612 James, Henry
liberties offend the wealthy expatriates’ European
sensibilities and result in Daisy’s downfall.
In Vevey, the Millers act as freely as they did
at home. Randolph, Daisy’s younger brother, tra-
verses the first-class hotel’s grounds with a pointed
walking stick that he thrusts indiscriminately into
landscaping and ladies’ dresses. Mrs. Miller, having
met all of Daisy’s many gentlemen callers in New
York, does not realize that she should curtail her
daughter’s plans to visit the castle of Chillon alone
with Frederick Winterbourne, an expatriate visit-
ing from Geneva. Daisy ignores the implication of
Eugenio, her European courtier, that to do so would
be improper and enjoys the attention she attracts as
she leaves the hotel with Winterbourne and without
a chaperone.
The Millers’ actions sit better with some guests of
the hotel than with others. Winterbourne struggles
to be cautious when he realizes that Daisy will
accompany him alone on their tryst. Having lived so
long in Switzerland, he is taken by Daisy’s insistence
on her freedom to do as she wishes. Mrs. Costello,
Winterbourne’s aunt, however, pronounces the Mill-
ers uneducated and “horribly common.” Upon learn-
ing that the young woman intends to visit Chillon
unchaperoned, Mrs. Costello declares herself “hon-
estly shocked” at Daisy’s behavior. When she realizes
that Mrs. Costello will not receive her, Daisy masks
her disappointment not by conforming to the older
woman’s restrictive social rules but by acting even
more freely in ways that she considers “natural.”
This tension between the expatriates’ expecta-
tions of social modesty and Daisy’s American sense
of social freedom emerges again in Rome. There,
Daisy finds a vibrant atmosphere, with gentlemen
callers, dinners, and dances. Although she enjoys
this scene, the socialites around her, including Mrs.
Costello and Mrs. Walker, are appalled by her
interactions with “third-rate Italians” and “regular
Roman fortune-hunters.”
One afternoon at Mrs. Walker’s apartment,
Daisy announces her intention to walk to the Pincio,
a public park with views of the city, to meet her most
energetic suitor, Giovanelli. Winterbourne, stunned
by Daisy’s willingness “to exhibit herself unat-
tended to [the crowd’s] appreciation,” hastily agrees
to accompany her. When, upon spying Giovanelli,
Winterbourne warns her to beware of him, Daisy
replies coolly, “ ‘I’ve never allowed a gentleman to
dictate to me or to interfere with anything I do.’ ”
This credo reveals the value Daisy places on her
freedom, but Mrs. Walker seeks to curtail that
independence. She pursues Daisy in her carriage,
but the latter refuses her invitation to drive about
the Pincio: when warned that her behavior is not
customary in Rome, the young American replies, “ ‘If
I didn’t walk, I’d expire.’” Thus, James’s naming of
Mrs. Walker proves ironic, as she attempts to control
Daisy’s freedom of movement—“^ ‘You should walk
with your mother, dear’ ”—from the vantage point
of her carriage.
As Daisy increasingly alienates herself from
Rome’s expatriate social set by persisting with
Giovanelli, Winterbourne attempts to negotiate her
shifting status among his peers. When he encounters
the couple late in the evening inside the Colosseum,
he feels Daisy has gone too far, both scandalizing
and endangering herself by appearing unchaperoned
and by courting the “Roman fever,” or malaria, of the
city’s swampy lowlands. When he turns away, Daisy
cries, “‘Why it was Mr. Winterbourne! He saw me
and he cuts me dead!” Her observation proves pro-
phetic. The Colosseum becomes a symbol of her
death at the hands of a Roman society that seeks to
inhibit her freedom, even as Daisy cannot see the
dangers of a land with customs different from her
own. She explains, “ ‘I was bound to see the Colos-
seum by moonlight—I wouldn’t have wanted to go
home without that.’ ”
In the end, she does not go home at all. Felled
by malaria, Daisy is buried near the city wall; at her
funeral, Winterbourne and Giovanelli remember
her as a young woman “ ‘who did what she liked.’”
Throughout the story, the names Daisy and Winter-
bourne evoke a struggle between vibrant innocence
and frozen custom. Although Daisy dies at the end
of the story, as an ironic symbol of the freedom she
treasured, her grave rests among “the April daisies”
that grow wild by the city wall—after the winter born.
Melanie BrownreSponSibility in Daisy Miller
In Europe, Daisy Miller seeks the adventure and
company of society, but she does not understand (or,