DAISY MILLER AND OTHER STORIES

DAISY MILLER AND OTHER STORIES-HENRY JAMES

Daisy Miller is one of Henry James’s most attractive heroines: she represents

youth and frivolity. As a tourist in Italy, her American freedom and freshness

of spirit come up against the corruption and hypocrisy of European manners.

From its first publication, readers on both sides of the Atlantic have

quarrelled about her, defending or attacking the liberties that Daisy takes

and the conventions that she ignores. All three tales in this collection, Daisy

Miller, An International Episode and Lady Barbarina, express James’s most

notable subject, ‘the international theme’, the encounters, romantic and

cultural, between Americans and Europeans. His heroes and heroines

approach each other on unfamiliar ground with new freedoms, yet find

themselves unexpectedly hampered by old constraints.

In An International Episode, an English lord visiting Newport, Rhode

Island, falls in love with an American girl, but their relationship becomes

more complicated when she travels to London.

In the light-hearted comedy Lady Barbarina, a rich young American seeks

an English aristocratic bride.

The unusual outcomes of these three tales pose a number of social questions

about marriage and the traditional roles of men and women. Is an international

marriage symbolic of the highest cultural fusion of values or is it an old style

raid and capture? Is marriage to remain the feminine destination?