The Quintessential American Woman

The Quintessential American Woman

The American woman is a mystery that has yet to be solved. She is an ever-changing poem that sparks interest in those who are unaccustomed to her mysterious ways. The American women fascinated many authors, including Henry James. To express his enthrallment, James employed his literary talent to create Daisy Miller. Daisy exudes the vast depth of the entity of the American woman, which originally captured James’ attention. John Hay, a contemporary observer of American manners and mores stated of the American woman, “Her conduct is without blemish, according to the rural American standard, and she knows no other” (qtd. in Fogel 52). James’s Daisy Miller depicts the innocence of the American woman, with its accompanying crudeness. It is through Daisy Miller, and her contradictory characteristics of purity and crudeness that James presents and depicts his American woman to the world.

“Pure” is defined as “chaste; virgin” in the American Heritage Dictionary (681). This describes one half of the American woman in the Jamesian perspective. Daisy Miller’s character is depicted as the epitome of pure. This purity particularly lies in Daisy’s ignorance of proper social behavior. Daniel Mark Fogel wrote in his critical analysis of Daisy Miller, “In America, women were under somewhat less rigid control than they were in England or Europe, in part because of the comparatively high degree of social mobility in the United States and the concomi...