James Journal

Jessica Granse
February 19, 2009

"’The young ladies of this country have a dreadfully pokey time of it, so far as I can learn; I don’t see why I should change my habits for them,’" (419).

When Winterbourne brings up how improper it is that Giovanelli invites her to walk about the Pincio at night, Daisy responds by saying the she doesn’t really care how it looks. She thinks the ladies in Rome are too uptight and she would rather do as she pleases than conform to their ways. This is central theme of this book: her rebellion against the ways of the society.

Wikipedia brings up the importance of the characters’ names in the novella. Daisy is a beautiful young girl, whom talks freely and does whatever she chooses. Her name is a springtime flower, which represents the character’s beauty and youth as well as her absence of inhibition. Winterbourne, on the other hand, is more uptight and adult. Daisies die in the winter and after meeting Giovanelli, Daisy dies as she gets malaria from being out all hours of the night with him. Another thing I find really interesting is the fact that flowers represent purity a lot of the time, such as when one says to "deflower" someone would be to take their virginity. Daisy is a young girl and everyone’s concern in the story is her purity and innocence. When they see her out with a man at all hours of the night with no other chaperone, it makes them question her purity. It’s very improper for a girl to go around with gentlemen friends, let alone foreign gentlemen friends, during the night without her mother or some other chaperone. I think her name definitely also represents this question of purity which really is a main theme to the story. Her purity is questioned because of her careless actions. She does not consider the propriety of her own actions in society’s point of view. Instead, she is more concerned with having fun and simply making herself happy rather than worrying about other people, such as Mrs. Costello, and her reputation. This causes the rest of society to think she is impure because of her having so many gentlemen friends and being seen alone with them various times at night. This leads to the end where Winterbourne discovers that she is, in fact, still innocent. Daisy’s mother tells Winterbourne that she wanted him to know she wasn’t engaged. Then, Giovanelli also comments that she was "’…the most beautiful young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable.’ And then he added in a moment, ‘And she was the most innocent,’" (428). He mentions that she wouldn’t have married him. Even her mother believed she may have been engaged, simply due to her actions, but society, and her mother, was wrong. This shows how one’s actions could give the wrong impression to the rest of society. James is really known for his writing on psychological matters, such as why people do the things that they do, as well as how Europeans fit into American society and vice versa. This is an excellent example of this type of theme. He’s discussing an American girl in a European setting and how her actions and carelessness for the rules of society ultimately affects her. Due to her inability to conform to the European ways, she meets her doom. Since she ignores that the observers consider her actions very improper, in the end she dies because of those same actions. They say it’s improper for her to be walking about with a gentleman at night, but she ignores them and ends up with malaria. Her rebellion from society’s rules is the cause of her demise.