Henry James

Henry James came from a remarkable New York City family: his father, an eccentric and independently wealthy man, undertook the education of all his children; his brother William would become one of America's most important philosophers; and his sister, Alice, was a perceptive diarist. In 1876 James moved to England, where he devoted himself to writing; his novels were often international in scope, exploring the comic or dramatic effects of an American in Europe or a European in America.

James wrote short stories, plays, essays, and many classic novels, including The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1878), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and The Ambassadors (1903). For decades firmly established as one of America's major literary figures, James is revered as a critic, as a subtle psychological realist, and as an unsurpassed stylist and craftsman.

Innovator of psychological realism “ The Art of Fiction ” : fiction=a serious art of form, an “ imitation of life, ” dealing with the truths of human existence (not a pastime or a game) “ the air of reality is the supreme virtue of a novel ” and a novelist aims to “ catch the color of life itself. ”

Point of view= “ center of consciousness ” (the limited point of view, presenting the story through the filter of a single character(Winterbourne in “ Daisy Miller ” (1879) he argues for characters of great sensitivity as his centers of consciousness, since the more they perceive of life the more the reader perceives.

International theme: clash between old European and the New American world Conflicts of moral values (the two worlds) American (innocence, inexperience, cultural ignorance) vs. European (moral relativism, sophistication, sense of tradition, knowledge of rich culture)

Daisy Miller Daisy Miller was first published in the June and July 1878 issues of the British magazine Cornhill. It was an instant success, transforming James into an author of international standing. The novel ’ s popularity almost certainly derived from the portrait at its center, of a na ï ve, overly self-confident, and rather vulgar American girl attempting to inhabit the rarified atmosphere of European high society.

The post–Civil War industrial boom had given rise to a new class of wealthy Americans for whom “the grand tour,” an extended trip through Europe, represented the pinnacle of social and financial success. As a result, Americans were visiting Europe for the first time in record numbers.

However, American manners differed greatly from European manners, and the Americans were largely ignorant of the customs of Europeans of comparable social status. Between these two groups lay a third: wealthy American expatriates whose strict observance of the Old World standards of propriety outdid even the Europeans.

Daisy Miller, fresh from the high society of Schenectady, New York, neither knows nor cares about local notions of propriety, and the conflict between her free-spirited foolishness and the society she offends is at the heart of the novel. Daisy Miller has been hailed as the first “ international novel, ” but it is also an early treatment of another theme that was to absorb James throughout his career: the phenomenon of the life unlived.

the protagonist, owing to some aspect of his or her own character, such as an unconscious fear or a lack of passion or feeling, lets some opportunity for happiness go by and realizes it too late. Winterbourne spends the entire novel trying to figure out Daisy. In fact, it has been argued that Daisy Miller isn ’ t really so much about Daisy herself as it is about Winterbourne ’ s wholesale failure to understand her.

The incongruity between reality and appearance The idea of subtext is a metaphor for the manner in which the European-American social circle in Europe misunderstands the true character of Daisy Miller. She is innocent and uncultured and incautious but the circle sees only the surface of her character and the actions that character takes.

They imagine a member of their social circle, thus someone with the experience and knowledge to understand and exaggerate the mores and codes of the European culture, acting in the way that Daisy Miller does. They do not take the time to look beneath this pretense to find that she is naturally innocent, acting on impulse instead of caution and convention. She rebels not by having a great knowledge of the rules which bind the society and consciously deciding to throw them out the window, but by being limited in her scope of experience and by refusing to change her natural ways in order to please a culture to which she does not belong.

The great theme of the disparity between reality and appearance is at its greatest strength in the relationship between Winterbourne and Daisy because of the conflict which roars inside of Winterbourne regarding the appearance he cannot overcome and the reality he cannot accept. He constantly asks himself, should she know better? Yet he does not realize that she does not know better and will ruin herself because of it.

Daisy Miller Her name symbolically represents the flower it mirrors, the daisy. The daisy is a typically commonplace flower known for its simple beauty and lack of pretense.H er last name Miller represents the trade of a miller and symbolizes how her father made his fortune in trade and is nouveau riche. This type of wealth would likely be looked down upon by the older wealthy from America and Europe. The disdain for his money will be witnessed in Winterbourne's aunt's reaction to the Miller family.