Comparing Daisy and Countess Olenska in Daisy Miller and The Age of Innocence

Society looks at daisy as if she is weak and deserves to only serve her husband. They believe she should do what she is told and obey her husband and family’s wishes. Daisy is the ideal woman of wealth through society's eyes in

Gender and sexuality – Gender plays a large role in the story of Daisy Miller. In the beginning and at the end, Winterbourne is known to be “studying” in Geneva. What this really means is that he is spending time with older, foreign coquettes. On the other hand, Daisy Miller is heavily looked down upon especially when she is in Rome. When Winterbourne arrives in Rome, his aunt tells him “When she comes to a party she brings with her a gentleman with a good deal of manner and a wonderful mustache.” Also, people continue to question her actions throughout the novella. For example, when Daisy Miller explains that she is going to the Pincio, Mrs. Walker replies with, “Alone, my dear—at this hour?” The carriage scene is another example of this happening. Both Mrs. Walker and Winterbourne tell her that she should go home because they are worried about her reputation being ruined by her walking the streets of Rome. In conclusion, Winterbourne is never confronted about what he does with older foreign ladies whether it is in the beginning or in the end of the novella. However, Daisy Miller’s actions are criticized. Both gender and the attraction between Winterbourne and Daisy Miller play a large theme. Winterbourne’s ultimate desire is to have Daisy Miller to himself to ultimately marry

Not only has Daisy hurt her family, she also wounded the man she once loved. When Gatsby does his service at the army, he still writes letter and keeps contact with Daisy. But she becomes impatient with Gatsby’s return and leaves him out of the blue. “Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping a half dozen dates a day with half a dozen men and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor besides her bed” (151). Daisy is lustful and sleeps with many men to tries to fill the hole in her heart created by Gatsby. When she sleeps with so many men, she becomes numb to the idea of love because her fairy tale prince never returned to save her. Although Daisy never felt the same about Gatsby as when she was younger, Gatsby was madly in love with everything about her til his death. He sacrifices his life for her by taking the blame of Myrtle’s murder. “‘Was Daisy driving?’... ‘Yes

For the wife, Louise Mallard, this was an awakening of a new life. This new life is cut short as the information that led her to believe this news turns our false. Kate Chopin reveals that even the desire for love is trumped by the need for freedom and independence, through her use of precise diction and syntax, and symbolism. (rewrite)

In Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” and Edith Wharton’s “The Other Two,” the narrators each disclose the complications of their party’s social formalities during circumstances within their own society. In both short stories, Winterbourne and Waythorn try to figure out their adored ones character and motives but for different reasons. In “Daisy Miller,” it’s noticeable that Mr. Winterbourne ends up longing for Daisy Miller as he tries to fully categorize the character she’s carelessly ruining. While in “The Other Two,” the narrator examines a society of how a married couple, Waythorn and Alice, adjust to an awkward

Daisy illustrates the typical women of high social standing; her life is moulded by society’s expectations. She is dependent and subservient to her husband. She is powerless in her marriage.

Her actions are viewed as foolish, creating the stigma around women, and though Daisy does not see herself as a fool, surprisingly she expresses that “the best thing a girl can be in this world [is] a beautiful little fool (Fitzgerald, pg 17).” Yet, Daisy is not a fool; she is merely a victim of her environment which is influenced by gender, money, and status. This leads to Daisy having no power or control over her own life and feeling as though women can only be “beautiful fools” as stated earlier.

Daisy confides in Nick that she believes “the best thing a girl can be” is a “beautiful fool” which shows us that Daisy is unhappy with the shallow society of the 1920’s. This comment shows the reader’s that Daisy isn’t shallow and empty; she dislikes the impersonal nature of the people around her and wants her daughter to be a “fool” so she doesn’t notice it. This shows that Daisy does have morals and feels strongly for the people close to her. An aspect of Daisy’s character that could suggest that she is immoral is the possible promiscuity associated with her voice. Nick refers to an excitement in her voice that “men found difficult to forget” which

James' manipulation of appearances in Daisy Miller as well as other character's notions of these appearances provides us with a novella of enigmatic and fascinating characters. Daisy, the most complicated of these ambiguities, is as mysterious as she is flirtatious. James gives her a carefully constructed enigmatic quality that leaves the reader wondering what her motivations were and who she truly was. He structures the novella in such a way as to stress the insights that the supporting characters provide into Daisy's character, weather accurate or erroneous. Despite their questionable reliability, they allow James to make commentary on both European and American cultures and social class.

Taking Daisy with appreciation and without alarm, we also re-read her character and re-evaluate her moral status. We (the readers) seem to meet James’ sophistication with out own, by agreeing on a mixed interpretation of Daisy: she is literally innocent, but she is also ignorant and incautious. (1)

The narrator, Nick is grouping together the women of the party and describing their persona all in the same way. The men of the party are comforting them, as they are providing protection and masculinity to the “swooning” and “puppyish” women. The women are following the social norm/stereotype that men must be their protectors because they are such frail beings and must be accompanied by a man. These societal standards were represented through the specific character, Daisy Buchanan and her actions throughout the novel. Daisy has intentional ignorance of her husband, Tom’s multiple affairs showing her lack of empowerment and fear of disrupting the gender roles. The woman was meant to be the housewife, caring for the children, and staying home. Daisy believes women should not be intelligent and applies these expectations to her own daughter: "I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right, ' I said, 'I 'm glad it 's a girl. And I hope she 'll be a fool—that 's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 116-118). It is evident that Daisy was disappointed by the gender of her baby, and thinks little of what a woman can be in

Besides the visual blazon he writes on Daisy as a traditional weapon of subjugation (and which permits him, momentarily, to "mentally accuse" her face "of a want of finish" [7]), Winterbourne tries something equally dominating‹to usurp Daisy's own power of sight by judging her eyes only on aesthetic terms. In their meeting, Daisy is at first ostensibly pinned by Winterbourne's evaluative gaze of superlatives and particularization, but her eyes tell another story: "She sat there with her extremely pretty hands, ornamented with very brilliant rings, folded in her lap, and with her pretty eyes now resting upon those of

by surprise, as we have been ill prepared for it. The story opens with a

Daisy Miller, a novella written by Henry James, and A Doll’s House, a three-act play written by Henrik Ibsen, are both set in the late 1800’s. Women were not allowed much freedom from their husbands at this time. They could not own property, keep their own wages, or enter into contracts on their own. For example in A Doll’s House, Nora was not allowed to borrow money without her husband's help but Nora did not want her husband so she had to lie. Nora plays her role as a women in the play A Doll’s House just like the women of that time normally would, until the end when she gains courage to stand up to her husband. In Daisy Miller, however, Daisy does not fit in with the role women would normally play. The heroines in each of the stories have significant roles

In 1878, Henry James wrote, Daisy Miller, a novella about a young American girl and her travels in Europe. Daisy Miller is a complex short story with many underlying themes such as appearance versus reality, knowledge versus innocence, outward action versus inward meditation, and Nature versus urbanity. In this short story, one is left to judge whether Daisy Miller, the main character of the story, is “a pretty American flirt” or a misunderstood, modern young woman. By probing into the complexities and contradictions of Daisy’s character, it is obvious that Ms. Miller is merely a misunderstood young woman.