American Romanticism
Student-led Text-Objective Discussion 2008

Thursday 13 November: Henry James, N 1491-1532 (Daisy Miller: A Study)

text-objective discussion leader: Katie Breaux

Daisy Miller: A Study

Henry James

Henry James (1843-1916)

Henry James was born into a wealthy family in New York City, and spent much of his youth traveling between Europe and America.  His father was an eccentric, independently wealthy philosopher and religious visionary, and his mother is said to have had an enormous influence on her five children.  He studied with tutors all over Europe and briefly attended Harvard Law School at the age of nineteen, but quickly discovered that he was more interested in literature.  After publishing his first short story two years later, James devoted himself to his craft.

Although born as an American, James felt that Britain was his “adopted country,” and became a legal British citizen after the shock of WWI.  Through his lifetime James wrote 20 novels, 112 short stories, 12 plays and several literary criticisms.  

James increasingly removed himself as the controlling narrator, and in essence became invisible in his work.  This emphasis on showing rather than telling heightened the opportunity for ambiguity.  The more an author withdraws—not telling what it said, not analyzing the characters responses and actions—the more the reader enters to process of creating meaning. 

Elements of Realism:

·         Characters are presented as believable and real.

·         Events and scenarios are plausible.

·         Avoids the sensational and dramatic.

·         Complex ethical choices are often the focus.

·         Relationships between people and society are emphasized, and social class is important.

·         Opts for depictions of everyday activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized presentation.

·         “Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence.” (A Handbook to Literature)

Review of course objectives:

Objective 1a: Romantic Spirit or Ideology

·         To identify and criticize ideas or attitudes associated with Romanticism, such as desire and loss, rebellion, nostalgia, idealism, the gothic, the sublime, the individual in nature or separate from the masses.

·         Romance narrative: A desire for anything besides “the here and now” or “reality,” the Romantic impulse, quest, or journey involves crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries in order to attain or regain some transcendent goal or dream.

Objective 1b: The Romantic Period

·         To speculate on residual elements in “post-Romantic” writings from later periods including “Realism and Local Color,” “Modernism,” and “Postmodernism.”

Objective 2e: Cultural Issues

·         American Romanticism exposes competing or complementary dimensions of the American identity: Is America a culture of sensory and material gratification or moral, spiritual, idealistic mission?

Excerpts from Daisy Miller

(1510)  “Winterbourne was a man of imagination and, as our ancestors used to say, of sensibility; as he looked at her dress and, on the great staircase, her little rapid, confiding step, he felt as if there were something romantic going forward.  He could have believed he was going to elope with her.” 

(1527)  “As I have already had occasion to relate, he was angry at finding himself reduced to chopping logic about this young lady; he was vexed at his want of instinctive certitudes as to how far her eccentricities were generic, national, and how far they were personal.  From either view of them he had somehow missed her, and now it was too late.  She was ‘carried away’ by Mr. Giovanelli.”

(1513)  “He had perhaps not definitely flattered himself that he had made an ineffaceable impression upon her heart, but he was annoyed at hearing of a state of affairs so little in harmony with an image that had lately flitted in and out of his meditations; the image of a very pretty girl looking out of an old Roman window and asking herself urgently when Mr. Winterbourne would arrive. 

(1512)  “It sounded very distinctly, at last, in her telling him she would stop ‘teasing’ him if he would promise her solemnly to come down to Rome in the winter… He declared that, at any rate, he would certainly come.  After this Daisy stopped teasing.  Winterbourne took a carriage and they drove back to Vevey in the dusk; the young girl was very quiet.”

(1500)  “He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion… And yet was he to accuse Miss Daisy Miller of actual or potential inconduite, as they said at Geneva?  He felt that he had lived at Geneva so long that he had lost a good deal; he had become dishabituated to the American tone… Some people had told him that, after all, American girls were exceedingly innocent; and others had told him that, after all, they were not.  He was inclined to think Miss Daisy Miller was a flirt—a pretty American flirt.”

Discussion Questions

1.    Do you think that Winterbourne is portrayed as a romantic hero, even if not a typical one? 

(Objective: A Romantic hero or heroine may appear empty or innocent of anything but readiness to change or yearning to re-invent the self or world--esp. the golden boy and fair lady; see also their counterparts, the dark lady and the Byronic hero)

1a.  How might James have portrayed Winterbourne differently if he had intended him to be a Romantic hero?
 

1b. How is or isn't Daisy herself a Romantic heroine?

1c. Is the Romance Narrative still operative? How is it varied by Realism?

(Romance narrative: A desire for anything besides “the here and now” or “reality,” the Romantic impulse, quest, or journey involves crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries in order to attain or regain some transcendent goal or dream.)

2.    Although Winterbourne seemed to have lost Daisy’s affections to Giovanelli, at the end of the story we are told that she sent him a note expressing that she would have appreciated his esteem.  Giovanelli also says that he is sure Daisy would not have married him.  What are the differences between and the significance of Daisy’s relationships with Winterbourne and Giovanelli?

3.    Throughout the story Winterbourne obsesses over whether or not Daisy is a “respectable” girl and her behavior never insists if she is or isn’t.  If we view Daisy as representative of America, what does they story say about Americans and their culture as compared with Europeans? 

T. S. Eliot on Henry James: "He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it."