Similarities in the Characters of Daisy Miller and Miss Grief
Topic: Academic Papers

Daisy Miller and Miss Grief seem about as different as the two authors from whom they emerged. At first glance, one notices all the external trappings that define a person are at odds: Daisy Miller is young, wealthy and social; Miss Grief is older, poor and anti-social. Even when one delves a little deeper, the difference remains, for Daisy is no great thinker, while Miss Grief is a writer concerned with her art.

However, one doesn?t have to be too great a thinker to begin to notice the similarities. They are both women, that is obvious enough, and their names are the story titles, and are also descriptive of their persona. They are both engaged in behavior that is frowned upon specifically because they are women?that is to say, behavior men were perfectly entitled to, if not encouraged in. Both are martyred to an unforgiving society. And even to the extent that they are viewed with a sort of morbid curiosity by the major male character (who just so happens to be the narrator in both stories) they are the same.

Miss Grief, by Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Daisy Miller, by Henry James, have their similarities even as stories. For instance, they were set in Rome, contemporaneously with their publications. Both have female protagonists who are newcomers of some sort and both stories are narrated from the point of view of a well-meaning, yet calculating man of society. Winterbourne, the male protagonist in Daisy Miller, is, in many ways, similar to the unnamed narrator in Miss Grief, both of whom have a style of detached commentary, an air of sophistication and vanity, and both ultimately capitulate to compassion for these two women at the end. Both do bear some resemblance to Henry James himself? happenstance in regards to the unnamed narrator, in Winterbourne?s case perhaps an intentional Jamesian technique.

Daisy Miller: A Study was published in 1879, just one year before Constance Fenimore Woolson would arrive in Europe and publish Miss Grief. While it has been speculated that Miss Grief is reflective of Woolson?s experience and relationship with James, such critics fail to take into account that she only met James shortly before it was published, and after it had been written (Lauter). Nevertheless, the two met in 1880 and remained friends until her death in 1894 (Buonomo).

The character of Miss Grief is aptly named, for she is the epitome of failure and sorrow in her shabby black gown, so ?rheumatic? looking when wet. Likewise, Daisy Miller is fitting for such a pretty, but common girl who is being ?milled? through the machine that is ?polite? society. Miss Grief is obviously in ill health due to her extreme poverty, while Daisy is the picture of youth; she has not yet lost her bloom.

Both women suffer horribly because of an inability to deny some part of themselves that is seen as unconventional and therefore offensive. Daisy is social to an uncomfortable (for others) degree and engages in activity that was thought improper for a woman at the time, such as going out late with foreign men, without even the benefit of a chaperone. Miss Grief, however, is guilty of another sin; she undertakes a man?s profession, or dreams of it, anyway. Both poverty and the comment by Serena/Martha that it was ?you, you?YOU literary men? who had ?racked and stabbed? Miss Grief suggest that Miss Grief was unable to achieve the writing career she wanted.

Both stories employ the themes of innocence/decay and the general inhumanity of people towards each other, themes that are characteristic of the work coming out of the American expatriate community in Europe at the time. James is largely responsible for the vogue of this style, being very prolific and ambitious, as well as involved in the literary community as both a writer and a critic. He wrote 22 novels, 113 tales, 15 plays, the equivalent of about 10 books of criticism, 7 travel books, 3 autobiographical volumes, and 2 biographies. Approx-imately 15,000 of his letters is extant (Campbell).

While it is easy to see the innocence inherent in Daisy Miller, a closer look is required to see such a quality in Miss Grief. Pretty young girls in pretty dresses with gregarious dispositions are often thought of as innocent, though it is only the narrator, Daisy herself, her family and Gionvelli who see Daisy as such in the story. The rest of society assumes her innocence to be willful ignorance, for which she will pay, they are sure. It is just this society that represents decay, however. They are of the old world, content in their rotting Rome, clinging desperately to some notion of tradition by trying to enforce prevailing social convention.

Miss Grief is not the picture of innocence. She is the picture of grief, and yet innocence abounds in her, as it does in Daisy. She shows up time and time again on the narrator?s doorstep, unaware or unconcerned that her forwardness might be frowned upon. The narrator mocks her to the reader all the way up to the point where she impresses him with her recitation of his work. Woolson is so keen in telling the tale that one can?t help but see this small, haggard, imminently hopeful woman, with her hands clasped before her and all the while staring off into the distance, begin to speak his words. Indeed, innocence can come in all sorts of wrappings.

The theme of decay that runs through Miss Grief is evident in the squalid, sparse living conditions of Miss Grief and her aunt, and in the literary society, which continues to pass over Miss Grief?s genius like a spotlight passing over an escaped convict. With every pass the convict is sure he?ll be spotted and yet he is missed, and missed again. The implication is that she was looked over, despite her genius, because she was a woman. Even the narrator concedes her genius after she is dead, when he has no motive, save truth, for doing so.

Both Daisy Miller and Miss Grief have been judged harshly by their respective societies, and both been subject to the cruelty of that judgment. Daisy Miller is shunned by polite society as a result of her transgressions, leaving her more and more isolated. Miss Grief is not only shunned by the publishing society, the narrator himself shuns her until the moment his vanity is provoked by her recitation. His compassion for her is only belatedly roused, too late to save her.

Both women eventually die tragically and are put in their place, their graves symbolizing the cold lines of Victorian social convention that they had dared cross. Daisy Miller is buried in a small Protestant cemetery in Rome while Miss Grief is escorted to her grave by only Aunt Martha and our narrator. Her manuscripts go with her, guaranteeing her eternal anonymity.



Works Cited
Buonomo, Leonardo. The Literary Encyclopedia Online. www.litencyc.com

Campbell, Kate. The Literary Encyclopedia Online. www.litencyc.com

James, Henry. Miss Daisy Miller.

Lauter, Paul, Ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Online. www.college.hmco.com

Woolson, Constance Fenimore. Miss Grief.

Spring 2003