paragraph, we hear from a first-person narrator (perhaps Winterbourne or maybe not, as this passage seems to indicate that it is someone else) who speaks very casually, relaying the story of an event that took place years prior. However, something in the tone of the narrator’s voice suggests that we are not hearing this story as fact, but, rather, as hear-say that was picked up on the street. For instance, he is swift to point out that he “hardly [knows],” and that this event could have occurred “two or three years ago,” although no exact time is given. Much like the rest of the novel, the second paragraph helps to set an ambiguous tone. Should we believe what we are about to hear?

As a result, the novella is marked by subjectivity. Even though the story seems to focus on Daisy, we hardly know anything about the narrator, who is just as much involved in the course of events as Daisy (or so it seems). Therefore, is it safe to say that we can trust his/her judgement? After all, we never really hear about Daisy from anyone else – we only hear about her through the details that the narrator relates.

This begs the question, why did Henry James choose to write his story in such an ambiguous manner? Why not tell the story the same way that Charles Dickens chose to in A Tale of Two Cities (third-person omniscient)? When you take into account a common theme from the book – that is, the concept of Americans abroad – it becomes more apparent why James chose a third-person method of storytelling that is not all-knowing. By writing from the perspective of an observer (which is what it seems), he is trying to show the incompatibility of American values and British tradition (an American living in Europe).

Winterbourne may be an American, but he has lived most of his life in Switzerland, so one could argue that his actions and mentality have been “Europeanized.” Therefore, I will treat him as though he is European. From the beginning, Daisy’s attitude is considered wrong in the eyes of others, as her mannerisms conflict with the morals of European culture. For instance, Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne’s aunt, exclaims that Daisy Miller is a “dreadful girl” because she agrees to go on a trip with Winterbourne after only knowing him for half an hour (James, 19). Meanwhile, in chapter 4 at St. Peters, “a dozen of the American colonists in Rome came to talk to Mrs. Costello…” telling her that “poor little Miss Miller’s going really too far” (James, 54) because of her relationship with Mr. Giovanelli. Even these Americans have begun to understood the nature of European culture.

In these two scenes – of which others exist – Daisy is put into an unfavorable light, and much of that is achieved through the narration: that is, characters engaging in gossip about Daisy. However, what makes this interesting is that we really know nothing about any of the characters in which we are dealing. Therefore, it is difficult to accept any of these characters’ accounts as truth. Even more interesting, we do not really know if any of these characters are saying anything negative about Daisy – this is just what the narrator is saying. Nevertheless, maybe James wrote his story in this way to prove the stereotype surrounding Europeans’ views on Americans abroad – to show how Europeans feel about American traveling from the progressive New World to the proper, old-fashioned Old World?

In all, I think James is pointing at something important through his narration – something that we can apply to our lives today. While it may appear normal to take someone else’s word about another person, it is important to question how information is shared, and also the ways in which we process that same information. Because if we do not, we merely become engaged in the gossip ourselves, much like the characters are in Daisy Miller (or at least that’s what the narrator says).

Henry James’ novel Daisy Miller is hard for a reader to grasp at first. Not, in the usual way with 19^th century novels, because it is over packed with plot and characters, drama and metaphors, but because on the onset this novel seems incredibly simple, even dull. It is true, that not much happens. Mr. Winterbourne visits his aunt, meets Daisy Miller and her family, falls for her, goes to visit her in Rome where she has found a new object of attention and this ultimately brings about her demise. The story is short, tragic, but ultimately leaves no real mark on the reader because no one really likes Daisy anyway. Having just finished the book I myself am still trying to dig for meaning in it all, because I refuse to believe that the novel is what it appears on the outside.

Thus finishing the novel, and after reading of Daisy’s death, I remembered the scene towards the beginning of the end of the story when Daisy and Winterbourne have just left Mrs. Walker’s house and Daisy is causing a scandal, as usual, in her intent to meet and accompany Mr. Giovanelli by herself. Suddenly, Mrs. Walker storms through in her carriage in an attempt to save Daisy from herself, and in speaking with Mr. Winterbourne describes the girl as “very reckless” but more importantly to the later events of the novel, says of this recklessness “and goodness knows how far- left to itself- it may go.”  This is not simply a, now, obvious foreshadowing of Daisy’s death, but a concrete fact. The way Daisy behaves is dangerous and inappropriate, but the reason she acts like this is because of her mother. Mrs. Walker touches on this fact also when she says “’Did you ever’, she proceeded to inquire, ‘see anything so blatantly imbecile as the mother?’” and then goes on to describe how she herself couldn’t sit around and let Daisy make such mistakes without attempting to stop her. Here in this scene, this acquaintance of Daisy, acts more in a motherly way than Daisy’s real mother does through the entire novel. It is true that occasionally Mrs. Miller will almost attempt to persuade Daisy to not do something, however in the end Daisy always does just what she likes. This is because Mrs. Miller is weak willed and lazy, and her character has effected Daisy’s own more than either of them could know.

Throughout Henry James’ Daisy Miller, the character of Daisy Miller is constantly referred to as beautiful by the men she entices. The main character, and arguably the narrator, Mr. Winterbourne struggles to decide whether her appeal, besides her beauty, comes from her free-spiritedness, innocence, or her foreign ignorance. However, the expression of Daisy’s beauty is always followed by the expression of her innocence. Moreover, her innocence is always noted by the men besotted by her, but never by the men would have been rejected by her in some way. Nevertheless, despite his alternating opinions of Daisy, her beauty remains, and in the end of the short novel Daisy’s other suitor, Mr. Giovanelli, also refers to her as “the most beautiful young lady I [he] ever saw” (82).

Looking at this, the repetition of beauty and innocence, from a Freudian lens, it is obvious that Daisy has nothing more to her than physical appeal. Moreover, her beauty and “innocence” is a façade to hide her conceit and agitating ways. In truth, Daisy is an ignorant foreigner, travelling through some of the world’s most beautiful countries, and is arguably unphased by her surroundings. Instead she remains fixated on the attention she receives from her male suitors, disregarding the custom of women to remain passive to men’s opinions.

Daisy’s perceived beauty and “innocence” from the young men who interact with her, says more about them than her. Daisy is obviously unintelligent and manipulative, but still the desire to have her remains high amongst single men. This either means that men are easily enticed by foreign objects, for that is essentially how she is treated, as an object, or, that her beauty, and lack of personality, mimics the lack of plot in the book. I would argue the latter. Like Peter Brooks states, plot is essential in understanding the novel, yet this novel does not seem to have any plot whatsoever. Thus, it is impossible to find the intention of Henry James, for he does not give much to analyze. Though I could analyze the repetition of the words beautiful and innocent, there is not much more to the character of Daisy Miller besides those words, so thus is impossible to analyze this novel under Freud’s or Brooks’ argument. Instead this novel just reasserts gender roles, as the male protagonist is a deep thinker trying to explore the different layers of the main, female character. However, the female character is one dimensional and manipulative, so regarding her layers, there is nothing more than her physical beauty.

When Winterbourne first meets Daisy Miller, he is immediately awestruck by her beauty and passive yet “flirtatious” nature. Speaking generally, what stood out to me is how quickly Winterbourne was willing to drop everything and tell his aunt how he wanted to run away with Daisy—all of which he seemed to want based on seeing her. On an analytical level, this suggests his physical infatuation with her is what is driving the relationship. This is shown throughout the novel, beginning with some of their first interactions. Upon meeting Daisy, Winterbourne is constantly mentioning how she is an American woman, and how physically attractive he believes American women to be. how he has never been with an American woman before. Winterbourne remarks “Never indeed, since he had grown old enough to appreciate things, had he encountered a young American girl of so pronounced a type as this. Certainly she was very charming; but deucedly sociable! Was she simply a pretty girl […] or was she also a designing, an audacious, an unscrupulous young person? Winterbourne had lost his instinct in this matter, and his reason could not help him. […] But this young girl was not a coquette in that sense; she was very unsophisticated; she was only a pretty American flirt.” (12) In this passage, he seems to be acknowledging that yes, she’s American, and yes, she’s pretty—however, besides those two things, she doesn’t have very many redeeming qualities. He calls her “unsophisticated” and notes how she only seems to have her flirtatious nature going for her. Instead of seeking out qualities that one would typically look for in a mate, Winterbourne doesn’t seem to care that in his eyes, all Daisy has going for her is her physicality.

Daisy’s allure as a beautiful, American woman is what seems to get her further in her relationship with Winterbourne, which is noticeable when they are on the boat to Chillon. It is said that “She was apparently not at all excited; she was not fluttered; she avoided neither his eyes nor those of any one else. […] People continued to look at her a great deal, and Winterbourne took much satisfaction in his pretty companion’s distinguished air. […] He quite forgot his fears, he sat smiling, with his eyes upon her face.” (28) This passage shows how Winterbourne is wanting to be with Daisy because of the image she gives off to others—he relishes in the appeal of his female companion, taking pride in how others are looking at her and must be jealous of how he has such a beautiful woman. Daisy’s lack of an emotional connection with Winterbourne is forgotten whenever he looks at her, because it is her face that shapes their relationship, or rather, lack thereof.

Some of the language that is used to describe Daisy not only in these two passages, but throughout the entire book is “flirtatious” or “coquette.” I find this language to be ironic, considering her way of flirting usually takes the form of avoiding Winterbourne and ignoring what he has to say. These words to describe her are perhaps an illusion of Winterbourne’s and correspond to the image that he has created in his head of her based strictly based on assumption and observation. He seems to be in lust with an idealized version of Daisy, rather than the “real” Daisy who lacks substance.

“…narratology has in practice been too exclusively concerned with the identification of minimal narrative units and paradigmatic structures; it has too much neglected the temporal dynamics that shape narratives in our reading of them, the play of desire in time that makes us turn pages and strive towards narrative ends.”

This particular quote from Brooks’ article about reading for plot has really stuck with me ever since I read it while we were discussing the piece in class. Admittedly, it first only did so because I was really confused as to what it was actually trying to tell me (academia is truly in love with big, complicated words). The more I read it, the more I started to get the impression that this was what it was trying to say: people who are too focused on narrative structures when they read, often search for both minute details and grand symbolic imagery alike, and rely on a steady advancement of the narrative to maintain their interest in the plot; whereas those who read purely for plot are satisfied simply with the knowledge that the plot will, eventually, advance, and that’s what keeps them turning the pages. Now, I could be completely and totally wrong, but that’s just the way I see it.

And honestly? Brooks has a point, and that’s probably why nobody in this day and age is really capable of successfully reading authors like Henry James. All of the books and short stories and music videos and movies–basically just anything with a narrative plot–that we’re exposed to these days have plenty of those minute narrative details and grand symbolic imagery to keep us satiated as we drift from plot point to plot point. Authors like Henry James, however, as well as other classical authors like James Joyce or Herman Melville seem to write specifically for readers who are capable of seeing the big picture when going into a story–those who stay interested in the story just because the story interests them.

The phrase “reading for plot”, then, takes on a new meaning with authors like James because when the plot is a summary of what’s happening, and in cases like Daisy Miller, you’re quite literally reading just to find out what happens. There’s no minute plot details that all tie together in some big, flashy reveal at the end, like so many modern fantasy novels. There’s no fateful intertwining of multiple lives that culminate in a huge climactic moment like in A Tale of Two Cities. It’s just a story that happens, in the lives of the characters that James has created, and if you want to read Henry James you have to be okay with that.

In all likelihood, that’s probably the reason why many people nowadays have such difficulty reading Henry James “for the plot” (as Brooks, more or less, says so himself). It’s because James doesn’t write the kinds of plots we’re used to. He doesn’t write the sort of heart-pounding, page-turning, can’t-put-it-down-because-you-have-to-know-what-happens-next plots. In the case of Daisy Miller, and a few of his other stories as well, he’s content with writing a simple slice-of-life plot that has no overall symbolic meaning beyond the story itself. It’s just a nice little story about Winterbourne and his romantic misadventures with Daisy. Nothing more, nothing less. And there’s nothing wrong with us for possibly not being able to enjoy that; it’s simply just not what we’re used to.

(And, to be clear, I hated reading this as much as the next guy, because I, too, want a more solid plot in my writing.)

Daisy Miller contains a variety of moments in which the texts seems torn about how Daisy should be received. Peter Brooks mentioned in his article, “Reading for the Plot” that “Plot is the principle of interconnectedness and intention which we cannot do without […] even such loosely articulated forms as the picaresque novel display devices of interconnectedness, structural repetitions that allow us to construct a whole.” His notion of structural repetition is an interesting lens through which to examine the repetitive structure of Daisy Miller and inquire as to why these structures might exist.

Daisy Miller contains a “bookend” scene structure, scenes that are nearly identical that appear at both the beginning and end of the novel. The novel begins with “[Winterbourne] was some seven-and-twenty years of age; when his friends spoke of him, they usually said that he was at Geneva ‘studying’. When his enemies spoke of him they said- but after all, he had no enemies […] What I should say is, simply, that when certain people spoke of him they affirmed that the reason of his spending so much time at Geneva was that he was extremely devoted to a lady who lived there- a foreign lady- a person older than himself” (James, 3). At the end of the novel a similar description is repeated: “Nevertheless, [Winterbourne] went back to Geneva, whence there continued to come the most contradictory accounts of his motives of sojourn: a report that he was ‘studying’ hard- an intimation that he is much interested in a very clever foreign lady” (64). The scene is phrased like contradictory gossip, similar to the gossip or doubt surrounding Daisy throughout the novel. It might be crazy, but what if the story’s presentation of Daisy Miller is a direct reflection of the story’s supposed narrator, Frederick Winterbourne?

The way this book seems to gossip about Winterbourne at the beginning and end remind me of the way Winterbourne considers Daisy. The terms he uses are contradictory, both unflattering and flattering. “She was very quiet, she sat in a charming tranquil attitude; but her lips and eyes were constantly moving” or “ He felt sorry for her- not exactly that he believed that she and completely lost her head, but because it was painful to hear so much that was pretty and undefended and natural assigned to a vulgar place among the categories of disorder” are two examples of contradictory descriptions that are assigned to Daisy (11, 54). The contradiction remains a similarity between the two characters until Winterbourne decides that he no longer cares what is true about Daisy: “A sudden illumination had been flashed upon the ambiguity of Daisy’s behaviour and the riddle had become easy to read. She was a young woman whom a gentleman need no longer be at pains to respect” (59-60). Winterbourne’s decision to stop respecting Daisy destroys the “protection” of contradiction surrounding her and exposes her to judgment. The judgment upon Daisy breaks her connection with Winterbourne that had existed through their similar contradictory presentation making her useless in the novel. No one (except an omniscient author) could pass judgment on Winterbourne in the same way he passed judgment on Daisy so he is forced to return to Geneva, a limbo between acceptance and rejection; a place of contradictory existence.