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.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary
In the charming resort town of Vevey, Switzerland, Winterbourne,
a young American expatriate visiting his aunt, meets Daisy Miller,
a pretty American girl, and her younger brother, Randolph. Winterbourne,
who has lived in Geneva most of his life, is both charmed and mystified
by Daisy, who seems to him wonderfully spontaneous, if a little
unrefined.
Winterbourne has never heard of a well-brought-up young
lady carrying on in this way. Daisy chats freely about herself and
her personal life and boasts about her abundance of “gentlemen friends.”
He feels he has lived so long in Europe that he has lost any sense
of the way Americans express themselves. He wonders if all girls
from the state of New York are like this or whether Daisy is a calculating
seductress, trying to lure him into an act of impropriety that might
obligate him to marry her. However, she seems too unsophisticated
to have designs on him. He decides she is simply a harmless American
flirt and feels relieved to have hit on a way of categorizing her.
Before long, Daisy announces her desire to visit a local
tourist attraction, the famous Chillon Castle, across Lake Geneva,
and Winterbourne finds himself in the shocking but rather pleasant
position of being expected to take her there, alone and unchaperoned.
He is still more shocked when the Millers’ courier, Eugenio, arrives
to call the young Millers in to lunch. Daisy addresses Eugenio as
an equal and informs him of her plan to go to Chillon with Winterbourne.
Eugenio responds in a tone of ironic disapproval that
Winterbourne finds impertinent. He also gives Winterbourne a knowing
look that seems to imply that Daisy is in the habit of picking up
strange men. As a guarantee of his honorable intentions and general
respectability, though more for the benefit of the courier than for
Daisy, who seems to have no idea what is going on, Winterbourne
promises to introduce Daisy to his aunt.
Analysis
The narrator of Daisy Miller presents
the events as “true”—that is, the narrator tells us the events took
place “three or four years ago” to a young man, Winterbourne, with
whom the narrator does not claim to be intimately associated but
about whom there are many stories. The device of the distant, first-person
narrator who knows but is not knowledgeable, who is interested but
not involved, has the effect of setting the whole story up within
the framework of a piece of gossip. This strategy is ironic, since
the story itself is about gossip: the things one hears about people,
the assumptions one makes about them based on the things one hears,
and the difficulty of judging character based on the stories one
hears.
As often happens in the work of Henry James, a number
of the novel’s primary themes are established in the opening paragraph,
which offers contrasts between old and young, history and novelty,
movement and stillness, and American vibrancy and European dignity.
The narrator tells us that the selection of hotels that line the
lakefront include many different kinds of establishments, from the
“grand” hotels “of the newest fashion” to the older boardinghouse-style
pensions. The narrator tells us that the Trois Couronnes, the particular
hotel in whose garden Winterbourne is sitting, is one of the “classical”
variety, distinguished from its “upstart neighbors” by an air of
“maturity.” Vevey is filled with American tourists, “stylish young
girls” who flit to and fro bringing with them “a rustle of muslin
flounces, a rattle of dance music” in the stillness of morning.
Set against these vivid images are the European elements, the quiet
German waiters who have the bearing and gravity of state officials;
the sedate Russian princesses; and the well-behaved little Polish
boys whose “governors,” nannies and tutors, accompany them wherever
they go. These observations set the stage for the conflicts Daisy
and Winterbourne will encounter between American and European values
and social expectations.
