Daisy Miller Character Analysis

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Daisy Miller was used by Henry James to represent the American Stereotype in that time and to differentiate American and European customs. She was the “American flirt” in this story; very young, unsophisticated, and bold. In the time that this novella was written, it was not uncommon for Americans to visit and explore Europe. Europeans held a negative opinion of Americans due to the Americans’ spontaneous and often poor manners. Daisy’s character represented all Americans and Winterbourne represented the Europeans even though he, himself, was American as well.
The characters in Daisy Miller all had very differentiating personalities. Daisy, the title character, was used as a symbol of American customs. She was vibrant and shameless but also very innocent and ignorant to her surrounding customs. Winterbourne, the second leading character, had a calm demeanor and acted very stiff which showed how influenced he was by European …show more content…

Daisy had little social etiquette and was extremely spontaneous. She cared little about what the European people thought of her because she was not fond of European culture and saw nothing wrong with her behavior. Winterbourne was completely opposite of this. He was very civilized and exceedingly polite. Winterbourne was greatly influenced by other people’s opinions of him, especially the women in his life. As the story unraveled, one could see how intrigued Winterbourne was by Daisy’s beauty. He stated that he “hadn’t for a long time seen anything prettier than his fair country woman’s features.” Daisy’s prettiness was a recurring theme throughout the novella. Mrs. Costello’s negative views of Daisy fall partly unheard by Winterbourne because he finds Daisy too beautiful for any of those things to be true. In part, he believed her innocence was to blame for her behavior. Daisy was unaware of how a big of scandal her behaviors appeared to

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