LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Student Presentation on Reading Selections 2006

Monday 13 November: Henry James, N 1498-1539 (Daisy Miller: A Study)

selection reader / discussion leader: Sharon Lockett

Text-Objective Discussion for Daisy Miller

Review of course objectives:

Objective 1a.  Romantic Spirit or Ideology

• To identify and criticize ideas and 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.

• The Romantic impulse may be a simple as a desire for anything besides "the here and now"--or "reality"; thus the quest or journey of the romance narrative involves crossing physical borders or transgressing social or psychological boundaries in order to attain or regain some transcendent goal or dream.

• A Romantic hero or heroine may appear empty or innocent of anything except readiness or desire to transform or self-invent.

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."

Elements of Realism:

• Characters are presented as believable and real
• Events and scenarios are plausible.  Realistic novels avoid the sensational and dramatic 
• Complex ethical choices often the focus
• Relationships between people and society emphasized/social class important 
• Realistic details presented 
• Purpose is to instruct and entertain

Source: NCTE

Quotes from Daisy Miller:

p. 1516--four lines down from middle of big paragraph

"She came tripping downstairs, buttoning her long gloves, squeezing her folded parasol against her pretty figure, dressed in the perfection of a soberly elegant traveling-costume. 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. He passed out with her among all the idle people that were assembled there; they were all looking at her very hard . . . ."

p. 1524--nine lines up from bottom

"It was impossible to regard her as a perfectly well-conducted young lady; she was wanting in a certain indispensable delicacy.  It would therefore simplify matters greatly to be able to treat her as the object of one of those sentiments which are called by romancers "lawless passions." That she should seem to wish to get rid of him would help him think more lightly of her, and to be able to think more lightly of her would make her much less perplexing. But Daisy, on this occasion, continued to present herself as an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence."

p. 1533--six lines up from bottom

"Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned towards her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all . . . he believed that she carried about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produced. He asked himself whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness of innocence or from her being, essentially, a young person of the reckless class."

p. 1536--just below middle of page

"What a clever little reprobate she was, and how smartly she played an injured innocence!  But he wouldn't cut her . . . Winterbourne had now begun to think simply of the craziness, from a sanitary point of view, of a delicate young girl lounging away the evening in this nest of malaria."

p. 1538--middle and bottom

"A week after this, the poor girl died; it had been a terrible case of the fever. Daisy's grave was in the little Protestant cemetery, in an angle of the wall of imperial Rome, beneath the cypresses and the thick spring-flowers. Winterbourne stood there beside it, with a number of other mourners; a number larger than the scandal excited by the young lady's career would have led you to expect . . . he stood staring at the raw protuberance among the April daisies . . . ."

Discussion Questions:

1.  Winterbourne often refers to Daisy as "innocent." How does Daisy compare to other innocent women we've read about, such as Charlotte Temple or Alice Munro?  Does she fit into the category of "helpless women needing a savior"?  Can she be "saved"?

2.  Is Daisy a romantic heroine? Why or why not? Can we trace her path to transcendence? What other aspects of Daisy Miller exemplify Romanticism?

3.  What elements of "post-Romanticism" or "Realism" do we see in Daisy Miller?

4.  How do natural elements figure into the storyline? Is nature seen as a Romantic feature?