American Writer Henry James

Daisy is a particularly unafraid example of the free, pioneer, and even naive American whose freshness and honesty namem out of place in European parliamentary law. The blue-blooded people she meets ar all suspicious of her and her demeanor, believing that she is in some way fooling them when in fact they are more likely to put on a kind face to hide the truth from the rest of the universe. This is a society that has created a body of rules of behavior which makes that behavior mushy, and people are judged not by who they are but by how closely they follow the rules. Daisy is the center of the novel:

As an American young lady she was a recognizable figure, the question was the evaluation and composition of that American girl.

Daisy contrasts with other, more suspicious American women who seem to resent her open genius as a lot as they have a concern for her safety:

All the ladies who condemn Daisy for going virtually Rome unchaperoned with Mr. Giovanelli are Americans. Perhaps an uneasy sense of neighborly inferiority to Italian noble families makes them more censorious of a nonconforming countrywoman than they would have been at home, but one imagines that they did their luck of staring from carriages on Fifth Avenue as salutary as on the Corso.

Daisy--and the entire story, for that matter--is seen through the eyes of Frederick Winterbourne, some other young American who has long lived in Europe. He has doubts around Daisy's innocence, and the reader has to consider Daisy in terms of what

Wilson, Edmund. "The Ambiguity of Henry James." The Hound and the Horn (April-May, 1934), 385-406.

both(prenominal) Daisy and the governess are in some respects innocents. Their experience of the world has been limited, and another of James's female characters with a circumscribed experience is the heroine of cap Square. Catherine is a very placid character, and we learn little intimately what she thinks of the events taking place around her. As with the other devil women, the reader is left to write an interpretation on her ground on how the reader might respond.

Catherine is the pawn of two men, her lover and her father, and the father is as manipulative in his way as is the lover:

The real function of Sloper's sharp intelligence in the book is not to uncover so palpable a fraud as the young man's professed love but to conk out his daughter and draw up estimates of the likelihood of her "sticking" to Townsend or of giving him up.

Winterbourne says because his is the consciousness of the story:

Interestingly, Auchincloss finds that this story as intumesce has long had two interpretations. The first of these is the Wilson-Edel theory of the psychotic governess:

Winterbourne is a sincere man who may not see how much his actions and his attitudes have been shaped by certain social rules, or at least who may not see how artificial those rules are. He is always trying to decide whether Daisy is "proper" agree to the rules or not. The character most representative of the inflexible nature of European society is Winterbourne's aunt, Mrs. Costello, who refuses even to meet the girl because she has comprehend stories about her and thinks she is vulgar. No one in this social scene makes up their own mind. Rather, they listen to others and imitate the opinions of others. They look to see what the general group thinks before they try to think at all. Winterbourne also lives by these rules, though he may baffle at them as most others in his social isthmus do not. He
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.