Plot:
This short story serves as both a psychological description of the mind of a young woman, and an analysis of the traditional views of a society where she is a clear outsider. The hero Winterbourne traveled to Europe, and fell in love with the heroine Daisy. With the deepening of the relationship, Winterbourne listened to rumors, and saw Daisy with other men going to the casino at night, misunderstanding she was a frivolous woman. Unexpectedly, Daisy caught a fever and left a note to him when she died, expressing her loyal love. Winterbourne regretted it later.
Character:
Daisy Miller is the female Huck and a typical American girl who is innocent, spiritually independent and defiant against social conventions in Europe. True to herself, Daisy does not compromise with the stiff, sophisticated, corrupt and cruel European society. Her tragic significance is that the Old World and the New should be reconciled with an agreement.
Themes:
Two kinds of cultures and values are presented in this novel: The American innocence, purity and the European sophistication, corruption. Finally, the flower Daisy dies in the winter of the Old World and in Rome, the center of the European culture. Here James not only presents the confrontation but also points out the consequence resulting from the clashes between people with different cultural backgrounds. The novel turns out to be another story about American innocence defeated by the sophisticated and degrading, harsh traditional values of Europe. Both Winterbourne and Daisy Miller are Americans by birth, and both find themselves taking the opposite journey of the European explorers. But rather than discovering a “new,” unspoiled paradise, they encounter a society with rigid rules for social behavior, propriety, and attitudes
