My perspective about Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller and Winterbourne

In my opinion, a traveler is a person that visit other countries to merge with the people of that country in order to learn about their culture. Also travelers usually visit more cultural and historical places than tourist do. In contrast tourists visit a country to have fun and forget about the problems they encounter in their daily life. Tourists prefer to visit places where they will have a lot of fun and do things that they believe that they won’t forget.

Daisy Miller behaves herself as a tourist because she is always willing to have fun and doing things she won’t forget and don’t give any importance to the cultural values of the European culture she visited. This can be seen when the author says: “But he saw that she cared very little for feudal antiques and that the dusky traditions of Chillon made but a slight impression upon her”. When the author says that he makes clear that Daisy didn’t had any interest in the cultural aspect of that country. This thought is supported when the author describes Daisy’s attitude in an historical and important castle to European people when he wrote: “Daisy tripped about the vaulted chambers, rustled her skirts in the corkscrew staircase, flirted back with a pretty little cry and a shudder from the edge of the obliettes…” as the author describes her, she was just trying to have fun in a very serious and meaningful place of history and values.

There were various incidents in the story where there was othering, specially toward Daisy. The first one I will discus is when Winterbourne says to his aunt: “she is completely uncultivated”, Winterbourne went on”. Winterbourne refers that way toward Daisy because she doesn’t present the same cultural values Europeans have. It’s obvious she won’t have them because as she doesn’t live there she doesn’t practice them and for that same reason Daisy is othered. Winterbourne assumes that she is lack of cultural values instead of understanding that, as she came from a different place, she has different customs.  Another moment when Daisy is othered is when Winterbournes aunt says: “that she is the sort of young lady who expects a man, sooner or later, to carry her off?”. Winterbournes aunt refers this way toward Daisy because she believes that the only intention of Daisy was to take advantage of their fortune as it has happened to Winterbourne before with other girls. Without even meeting Daisy, she assumes she is that kind of girl and dislikes her. Daisy is othered again when Winterbourne says: “I have never as yet had any relations with young ladies this category”. When Winterbourne says category, he is in fact categorizing Daisy Miller as a flirt as he had heard that young American ladies are.

Daisy’s perspective toward everything seems fine to her like going out with men during the night, walk around with a man alone and that kind of things. She has a very liberal perspective toward things.

In contrast, Mrs. Costello was a very conserved woman and for her, everything that Daisy do is wrong. Daisy represents the liberal feature of the American culture while Mrs. Costello represents the conservative and strict features of the European culture. Winterbourne, can be categorized as a middle point of this two cultures because he has been related to both of them. This way, he is represented in the novella as a conservative man but not so strict as his aunt Mrs. Costello. With these descriptions it can be seen that the cultural environment in which the characters evolve affects directly their perception of things and their personality.