|
Justin Chen Daisy Miller and the Discourse of Innocence The difficulty for Mr. Winterbourne, the unfortunate protagonist of Henry James’ Daisy Miller, is that his infatuation with the title character comes in continual conflict with the glaring societal impropriety of the majority of her actions. Winterbourne’s attempts to reconcile his feelings for Daisy with his continued frustration over her seeming imprudence ultimately end in frustration, for she seems destined to remain an inscrutable enigma to him despite his best efforts to decipher her true nature. At the root of Winterbourne’s dilemma is his inability to find a simple answer to the oft-raised question of her innocence. In choosing to contemplate this particular question, Winterbourne (and the other characters in the novel) commits a common structuralist blunder, for he supposes that if Daisy is not innocent, she must surely be guilty. Yet as post-structuralists like Derrida would contend, such a binary opposition is simple-minded, societally imposed, and ultimately invalid. Indeed, Winterbourne’s inability to come to terms with Daisy’s frustrating behavior is the product of an inflexible Foucaultian discourse that mandates the opposition of guilt and innocence, a discourse from which Daisy attempts to extricate herself. At the novel’s opening, James sets up an interesting situation in which the characters seem free to interact in a manner which would likely be considered improper in most other locales. Winterbourne is at first extremely cautious when speaking with Daisy, for “in Geneva, as he had been perfectly aware, a young man was not at liberty to speak to a young unmarried lady except under certain rarely occurring conditions” (51). (i) Thus, even at this early stage in the novel, it is apparent that the discourse of propriety is exclusively determined by society. “But,” James adds, “here, at Vevey, what conditions could be better than these?—a pretty American girl coming and standing in front of you in a garden” (51). Winterbourne is clearly rationalizing his decision to initiate conversation with Daisy, for discovering a pretty American girl in a garden would hardly be an acceptable reason to violate social convention in Geneva, but the rules appear to have changed in Vevey. This blurring of etiquette as a function of geographical location provides an interesting commentary on the subject of discourse, for it seems that whether an action is considered “proper” depends merely on its context, suggesting in turn that there is no absolute notion of propriety. As Foucault argues in The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, “We must conceive discourse as a violence that we do to things, or, at all events, as a practice we impose upon them” (229; 97). (ii) Foucault’s language suggests a strong sense of the subject-object dichotomy—that is, as discussed earlier, an external agent (society in the case of Daisy Miller) imposes a certain discourse on humanity. For Winterbourne, the discourse of propriety seems to undergo a transformation depending on the society to which he is at the moment answerable, a situation that would be impossible if discourse were inflexible and propriety not socially determined but external and absolute. Yet Winterbourne himself seems to be unaware of this peculiar conditionality despite his capitalization upon it for romantic purposes, for he continually tries to confine Daisy to his own binary oppositions, and in so doing, he subjects her to his own particular brand of discourse. For instance, shortly after meeting Daisy for the first time, Winterbourne decides it “very possible” that she is a “coquette” (53), but he cannot seem to determine whether her single-minded pursuit of “gentlemen’s society” (57) is innocent or not. The resolution of this question is vital for Winterbourne, for his discourse allows only two possibilities: either Daisy is innocent or she is guilty. This inflexible binary opposition is clearly outlined when Winterbourne’s aunt, the elderly Mrs. Costello, accuses him of being “too innocent” (64). “My dear aunt, I am not so innocent,” he insists, to which she then retorts significantly, “You are too guilty then?” (64). For Winterbourne and other members of James’ imagined society, then, these clearly defined categories appear to be the only two available options. Yet throughout the novel, Winterbourne continues to be amazed by Daisy’s refusal to occupy either of the two inflexible roles allowed by his discourse. He describes her variously as “an extraordinary mixture of innocence and cruelty” (78), an “inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence” (90) and an “odd mixture of audacity and puerility” (101). By the end of the novel, Winterbourne is willing to attribute this ambiguity to Daisy’s immense capacity for performance—and to a certain extent, this assessment is correct, for Daisy often speaks or acts with the sole intention of producing an effect or reaction. (On page 73 she declares, “That’s all I want—a little fuss!”). At the same time, though, one still feels that Daisy simply cannot be defined by the binary opposition of Winterbourne’s (and society’s) selection. In his struggle to understand Daisy’s motivation, Winterbourne would do well to reexamine the discourse that he allows to define his relationship with her. As Foucault, and later Butler, have argued, the imposition of a particular discourse is a manner of exerting power, and no one is more deeply affected by the “violence” of this imposition than the inscrutable object of Winterbourne’s desire. Yet Daisy is not merely a helpless victim of the prevailing discourse. Rather, by stubbornly refusing to be categorized as innocent or guilty, she seems to enact a conscious resistance to the prevailing discourse. Winterbourne himself begins to suspect Daisy’s resistance near the end of the novel. At the same time that he feels Daisy is too “uncultivated” and “provincial” to realize that her actions have caused her to be shunned from society at large, he still cannot help but also feel a conviction that she “carrie[s] about in her elegant and irresponsible little organism a defiant, passionate, perfectly observant consciousness of the impression she produce[s]” (106). Thus, perhaps the correct question to be posed is not whether Daisy is innocent, but whether she is conscious of her precarious position at the dividing line between innocence and guilt. Perhaps the answer to this new question is provided by Daisy herself when she is all but commanded by Mrs. Walker to get in her carriage and to cease parading around on the streets of Rome with two male attendants. After Winterbourne joins in on the side of Mrs. Walker, Daisy gives a “violent laugh” and rejoins, “If this is improper… then I am all improper, and you must give me up” (93). The unspoken message behind this significant refusal of Mrs. Walker is that the definition of what is proper must be reexamined. Daisy seems to be saying that she refuses to accept the discourse of propriety (and innocence) that has been forced on her by society. Thus, Daisy is in a way engaged in a sort of Butlerian resistance to categorization. In Imitation and Gender Insubordination, Butler calls cases in which the distinctions between genders and sexualities are blurred or confused “sites of disruption, error, confusion, and trouble [that] can be the very rallying points for a certain resistance to classification and to identity as such” (1516; 105). (iii) Butler’s claim seems eminently suited for this discussion of Daisy, who seems to have grasped upon just such a “site of disruption”—in this case, the ambiguity of the discourse on innocence—and has decided to use it as a rallying point for resisting her own subjection to categorization. Here, the theories of post-structuralism can also inform a reading of the novel. Just as Derrida contests the nature-culture opposition in Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences by invoking the incest taboo common to both categories, Daisy has discovered in the weak distinction between innocence and guilt a powerful weapon against society’s discursive impositions. By choosing to be ambiguous, she actively demonstrates the arbitrary nature of the binary opposition she opposes. Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of Daisy Miller is its suggestion that the reader must revise his or her own acceptance of discourse after encountering the text. Throughout the novel, the need for such a challenging of perspectives and reevaluation of values is continually implied, even at the very opening of the story when Winterbourne has just met Randolph, Daisy’s younger brother. Upon spotting Daisy, Winterbourne announces that “American girls are the best girls” (51), to which Randolph retorts, “My sister ain’t the best!… She’s always blowing at me” (52). Interestingly enough, Winterbourne’s response is to say, “I imagine that is your fault, not hers” (51). On a first reading of the novel, this statement seems unremarkable—a rather natural sort of thing to say to a “young urchin of nine or ten” (49). Yet from the larger context of resistance outlined above, Winterbourne’s use of the word “fault” is noteworthy because it automatically implies the guilt-innocence opposition. Perhaps it is true that Daisy is “always blowing at” society and its conventions, but whose fault is that? As in the case of the hyperactive Randolph, perhaps it is actually society that provokes Daisy’s seemingly improper actions, for it demands that she neatly fit into its discourse of innocence. (iv) In another striking example of the reevaluation of perspectives, Daisy’s mother, Mrs. Miller (a periphery character for most of the novel), discusses her feelings about the various European cities that she has visited. When asked about Rome, she says, “Well, I must say I am disappointed… We had heard so much about it; I suppose we had heard too much. But we couldn’t help that. We had been led to expect something different” (82). Again, although this seemingly innocuous statement appears to have little to do with the discourse of innocence, it is actually charged with displaced meaning. Mrs. Miller seems to be the victim of another discourse—that of prior expectations. It is interesting to note that she admits that she “couldn’t help” having had falsely inflated hopes about Rome. That is, although Mrs. Miller’s choice to base her impressions of a city solely on what she had heard of it before actually arriving there may seem like a poor one, she ultimately had very little choice in the matter. Just as discourse is imposed as a violence, Mrs. Miller’s expectations have been implanted in her in a manner that is out of her control, and she cannot disregard them once they are in place. The inflexibility of the discourse of prior expectations in this case mirrors that of the discourse of innocence, which forces Daisy to live up to a certain standard or else be deemed guilty by virtue of the accepted binary opposition. As mentioned earlier, Winterbourne seems to have far less of a problem with the discourse of innocence, perhaps because of his favored status in a society which is extremely indulgent to males. After all, as Mrs. Costello informs him, “Of course a man may know everyone. Men are welcome to the privilege!” (79). He seems fairly unconstrained by societal dictums of impropriety, and, once he has discovered Daisy’s rather imperturbable nature, even seems to feel a certain liberty in addressing her; in one scene at Mrs. Walker’s party, James writes, “[Daisy] had allowed him up to this point to talk so frankly that he had not expectation of shocking her by this ejaculation” (100). Perhaps in presenting the stark contrast between society’s treatment of the two sexes, James wishes to point out to the reader the truly arbitrary nature of the reigning discourse that exerts power over us all. In retrospect, it is almost comical for the reader to consider that shortly after meeting her, Winterbourne finds himself “grateful for having found the formula that applied to Miss Daisy Miller” (58). Such a feat as summarizing Daisy in a formula remains elusive to Winterbourne even at the end of the novel, for Daisy seems to be a character who defies all formulas and attempts at characterization. Whereas Winterbourne, Mrs. Costello, Mrs. Walker, and all the other disapproving onlookers live in a world ruled by a discourse of propriety that only allows for a rigid binary opposition of guilt and innocence, Daisy refuses to submit to such a structure, preferring instead to be called “all improper.” Like Derrida from the post-structuralist school, Daisy dismantles a useless binary opposition by demonstrating its invalidity. And like Butler, she purposely chooses to access the point of ambiguity between guilt and innocence as a rallying point for resistance to the power structure of an externally applied Foucaultian discourse. Perhaps, then, the focus on Daisy’s innocence is ultimately misguided. We must shift our attention to the society that dictates discourse and, like Winterbourne to Randolph, simply state, “I imagine that is your fault, not hers.”
i) James, Henry. Daisy Miller. Penguin Books Ltd.; New York, NY. 1986. Citations show page numbers in parentheses. ii) Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (Tr: Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato). Structuralism, Semiotics, and Deconstruction. Citation is (Page in original text; Page in course reader). iii) Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” Citation is (Page in original text; Page in course reader). iv) It may be instructive to refer to Britney Spears’ work titled “Oops! I Did it Again” for a further examination of resistance to the imposition of discourse. Spears states, “Oops, you think I’m in love, that I’m sent from above,” adding, “I’m not that innocent.” Like Daisy, Spears chooses a point of ambiguity as a rallying point against confinement by the prevailing discourse. In this case, she resists her would-be lover’s attempts to characterize her love for him. HA! Just kidding. You are right, Britney is not good literature. |