Daisy Miller Analysis

Maybe you haven't been to/heard of Vevay (it's lovely this time of year!) but you certainly have some pretty strong associations with Rome. They say it wasn't built in a day, and the architectur...

Quick caveat: the narrator only breaks into the first person five tiny times in the whole book. Blink and you might miss it. Usually, when he does it, it's to imply something saucy. For example, at...

Realism is a genre that has been poo-pooed to no end. But its works are some of the most read and respected among classic literature. Go figure. The naturalist writer (naturalism is like realism on...

Spotted: Daisy Miller talking to Lonely Boy at the Trois Couronnes Garden. Is it love—or just a case of Vevay-induced boredom? Word on the street is they're slipping away to Chillon together this...

The Jamesian sentence is not as wildly complex here as it is in later James works like The Golden Bowl or The Wings of the Dove. But still, he throws down some doozies that it takes us a while to f...

Novels that simply bear the name of a woman (or girl) are kind of an 18th- and 19th-century English thing: Moll Flanders, Emma, Jane Eyre, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It doesn't matter if you've rea...

In the end of life, we all die. Sorry to bring you down. But in the end of Daisy Miller, only Daisy dies. (Kind of a shame, because we find Mrs. Costello really annoying.) Daisy's death is a traged...

You can easily plough through Daisy Miller in one or two sittings, especially if it's raining or you're trying to carve some space out for yourself at an awkward family visit. It's one of James's m...

Hotel, Motel, Trois Couronnes InnFrederick Winterbourne is a late-twenties American expat lightly involved with an older woman. He's suffering from ennui at a fashionable little hotel in Vevay, Swi...

Frederick Winterbourne is hanging out around Vevay like a hipster at a coffee shop, bored and unimpressed with the regulars. Will someone or something new and exciting come along?Winterbourne emb...

Frederick Winterbourne meets Daisy Miller in Vevay and is tantalized and intrigued. They take a day trip alone together, which, back in the day, is a slightly risqué and exciting adventure. He loo...

In the 1883 dramatic version of the novel, Daisy marries Winterbourne. Um, what?! (Source.)James himself wasn't a big fan of Daisy Miller. We tend to disagree, but to each his own—especially abou...

We'd be lying if we said Daisy Miller were anywhere close to steamy. Winterbourne, our male lead, is about as sexy as the bibs they give you at the dentist. And Daisy, our female lead, is basically...

Lord Byron, "The Prisoner of Chillon" (1.251)Lord Byron, "Manfred" (2.237)Victor Cherbuliez, Paule Mere (2.1)Innocent X, Velasquez (2.197)