The Character Analysis of Daisy’s Life in Daisy Miller by Henry James
There are quite a few characters in this story, but for now lets mainly focus on Daisy Miller the main character. Daisy was an American girl, rich and beautiful. She came from uptown New York, but she started traveled Europe with her family. Her mom, Mrs. Miller and her brother Randolph. She wanted to get a better understanding of their culture and how their economy worked. She was having a hard time being okay with how Europe was functioning like they did in the “older days.” While Daisy was traveling around, she went to Rome for a little while and started getting involved with an older Italian man, Giovanelli. She would sneak out at night to spend more time with him. With her always sneaking out, she caught malaria and died. With getting more and more in-depth into the story, I started to realize that there were a lot of stages in the story. A lot of different things happened. There was the stage where Winterbourne was around Vevay, but he wasn’t very into her. Or he wasn’t very impressed with where they were hanging out. Then there was a time when Winterbourne has a dream about Daisy. The young, attractive, and vivacious American (page 196).
Then the bad stages start to come around. Once Daisy started dating the Italian guy, there was a lot of gossip. When Daisy heard about everything that everyone was saying, she got really frustrated and upset with everything. She was getting more and more upset with how her roads to the richer and higher places in the world kept getting blocked. At the same time that Daisy was upset with everything, Winterbourne was also upset with how she was acting. But as us, the readers could tell, this was the reason he was into her. He liked the way she would act.
Along with them both being frustrated, Winterbourne was having nightmares of Daisy marring her Italian so he was getting sad along with being frustrated which was also about Daisy. The last stage of the “bad” stages is the one where Daisy dies. This one effected everyone in the story. It effected Winterbourne because he was in love with her and finally realized that she was also in love with him. It effected The Italian because she got sick always sneaking out to go and see him, so he feels beyond guilty. When comparing Daisy Miller and Henry James, they were similar. In more ways than just one. The first way is that they were both from New York and were both pretty well known. They both also traveled England with their families. The author, James, and Miller were very similar. It’s almost as if, daisy Miller is just a representation of Henry James when he was growing up. Everything matches up. While Miller died from malaria, Henry James died from tuberculosis.
