Innocence in Daisy Miller :: Henry James, Daisy Miller

The story of Daisy Miller, by Henry James, is told by a male narrator. This male figure serves to reveal the deep seated stasis in much social interaction which existed in the Nineteenth Century. Winterbourne is the protagonist and 'filters' through his impressions of the heroine Daisy Miller so that we never see Daisy except through the qualifying prose of Winterbourne himself. Thus by the end of the tale, we feel we have not met Daisy at all. We have only caught glimpses of this transient 'flower' almost in spite of the suffocating prevarications of Winterbourne's 'frozen' eye! We feel thwarted by the elusiveness of this heroine! "Poor Winterbourne was amused, perplexed, and decidedly charmed. He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain laxity of deportment. 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. Never, indeed, since he had grown old enough to appreciate things, had he encountered a young American girl of so pronounced a type as this. Certainly she was very charming; but how deucedly sociable! Was she simply a pretty girl from New York State- were they all like that, the pretty girls who had a good deal of gentlemen's society? Or was she also a designing, an audacious, an unscrupulous young person? Winterbourne had lost his instinct in this matter, and his reason could not help him. Miss D aisy Miller looked extremely innocent. 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. He had never, as yet, had any relations with young ladies of this category. He had known, here in Europe, two or three women- persons older than Miss Daisy Miller, and provided, for respectability's sake, with husbands- who were great coquettes- dangerous, terrible women, with whom one's relations were liable to take a serious turn. But this young girl was not a coquette in that sense; she was very unsophisticated; she was only a pretty American flirt.