Collisions Of Moral Values In Daisy Miller

Henry James who lived at the turn of 19th and 20th century is a famous American realist and the forerunner of the modern psychological novels. He spent many years living in Europe. He had a deep and subtle observation on the life of the upper class in America and Europe. He experienced the cultural differences between America and Europe profoundly.Europe is an old continent with a long history of development. It has experienced all the phases that a society should experience during its development: slavery, feudalism and capitalism. Living in such a continent Europeans' way of life and behaviors are controlled by a set of strict moral standards. Influenced and restrained by the established moral values, Europeans become ritual and formal. In their mind, there exists the distinct hierarchy. They are hypocritical and sophisticated in social association. However America is a rapidly developed country. It has a short history without experiencing slavery and feudalism. Because of its distinctive development progress, Americans have different moral values. They pursue liberty, equality and fraternity. The differences between American and European moral values make them impossible not to collide with each other when they meet. The book of Daisy Miller is just the preliminary inquiry about this subject. The thesis is to argue the collisions of moral values between America and Europe by analyzing the setting, the characters and the themes of the novella.