Females in H. James’ and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Novels Term Paper

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This way or another every piece of literary work is intended to reflect the society the characters are destined to live in. If we assume that human life exists by certain laws, one of the laws will concern the coexistence of men and women. The thing is that in the most general sense they cannot live without each other, their lives are in close interdependence. Men’s lives seem to be a context in which women’s lives exist and vice versa.

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  1. In the current paper we will observe this interdependence by the example of the female characters from the two works, namely, Daisy Miller from Henry James’s novella Daisy Miller (written in 1877) and Judy Jones from ’s short story Winter Dreams (1922). The paper will focus on the comparison of Daisy and Judy, we will seek differences and similarities in the ways they are represented with the special attention paid to the men’s reaction to both female characters.
  2. The first thing that comes to our mind is that in both works under consideration one can hardly define the main character: in James’s novella, one can hesitate between Daisy and Winterbourne, in Winter Dreams it is Dexter and Judy who pretend to be called the protagonist. Despite the lack of an obvious answer to the question of the main character, in both works, the women can be considered as determining factors of the plot’s development.
  3. Daisy Miller reveals the theme of Americans abroad through portraying the courtship of the American girl by her compatriot Winterbourne which takes place in the European settings. The girls’ flirtatiousness prevents the young people from being happy together.
  4. Daisy Miller is a wealthy, young, “pretty American girl” who travels with her mother and younger brother around Europe. The first descriptions of hers that the reader is given are as follows: “charming complexion”, “eyes were singularly honest and fresh”, she “was a coquette”, “she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no mockery, no irony” (James 5). The name of the character seems to be very symbolic; it means a flower in full bloom. But this is where another law of life comes in force: most flowers die in winter. The same happens to Daisy as she catches the Roman Fever and dies soon after.
  5. Still, the characters like Daisy seem to be immortal, they share their energy and desire to live with everyone, making him or she remember her liveliness and uniqueness. The immortality of this character is also predetermined by the fact that the girl stands to represent the whole country she has come from. It seems that by all her conduct Daisy wanted to prove Winterbourne’s remark that “American girls are the best girls” (James 5) The mixture of traits that she possesses gives the general impression of an average American: on the one hand, Daisy is fresh, ingenious, spirited, innocent and independent, on the other, she is shallow, ignorant and provincial, unaware of social distinctions and unwilling to adapt the norms and standards of others. One can say that Daisy’s traits can be considered as either virtues or faults. What one can be sure of is that she sharply contrasts the type of the “ugly American” tourist that her brother Randolph stands to represent in the novella. He is shown as gauche, boastful, and radically nationalistic. If we continue to observe contrasts in the work we will see that Winterbourne is depicted as ambivalent and unwilling to commit to any relationship as his name presupposes.
  6. Throughout the whole novel, one trait of the girl becomes a subject for Winterbourne’s “investigation”: he tries to decipher whether the girl is innocent or not. The word “innocent” is repeated several times and each time it acquires a different shade of meaning. We are inclined to think that three meanings of this word can be singled out from the context that the author creates:
  7. Ignorant – the girl’s ignorance/innocence is revealed in her conversations with others;
  8. Naïve – this meaning is used when speaking of Winterbourne in the second chapter of the book;
  9. Harmless – according to Winterbourne, this meaning applies to the Millers as a whole and Daisy as a part of the family.
  10. What is important is that Winterbourne’s understanding of Daisy’s innocence transforms from a harmless flirt as he assesses her conduct to a lack of any modesty and decency which in the long run puts Daisy beyond his interest and concern.
  11. When we first encounter the second female character under consideration she does not seem to be innocent. Even at the young age of eleven, she cannot be described as an innocent person. Judy Jones gets the following description by the author:
  12. […] beautifully ugly as little girls are apt to be who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men. The spark, however, was perceptible. There was a general ungodliness in the way her lips twisted, down at the corners when she smiled, and in the–Heaven help us!–in the almost passionate quality of her eyes. Vitality is born early in such women. It was utterly in evidence now, shining through her thin frame in a sort of glow (Fitzgerald 5).
  13. Being only eleven Judy is rather unpredictable and outrageous: her beautiful ugliness does not combine wither ordering people around or raising a golf club against her nurse. Starting from the first scene the author describes Judy as “passionate”, “radiant” and having “vitality”, she gives an impression of “intense life.” (Martin 159). The same can be told about Daisy from James’ novel.
  14. This liveliness of the characters is obvious for the reader due to the way the authors depicted their appearances. We can observe that both James and Fitzgerald managed to attract the reader’s attention to their characters’ appearances. We suppose that the reader is not merely described the physical attractiveness of their characters, but is provided with a male’s evaluation of the female beauty what is very important for the understanding of how men in both works saw their women. The bright description of the appearance prepares the reader for further character development. Indeed, later one reads about one of Judy’s admirers when she admits: “[…] I live in a house over there on the Island, and in that house, there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door I drove out of the dock because he says I’m his ideal.” (Fitzgerald 7) Mr. T. A. Hedrick says about the girl who does realize the benefits of her appearance that “All she needs is to be turned up and spanked for six months and then to be married off to an old-fashioned cavalry captain.” (Fitzgerald 17)
  15. Throughout the story, there are several references to the tendency of men to idealize Judy and to tame her, and this creates an intractable dilemma for her. What the girl strives for is to be treated fairly, not to become a victim of “an old-fashioned cavalry captain” and not be absurdly idealized, as by the man waiting in her house. “But these are the only ways men know how to react to her – either to tame or to idealize.” (Wardley 240)
  16. As for James’s study of the close interconnection between a woman’s realization of her beauty and her behavior Lynn Wardley’s observations seem to be justified. The critic claims:

Daisy Miller’s behavior exhibits either the self-determination of the flirt (“‘I’ve never allowed a gentleman to dictate to me or to interfere with anything I do’”) or the illusory nature of her mastery. James’s study of the “specimen” Daisy appeared to some grateful advice-givers to be prescriptive; it inoculated “innumerable” American girls, who “learned more from it than they would through a volume of well-intentioned maxims.” (Wardley 241)

In the two works under analysis, the characters knew about their beauty, realized that men worshipped it, and made use of this power.

What else unites the two characters is that both of them can be considered as a symbol of the American nation. But unlike Daisy who stands to represent an average American Judy is seen by Dexter as the epitome of what he believes to be the intense and passionate life of the American elite. If in James’ work we observe that Winterbourne rejects Daisy’s Americanism as unacceptable in the European setting, in Fitzgerald’s story Dexter strives to experience all benefits that his life can afford him with the help of Judy. Thus, while for Dexter his relationships with a beautiful woman were a door through which he could open the new world of the American elite, for Winterbourne possible affair with the young beauty was a way to moral downfall as he saw it.

Still, none of the characters was inclined to fall morally. Both of them were strong personalities and were never tamed or controlled by men or by the society they lived in. When Mrs. Costello tries to enclose Daisy “both within her carriage and within her social code” (Barnett 289), the young girl keeps to her moral principles and wants to alter society rather than her behavior. She says: “If I didn’t walk I should expire.” (James 78) In this respect Barnett claims:

Walking is the simple physical activity performed by an autonomous individual and also the motion of life itself, in contrast to the rigidity of social prescription and the stasis of death. For Daisy, life without the freedom to move under her power and by her direction is unthinkable (Barnett 291).

In Judy’s case when she turns out to be a loving wife and a caring mother she proves that “vitality and individuality in a woman do not necessarily negate her ability to be a good wife and mother, as Mr. Hedrick and Dexter believe.” (Wardley 240)

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Thus, the two characters compared, we conclude the following. Daisy Miller and Judy Jones’s moral principles and strivings are depicted through the perspective of their intercourse with the men around. The latter idealized their beauty and wanted to tame the women. Daisy and Judy’s inner passion and vitality helped them not to be broken either by these men’s attempts or by the public opinion. Some sort of paradox can be observed in both works: though the women’s flirtatiousness prevented them from being happy with their men, it gave them the power to survive in the world that wanted so much from them. The two female characters though differ in some aspects of their depiction present the authors’ view on an American woman, with all her virtues or faults. Daisy and Judy come to speak on behalf of female sex representatives of the American nation who are not afraid of one’s attractiveness and know the true value of it.

Works Cited

Barnett, Louise K. “Jamesian Feminism: Women in ‘Daisy Miller’.”Studies in Short Fiction16.4 (1979): 281-87.

Fitzgerald, Scott F. Winter Dreams. Kessinger Publishing, 2004.

“Henry James: Novels 1896-1899.” The Atlantic Monthly. 2003: 102-8.

Hollington, Michael. “Fitzgerald’s French.” Twentieth-Century Literature 49.1 (2003): 123.

“James, Henry, American Novelist and Critic.” The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th ed. 2007.

James, Henry. Daisy Miller. Penguin Classics, 2007.

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Martin, Quentin E. “Tamed or Idealized: Judy Jones’s Dilemma in ‘Winter Dreams’” F. Scott Fitzgerald: New Perspectives. Ed. by Jackson R. Bryer, Alan Margolies, and Ruth Prigozy. University of Georgia Press, 2000. 159-72.

Schwarz, Daniel R. The Humanistic Heritage: Critical Theories of the English Novel from James to Hillis Miller. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.

Simon, Linda. “A Miraculous Enlargement of Experience – A Profile of Henry James.” World and I . 2001: 260.

Wardley, Lynn. “Reassembling Daisy Miller.”American Literary History.(1991): 232-54.

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