Individual vs. Society on Daisy Miller Research Proposal

Individual vs. Society on Daisy Miller - Research Proposal Example These traits are a stark contrast to the highly conventional, pretentious European society of old, making her the center of gossip and ill contempt. Even Winterbourne, who first found Daisy’s beauty attractive subsequently developed prejudice against her seemingly careless and wanton ways, although she really did nothing extraordinary that many young Americans are not doing today. In this story, the individual, a denizen of the new world, is unintentionally pitted against a decadent, prudish, traditional and old society as her course takes her into its midst. The conflict in Daisy Miller stems from the fact that the young female protagonist of the story is thrown into a culture and society distinct from her own. In the 1870s, the time when the story was written, Europe was an old decadent society steeped in traditions and conventions and America, especially New York where Daisy’s family originated, was a new, modern, coming-of-age nation. It was in this context that the young, modern American youth is thrown into as she travel as a tourist together with her mother, young brother and courier. Daisy Miller, which is said to be Henry James’ most well-known study of the ‘young feminine nature’, is described as a girl’s heedless rash indifference to the kind of decorum being observed in European civilized society. Although at first blush, her actions would seem to be one of the typical American traits of moral innocence, it turns out to be a want of discriminating judgment which tragically ended in her untime ly death (Berkovitch Cambridge University Press p. 163). Nonetheless, there was nothing terribly wrong in Daisy’s actuations from the modern-day perspective except perhaps the fact that she threw all caution to the wind when she went to the Colosseum in the middle of the night with her friend when the malaria epidemic was rampant. The matter with Daisy is that she personifies everything that is