Irony In Daisy Miller

Henry James(1843-1916) is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest American novelists and critics. He is also hailed as a great ironist. However, there is little systematic study of Henry James’ s art of irony both at home and abroad and even less study of irony in Daisy Miller, the first work to bring him international fame and his most successful fiction during his lifetime. This paper attempts to explore Henry James’ s ironical techniques embedded in Daisy Miller and the functions and effects they contribute to the whole work.Irony permeates many aspects of Daisy Miller including language, character, setting, events, and narrative point of view, helping the characterization and serving the international theme. Henry James’ s irony touches nearly every character who can be grouped roughly into three groups: the free American girl, the Europeanized Americans, and half-Europeanized Americans. The body of this paper devote three chapters to analyze ironies employed on them. Chapter two concentrates on Henry James’ s tragic irony on the free American girl Daisy. Dramatic irony and irony of fate on Daisy show Daisy’s innocence and Henry James’ s sympathy for her. Chapter three centers on Henry James’ s satiric irony on Europeanized Americans. Henry James employs verbal ironies and situational ironies especially self-betraying irony to expose Mrs Costello’s and Mrs Walker’s vulgarity, hypocrisy, snobbishness, narrowness and intolerance, and to satirize the decadent European social convention and morality. Chapter four focuses on Henry James’ s comic irony and satiric irony on the half-Europeanized American Winterbourne. Winterbourne’s formality is kept under comic and moral surveillance and the restraint of social convention and morality is also satirized.This paper draws the conclusion that ironies in Daisy Miller help the characterization, create tragicomic effects and enhance the theme. Through ironies, Henry James articulates his attitudes towards his international subject-- his sympathy towards American innocence and disapproval of European sophistication-- and his laments over the destroying of innocence and frank nature by the conventions of “civilized” society.