Role of the Narrator in Henry James' Daisy Miller Essay

James life, causes him to struggle with his self-actualization because he does not know who he is or his true identity. However, because he knows so little about his own life, he is led to ask questions and find out answers. “Yet I myself had no idea who I was. I loved my mother yet I looked nothing like her. Neither did I look like the role-models in my life” (91). The only way he figures out who he is, is by asking questions and finding bits and pieces of information. He struggles greatly with himself, and the only way for him to know himself is to know his mother. This gets back to the idea that the parallelism between him and his mother, or chapters 9 and 10, helps him in his

who live and judge other people based on the common value of the rigid morals systems at that

In Ernest Hemingway’s short story “ The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,,” Hemingway uses the author’s craft of perspective along with dialogue and internal dialogue to create a multi-part claim that develops an overall negative characterization of the story’s characters. Hemingway develops the characterization of Margaret, one of the main protagonists, by using multiple perspectives to assure on her character traits of cruel, manipulative, and fearful.

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

Since “Annabel Lee” and “The Highwayman” are both narrative poems, the speakers of each story influence certain features of the plots. The narrator of “Annabel Lee” is also the affected lover who is recalling the catastrophic incident that is his lover’s death. Since he is actually a part of the storyline, he conveys the plot the way he had experienced it as it began “with a love that was more than love” but progressed onward to the “killing [of his] Annabel Lee”. The passionate narrating establishes his reliability as a narrator as the audience can truly sense his pain. However, the narrator of “The Highwayman” is not involved with any aspect of the storyline and, therefore, tells the story from a bystander point of view. Even though the narrator is not directly impacted by the events, they are still able to captivate the audience by utilizing lifelike elements, such as the “tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot” of the horse, to institute their trustworthiness as a narrator. Therefore, both narrators within “Annabel Lee” and “The Highwayman” add different elements of persuasion to their narratives to establish an authentic storyline.

Introduction: John’s domination over the Narrator is evident from the beginning of the short story. The Narrator remains unknown and takes the identity of John’s wife not an individual human being. This identity, further explored, becomes her personality because she obeys John’s every command.

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.

Furthermore, Rebecca reflects the conventions of the romantic genre by showing that the heroine?s first impressions of the hero were incorrect. She had first viewed him as ?hard? and ?sardonic? due to his remarks at Mrs Van Hopper, ?He got up at once, pushing back his chair. ?Don?t let me keep you,? he said. ?Fashions change so quickly nowadays they may even have altered by the time you get upstairs.?? However, following her first breakfast with Maxim, she realises that she was wrong and says, ?I had ill-judged him, he was neither hard nor sardonic, he was already my friend of many years.? The first impression of Maxim only lasts over one coffee with Mrs Van Hopper however is fixed soon after when he sends the heroine a note which reads, ?Forgive me. I was very rude this afternoon.? It is evident that as soon as she receives this note, her opinions of the hero change. She also elaborates on her feelings the next morning when Maxim invites her

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)

Fitzgerald presents his audience with Daisy, a married “girl” who eventually reunited with the lost love of her life, Jay Gatsby. While breaking rules and being adventurous, Daisy ultimately brings Gatsby to his death. Although she explores her sexuality and runs off behind her husband Tom’s back, Daisy continues to be oppressed. Tom’s aggressiveness and wealth force Daisy to depend on him, making her a slave of her husband. Because of this, she can not leave him to be with Gatsby, the one she loves. Doing so would mean losing economic support and losing a stable life. In this way, her husband defines her life. There is an evident contrast however with Tom’s role. Tom keeps an apartment away from home for his mistress and gets away with it. Because he is the man, society would not dare punish him for exploring his liberties. Daisy on the other hand is inferior to Tom and, as a social norm, is not allowed to indulge in such freedoms because doing so would bring shame to her honor.

Austen has set out to save the rising art form of the novel. In this address to the reader she glorifies what a novel should be: the unrestrained expression of words conveying the wide range of raw human emotion. This veneration of the novel is necessary to the development of Catherine's fiction-loving character as it justifies the narrator's right to remain fond of this flawed heroine.

In the novella Daisy Miller by Henry James, the main character Winterbourne, exhibits one of the main characteristic of critical thinking: Intellectual humility. Intellectual humility is defined as having a lucid awareness of the limits of one's knowledge, not to mention a consciousness of any potential internal biases or ego (criticalthinking.org, 2012). Essentially, one does not believe one knows everything and one has a healthy level of curiosity about all the things one does not know. One is acquainted with Winterbourne's concentrated sense of intellectual humility the moment he meets Daisy Miller. To Winterbourne, Daisy is practically a strange, exotic creature; he's obviously never met a woman like her and his thought process reflects this. Thus, he does not assume to know anything about her, rather his thinking highlights everything he does not know. Midway through their conversation, the reader finds out that "Poor Winterbourne was amused, perplexed, and decidedly charmed. He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain laxity of deportment. And yet was he to accuse Miss Daisy Miller of actual or potential inconduite, as they said at Geneva?... Was she simply a pretty girl from New York State? Were they all like that, the pretty girls who had a good deal of gentlemen's society? Or was

When Winterbourne first meets Daisy, he is willing to accept her for the vivacious young American girl she is. Although Daisy's customs are not what are expected of young girls in European society, Winterbourne is charmed by Daisy and her original ideals. He defends Daisy to the aristocracy, claiming that she is just "uncultivated" and is truly innocent. As the story progresses, Winterbourne finds himself questioning Daisy's true nature in comparison to the standards of European society. Winterbourne's opinion of Daisy changes from acceptance to condemnation as his tolerance of cultural standards is clouded by the prejudices of the European aristocrats.