A CRITICAL LOOK
Daisy Miller: Hierarchy and the Plight of the American Upper Class during the Gilded Age.
What Henry James’ “Daisy Miller” reveals about human nature and the social dynamics of the late 19th century.
Set and written in the late 19th century, Henry James’ “Daisy Miller” tells the tale of a young American woman fallen prey to her elite compatriots while living abroad in Europe. Told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator privy to the innermost thoughts of the American-born, European-groomed Winterbourne, the story follows the gradual defacement of Miss Daisy Miller’s reputation. Throughout the story, Daisy’s “commonness”, inordinate “crudity”, and “reckless” behavior are the reasons people cite for their giving her the “cold shoulder”. Yet, as the novella unfolds, these grounds for snubbing and excluding Daisy and her family are shown to be superficial. Daisy, as free-spirited and forthright she is for a woman of her time, especially in Europe at that, is ultimately mistreated by her society―of which Winterbourne is included―for reasons with roots deeply embedded in human nature and the social changes witnessed during the Gilded Age.
When first meeting Daisy in the Vevey hotel, Winterbourne does indeed find her unusual, but not at all in a negative way. As taken aback as he is by Daisy’s forwardness (“he [Winterbourne] had never heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion” (14)) he is―while “amused and perplexed―above all…charmed”. His warm reception to her is sharply undercut in the very next chapter by Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne’s chronically headache-ridden aunt: “‘They’re [Daisy and her family] horribly common’―it was perfectly simple. ‘They’re the sort of Americans that one does one’s duty by just ignoring’”’ (20). In the end, Mrs. Costello, estimating the Millers to non-elite, refuses to meet Daisy and advises her nephew against associating with her, lest he get involved in one of her “scandals”. At this point in the story, it seems as if the rest of American-born European society shares in Mrs. Costello’s judgement that Daisy is lower class, and for this reason does not welcome her into their circles.
Contrary to Mrs. Costello’s, and presumably that of those who choose to avoid her, conviction that Daisy’s “place in the social scale [is] low”, several subtleties imply that she is―at least according to more traditional criterion―of a higher social standing than regarded. One feature that hints at this is the way she dresses, which even Mrs. Costello is forced to give her credit for: “and she dresses in perfection―no, you don’t know how well she dresses. I can’t think were they get their taste” (20). In the late 19th century, to “dress in perfection” necessitated luxurious clothing, styled properly. Mrs. Costello’s begrudging compliment regarding Daisy’s fashion suggests a cosmopolitanism as much as a certain degree of flexibility in spending.
Another is where Daisy hails from in America. Schenectady, New York, quieter than Manhattan it might have been, became an industrial powerhouse and center of innovation in the late 19th century. That the Millers come from a burgeoning city as opposed to a backwater country is important because presumes a certain worldliness and knowledge of urban society. To add a tinge of irony to the criticism Mrs. Costello spouts about Daisy, calling her a “horror” and whatnot, Mrs. Costello also finds her home in New York and has two granddaughters, rumored to be “tremendous flirts”, living there. It is not hard to imagine Daisy as one of Mrs. Costello’s socialite, New York-domiciled granddaughters, about whom Mrs. Costello would presumably have nothing bad to say.
Randolph’s tactless remarks at Mrs. Walker’s house―”We’ve got a bigger place than this…’It’s all gold on the walls’” (41)―also evidence enough wealth to disqualify her from the “common” class. If the size of one’s house is an accurate measure of one’s financial means, the Millers could be regarded as wealthier than the Walkers. Though this fact does not ironize Mrs. Costello criticism―that Daisy is “indelicate” and “reckless”―it adds an important layer of subtext to the complicated dynamics between the two women. Given the social indicators sprinkled throughout the novella, if Daisy is considered “common”, then the characters who view her as such―Mrs. Costello and Mrs. Walker―can only be deemed equally “common”, if not more so. The claim that the Millers are “common” is not based on traditional social measures of wealth, dress, or residential location, rather “uneducatedness” and “recklessness”. Americans thus are shown to operate under a different social hierarchy, one that places a larger emphasis on conformity to behavioral expectations, in Europe.
In addition to her purported “crudity”, Daisy’s “reckless” behavior is another reason she is slandered and ostracized. While there is reportedly widespread disapproval of her habits, none of Daisy’s acquaintances is as vocally opposed as Mrs. Walker. Upon spotting Daisy walking with Giovanelli and Winterbourne in broad daylight on the streets of Rome from her carriage, Mrs. Walker pulls Winterbourne aside and voices her revulsion, disguised as concern:
That crazy girl mustn’t do this sort of thing. She mustn’t walk here with you two men. Fifty people have remarked her…She’s very reckless, cried Mrs. Walker, and goodness knows how far―left to itself―it may go. (Miller, 52)
Here, Mrs. Walker is disgruntled by what she regards as Daisy’s unabashed coquetry, and with more than one man at that. Though this one instance does not immediately harden Mrs. Walker to Daisy, it along with Daisy’s rumored promiscuity (“Flirting with any man she can pick up; sitting in corners with mysterious Italians; dancing all evening with the same partners; receiving visits at eleven o’clock at night” (55).) induces her to cut her off rather permanently at the party. Though Mrs. Walker’s immediate justification for her “cruelty” is Daisy’s tardiness―assumedly deliberate―, her inhospitable attitude towards Daisy and her mother from the moment she hosts them makes it clear that it is only a pretense. The rest of American society, for the same reasons as Mrs. Walker, follows suit:
They ceased to invite her, intimating that they wished to make, and make strongly, for the benefit of observant Europeans, the point that though Miss Daisy Miller was a pretty American girl all right, her behavior wasn’t pretty at all―was in fact regarded by her compatriots as quite monstrous. (Miller, 69)
More so than because they feel personally offended by Daisy, the Americans exclude her because they believe doing so would reflect poorly on them, especially in the eyes of the Europeans they live among. For how revolted they believe the Europeans to be by Daisy’s behavior, interestingly enough, every single person who reprimands Daisy in the book is American. The one European, Giovanelli, freely associated with her and was not off put in the least by her friendliness or dalliance, between which the distinction is unclear. In response to Winterbourne’s accusation that he was the one who took her to that “fatal place”, “‘Giovanelli raised his neat shoulders and eyebrows to within suspicion of a shrug. ‘For myself I had no fear; and she―she did what she liked’” (80). Giovanelli’s relative nonchalance towards Daisy’s conduct suggests a certain acceptance or lack of surprise at the very least. This brings into question the Americans’ claims that Daisy was outrightly breaching “custom here [Europe]” with her effrontery.
Winterbourne and Mrs. Costello’s feelings of disdain towards Giovanelli, the one European that makes an appearance in the novella, also undermines the protectiveness they feel of the European social code. It should strike the reader as odd that Daisy is scolded for defying European custom by Americans only. It should strike the reader as even odder that there is a noticeable discrepancy between the way Americans view the European social code and the one European person in the story. When asked about Giovanelli, Winterbourne explains to his aunt:
The shiny―but, to do him justice, not greasy―little Roman. I’ve asked questions about him and learned something. he’s apparently a perfectly respectable little man. believe he’s in a small way a cavaliere avvocato. But he doesn’t move in what are called the first circles. I think it really not absolutely impossible the courier introduced him. (Miller, 67)
In sharp contrast to the contempt Winterbourne―and also his aunt, who goes as far as proposing that the Millers’ courier connected the two,―feels for the native, he expresses absolute reverence towards the code of conduct under which natives like Giovanelli apparently base their actions:
When you deal with natives you must go by the custom of the country. American flirting is a purely American silliness; it has―in its ineptitude of innocence―no place in this system. So when you show yourself in public with Mr. Giavanelli and without your mother― (Miller, 61)
This inconsistency in the treatment of the story’s sole European and the “European” social system begs the question of whether the strict social customs touted by the Americans are truly European. The dubiousness surrounding how European the customs Daisy’s compatriots accuse her of defying truly are has an interesting implication. It implies the construction of a new social code unique to Europe-based Americans and the peddling of it as European to give it legitimacy.
Why Europe-domiciled Americans might have indeed formulated a separate set of social standards, perhaps based in the European one but more stringent, is hard to tell. There are several possible explanations, however: one that finds its basis in evolutionary psychology and another in the social context of the Gilded Age. Americans who travelled abroad to Europe were undoubtedly of the elite class, in possession of excess cash to burn. The popularization of international travel, facilitated by the development and propagation of passenger steamboats, would have meant a influx of rich Americans into countries, like Switzerland and Italy, that Daisy and Winterbourne find themselves in. The creation of populations of such socioeconomic homogeneity would have been near unprecedented. The human need to erect systems of social distinction and hierarchy, no matter how similarly stanced members of the population are, is a potential reason for the American making of a distinctly conduct-based system, of which newcomers like Daisy are unaware and are therefore scandalized by.
The Gilded Age, though a period of immense wealth inequality, also saw the rise of the middle class. No longer was the division between the haves and the have-nots so clear, as there came to be an in-between class―members of which were at danger of falling to the lower class, but also were also positioned favorably to enter into the upper class. Though richer than ever, especially with the rise of industrial titans like Carnegie and Rockefeller, the American upper class would have felt that their social positioning was being jeopardized with so many prospective nouveau-riche. The need to reassert social dominance, on whichever soil it may be, might explain the formation of this Euro-American pecking order.
Neither as “common” or “reckless” as spoken about by her fellow elite Americans, Daisy is needlessly maltreated and is ultimately made a martyr. As personally tragic as it is, the story of her betrayal by American society and eventually her admirer, Winterbourne himself, reveals important dimensions of human nature, the merciless need for hierarchy of power, and the unspoken plight of the upper class during the Gilded Age.
