The Conflict Of Innocence And Sophistication

Henry James is a well-known novelist, an essayist and a critic in American literature. He dedicated all his life in writing novels on"International theme". James is also primarily known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the conflict of America with Europe. And with women as central figure in his novels is another important feature in his works. Among all his excellent medium-length novels, Daisy Mille is the most remarkable and representative.The novel tells us a story about an American girl Daisy Miller's short tragic journey in Europe, from the perspective of a European American youth Winterbourne, who lived in Europe for a long time. Daisy Miller was young, beautiful, clever, innocent and natural. She traveled with her mother from America to Europe to enrich knowledge and culture. But in Europe they found that the society operated by different standards. Daisy grew up in America and was influenced deeply by the spirit of freedom, equality and democracy. She could not understand and obey the social laws there. She broke the social conventions and isolated herself from society. Her strange behavior aroused strong dissatisfaction from Europeans and European American immigrants. In the face of their slander and exclusion, Daisy rose up against the old forces without any hesitation and never stooped to compromise to get sympathy and favor. In pursuit of freedom and equality, she rebuked the society for all kinds of injustice and maintained the naive, forthright character of Americans. Due to the misunderstanding with Winterbourne, Daisy caught some kind of influenza by going out in the night of Rome and died.Many scholars believe the reason why Daisy Miller is so widely recognized and praised is that on the one hand it successfully created Daisy Miller this classic American female image. She struggled against Winterbourne, Mrs. Costello and Mrs. Walker——the representatives of the European traditional social morality. She led a free life according to her will and all her behaviors ran counter to social morality. In fact Daisy Miller is the typical representative of American culture, character and spirit, who also symbolizes the free, pure and independent women in the new world. Her constant resistance shows to the world that the new women desire to break the shackles of the feudal ethics, looking for freedom, which reflects women's self-consciousness. On the other hand, Daisy Miller is so popular because it exposes a prominent social problem——the cultural differences and the conflict between Europe and America. It was typical for James's fiction about the international theme of the tradition-less Americans confronting the complexity of European life and it was also typical for realist writers to examine the interplay between innocence and experience. Due to different historical development, Europe and America are quite different in the culture background, the view of female education and the view of love and marriage, etc. Europeans were more cultured, more concerned with art, and more aware of social etiquette; Americans were more innocent, and more concerned about the spirit of freedom, equality and democracy. And all these factors lead to the death of Daisy. This paper is an attempt to explore the deep-seated reasons for Daisy Miller's tragedy through analyzing the character images in the novel with the background of Cultural conflict and integration of Europe and America.