We begin in the Swiss resort of Vevey, in the canton of Vaud . Despite the cosmopolitan provenance of its diverse residents, James makes of it, in summer, a specifically 'American watering-place' : upper-middle-class Americans of blue-stocking hue and Wasp mentality, enshrined in Mrs Costello and Winterbourne . Mrs Costello is aptly named (from Italian,'costellazione', constellation) because, for the season, the Swiss canton, Lake Leman and all, has become the blue, star-spangled canton on the US flag, and Mrs Costello is the resident blue-stocking, pronouncing on the exclusion from the Wasp constellation of the Millers, the nouveau riche upstarts from Schenectady who evince an intimacy with the courier(26) .
The Vevey region was the setting for Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise ,an eighteenth century best-seller that did much to make Swiss travel fashionable . Thus, one might say, James's selection of Vevey, thus the American ensemble . Both La Nouvelle Heloise and Daisy Miller have remarkably parallel features :
(1) the romantic liaison between Julie and her tutor, Saint-preux : the budding liaison between Daisy and
Winterbourne ;
(2) a Rousseauean boat-trip across Lake Leman to a ruined castle where the lovers attest their mutual
ardour : a Jamesian boat-trip on the Lake , under the stars--mooted by Winterbourne, considered,
approved, then arbitrarily cast aside by Daisy ;
(3) Julie's untimely death of fever, in the throes of which, despite her marriage to Wolmar, she confesses
the survival of her love for Saint-Preux, and wishes this communicated to him : Daisy's untimely death
of fever, just before which, despite her suggested engagement to Giovanelli, her dying thoughts were
on Winterbourne and Chillon, and she wishes this and the rejection of the engagement made known to
him .
Evidently there is a qualitative distinction between these parallels : the Jamesian version palls before its predecessor, and if anything, Winterbourne and Daisy are Abelard and Heloise twice removed, and grossly manques .
Rousseau was equally renowned as 'Citizen of Geneva', a title he greatly prized . Our Winterbourne would qualify, through his extensive education there, to 'honorary citizen of Geneva' . Geneva's brooding spirit--the dark old city at the other end of the lake(36)--is his touchstone for assaying the social acceptability of the Millers : Mrs Miller to its vigilant matrons(36), Daisy to its blushing...young girls(21) . Again, during the visit to Chillon, Winterbourne is at pains to recount the deeds of Bonnivard, defender of Geneva, while Daisy is only interested in the feel of the place, and in details of the real live young man before her . Despite his severe Genevan upbringing, Winterbourne finds himself dazzled, beguiled, bemused by this inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence, and he needs must repair to the resident Wasp, Mrs Costello, to bolster his notion of what is the done thing . Clearly there is a yawning gap, both in the Chillon experience and in the Vevey postures, between two factions, one Protestant, the other something other : the Calvinism of Costello-Winterbourne and whatever the Millers can be said to be .
The key to this dichotomy lies in the precocious behaviour of Randolphe : Randolphe seems to be a continuing end-product and embodiment of the principles advocated in Rousseau's Emile , a treatise on the education of 'natural man' . Rousseau's educational procedure is based on the assumption that the child's autonomous tendencies are sound . He need not, therefore, be subjected to authority . Until reason has developed, he should be controlled only through natural discipline . 'Keep the child dependent on things only'(Emile,p.49) . By keeping the child dependent on things only, he will not need to seek the help of others and so acquire a taste for command . Natural discipline, then, is intended to check the growth of any liking for power . It teaches the child to be self-reliant, to confine his desires within the scope of his potentialities . It also prevents development of resentfulness . Since he does not understand its purpose, the child interprets human discipline as malevolence, and this necessarily arouses hate for people . He feels differently towards the recalcitrance of things because he does not see it as a thwarting of his desires . ' For it is in man's nature to bear patiently with the nature of things, but not with the ill-will of another' (Emile, p.55) .
Mrs Miller's extraordinary laxity towards, and seeming ineffectiveness with, her progeny is clearly a purposeful eschewal of human discipline along Emile lines . Randolphe is permitted an almost promiscuous latitude : he has the run of Vevey, goes to bed when he likes, does not wish lessons in the cars, so that makes it final . His autonomous tendencies are thing-directed : he climbs the Alps with a few strides on his alpen-stock, manifestly ineffective due to its recalcitrance, yet he will take it willy-nilly to Italy . He solicits one lump of sugar, takes three, then ascribes his lack of hurting teeth not to other humans, nor to some guilty notion based on his own 'greed', but to old Europe... the climate...these hotels : thus, no hate for people .
Furthermore, Rousseau contends that once the child's abilities exceed his desires. he begins to have a productive orientation towards others . No longer concerned only with the satisfaction of his own wants, he experiences desire to respond appropriately to the needs of others . When the child also becomes aware that others desire to help him, love for them is evoked . But love for others gives rise to desire for preference in their eyes . Expansion of the child's self brings not only love but also pride, and with it danger that his attitudes will be shaped by opinion . If this is permitted to occur, then he will be deprived of his conscience .
One can see that in Randolphe ' orientation towards others' is burgeoning : he cannot be induced to retire at 11pm because he wants to talk to the waiter(33) ; at Dover he was up until after midnight in the public parlour, he wants to return to America because he hasn't got any boys here . As to opinion, those of Winterbourne about the harmful effects of sugar, and those of Daisy about taking the alpen-stock to Italy, are like water off a duck's back . Randolphe is socially disposed, but impervious to opinion .
Mrs Miller shows the same laxity and seeming ineffectiveness towards Daisy in Rome, and the function of Randolphe in the text is to show the mode of education that Daisy had at an earlier time and stage . The present end-product, the present Daisy, is social tendencies personified, brought to fruition . Back home, Daisy enjoyed the social whirl of parties and gentleman friends . Here in Vevey, she makes do with the only young gentleman on the horizon--the stiff, perplexed Winterbourne . And in Rome she is off again on the social rounds, with her attendant cicisbeo, Giovanelli . This is exactly as Emile prescribes for the education of young ladies : ' she should be lively, merry and eager....enjoy all the innocent pleasures of youth' (Emile,p.337) ; she 'may be allowed a certain amount of coquetry' as part of the complex game by which she tests and chooses her mate . The proper study of womankind is man (Emile, pp349-50) .
Rousseau, then, drew a clear line between his 'natural man' who progresses unindoctrinated into society, and the 'social man' whom society theretofore had produced, and, as reward for Emile , Rousseau was given the Genevan equivalent of excommunication, as undermining the tenets of civic religion espoused in Geneva . The differing 'production lines' of 'social man' and 'natural man' are similarly drawn in Daisy Miller : Winterbourne, the product of the dark old city, crammed-full of data on Bonnivard, the Simplon and Hannibal, and greatly influenced--as we see in Rome--by the opinions not solely of Mrs Costello but also of the rest of the Wasp establishment ; and Daisy, the very unsophisticated coquette[ Emile's love happens to be called Sophie], the product of an upbringing along Emile lines, impervious at Vevey to the opinions of Mrs Costello or to the whisperings of the visitors to Chillon, but with, in her mother, no secure base to repair to when troubles loom .
This rift in the Jamesian American coterie is, then, no mere matter of intimacy with the courier : it is ideological, fundamental, all-embracing . When they all move to Rome, the fount of Catholicism, the Wasps are ever more alert, primed, beyond mere Veveyan distaste, to close ranks : in Rome, Daisy suffers Genevan excommunication without bell, book and candle . Of course, in Rome, Daisy's crime is to continue to be her natural self . In Vevey, she showed a preference for atmosphere--the starlit lake, the staircases and battlements of Chillon--and an interest in the sole young man available . In Rome, there is greater scope in both areas . Her interests expand, while those of the Genevan faction contract, and the go-between, Winterbourne, is here no longer a majority of one .
James uses the historical associations of two Roman place-names--the Pincio and the Colosseum--and the etymology of Miss Miller's 'familiar name' to impart the impression that, as in his specific fictional example, 'natural man'--or here 'natural woman'-- was always going to succumb before 'social man' : the result is, as it were, fore-ordained .
First, the Pincio . The primum mobile of Daisy's excommunication is the fact of her unchaperoned stroll in the Pincio Gardens in the company of two young gentlemen, Winterbourne and, horror of horrors, Giovanelli . The Pincio site has historical associations that reinforce the progressive ascription of 'shameless character' to Daisy . It was the site of the villa of Licinius Lucullus, notorious for his riches, lavish expenditure and legendary sumptuous banquets . In Daisy Miller it goes without saying that to Wasp eyes Daisy is being overly lavish with her company and, inferentially, with her favours . In the Pincio we find Daisy with her cicerone and Winterbourne, and when Mrs Walker, the guardian angel of Protestant morals, appears, Winterbourne is faced with the alternatives of pot luck with Daisy or excommunication by 'the angel' [Mrs Walker, pointedly, would not walk the Pincio, but hovers round it, above ground, in her carriage] . Daisy is impervious to her solicitations, but Winterbourne is swayed, guided, by them . Secondly, this same Pincio villa was later purloined by the dissolute Messalina, third wife of the Emperor Claudius, after the owner was murdered at her instigation . The villa was then given over to orgy, unbridled licence . To the Genevan mentality, Daisy by her behaviour is the new Messalina, who, moreover, is lavish with herself in unacceptable company . She has become a Roman both ancient and modern, roaming around Rome with a Roman, a Papist : her own natural interpretation of 'When in Rome...' .
One manifestation of the Wasp siege-mentality is that in their fervour they reveal themselves more than they ought : Giovanelli is a fortune-hunter, and, at St Peter's, that young lady's...Miss Baker's, Miss Chandler's...Miss Miller's--deprecation, by Freudian slip, of those with recent roots in 'trade' . Winterbourne, despite his continuing beguilement, despite his defence of Daisy's innocence, ceased to meet her...because these shrewd people had quite made up their minds that she was going too far(76-7) : he opts for the side on which his bread is buttered . Outside and cut off from the bastion, Daisy responds by over-emphasising her desire to disregard opinion, for now she ignores opinions concerning her health, offered by those closest to her in spirit--her mother and Giovanelli--who have no socio-religious axe to grind . And so it is Daisy's pride which leads her off to savour the moonlit atmosphere of the Colosseum . [The Colosseum was built in the former Golden House complex of Nero : one recalls (47) that the Millers' Roman residence is all gold on the walls--again the sense of fore-ordination]
Daisy has flouted the social norms of the blue-stocking, star-spangled Wasp coterie wherever it settles its canton, and she falls under a ban of some ancestry and of great historical significance to the Reformed Faith . In 1555 at the Diet of Augsburg, the signatory princes agreed that each of them should have the right to banish from his territory any person not accepting the prince's faith--cuius regio eius religio . Annie Miller's hypocoristic name,'Daisy', has an identical etymology with 'Diet Augs'--'day's eye'. The meaning for Daisy in that etymology ironically underlines her exile : her preference for starry, moonlit nights converges with the symbol of her nationality, the blue, starry canton of the US flag, while the Day's Eye, the sun, is at the opposite temporal extreme to the night, just as Daisy is to carpet-bag America .
In thus setting forth in fiction the demise of Rousseau's 'natural woman' before 'social man', James seems to have depicted Rousseau as having lost the philosophical battle . But James gives Rousseau a redeeming nod . Rousseau says in Emile that if it is permitted that a child's attitude be shaped by opinion, then he will be deprived of his conscience . In her death throes, Daisy feels it important to communicate to Winterbourne not blame or invective, but appreciation for the trip to Chillon and the straightforward intimation that she had not excluded him from her thoughts in favour of Giovanelli : she is humane, and has a conscience . The inference of her message is that if Winterbourne had been more 'natural' and less 'social', they could have been Abelard and Heloise, twice-removed but not manques . As to the recipient, the novel concludes with him sounding the mysteries of Daisy's communication against the opinions of Mrs Costello, with not a hint of remorse for his exclusion of Daisy . His lack of conscience is a pointed, negative argument in favour of Daisy and Emile .
Winterbourne, restored to his niche at Vevey, is the modern-day Prisoner of Chillon, chained to Geneva and the Wasp mentality, and for whom Daisy was the little bird which temporarily lit up his existence . Her body lies in a Roman cemetery, but if he had a conscience it would be buried there before him in his Swiss cell, arousing indignation, self-questioning and remorse . As it is, the dark of Mrs Costello's opinions eclipses the light, the memory, of Daisy, and Winterbourne is definitively ensconced in the security of the Genevan fold . Daisy was simply a singular growth of last year's summer, and Winterbourne now is self-confined within the bournes, the bounds, of winter .
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