Let’s dig into our year-long series on short fiction. I’ve started with Daisy Miller by Henry James.
It might not be the best one to start with, because I wanted to examine how writers tighten up their prose and structure and so on for shorter works. James is known for extreme care in his prose, even in long works like Portrait of a Lady.
In general, I’m going to try to go in chronological order so we can look at how short fiction has evolved (see below for the whole list).
Daisy Miller Plot Structure
Daisy Miller originally appeared in a magazine in 1878. It is a novella-length work.
The story is told over four scenes. Each scene is basically an event that occurs while Daisy, an American, is traveling in Europe. A lot of James’ themes we’ve seen before appear: reputation, independence, society, roles.
Daisy meets a man named Winterbourne while traveling in Switzerland.
She flirts with him, and since they don’t have a history, he can’t tell if she is a free spirit who doesn’t care how society views her or if she is, for lack of a better word, slutty.
In either case, he likes that she does what she wants.
They then meet up again the following year. She has taken up with an Italian but still flirts with Winterbourne. He decides she probably just flirts with everyone.
She stays out too late with the Italian, and Winterbourne tries to warn her of the danger. She catches malaria and dies.
Themes
I knew nothing about this before reading it, so I was kind of surprised at this ending. Much of the second half of the novella revolves around Winterbourne figuring out a note Daisy sends him in which she declares that she cares what he thinks.
This draws out the theme of following roles set out by society.
In one sense, it indicates she doesn’t care what other people think. In another sense, it shows how much Daisy really cared for Winterbourne. She’d listen to him and no one else.
Winterbourne had the opportunity to save Daisy. He made the decision to not bring her in from the mosquitoes in a heated moment of passion.
The novella is warning us about how fast tragedy can strike. Sometimes ridiculous split-second decisions can cost a life. It’s only after it’s too late that Winterbourne realizes how terrible a mistake he made.
But Winterbourne goes on with his life.
Modern Takeaway
The tone of the novella suggests the whole thing is gossip, and Winterbourne treats the tragedy as gossip. This seems a warning more relevant for today than for the time it was written.
We hear about tragedies and gossip as if they are entertainment, then promptly forget them. There’s something disturbing in how we remove ourselves from the fact that gossip is about a human who has their own feelings and life.
Late in the novella, Winterbourne changes his opinion about Daisy. When she is most taken with the Italian, he sees her as irresponsible and in defiance of society.
He later sees her as innocent, and she just didn’t realize how society saw her indiscretions. This was the most interesting to me, because: how many times have we seen the public side of a person only to realize they aren’t at all like that? We have to give people a chance despite whatever reputation they might be carrying when we meet them.
Final Thoughts
Structurally, James executes the novella brilliantly. For a work so short, many years of time get covered. He accomplishes this by using four focused scenes.
The reader then must infer the events between the scenes from context. A lesser writer might fill the reader in with exposition, but this would be boring to read.
One thing I was surprised about was to see that dialogue had a lot of excess surrounding it. Modern sensibilities suggest that the dialogue should speak for itself. Adding too much to the tags is repetitive and distracting. I’m talking about things like:
“Of course I care to know!” Daisy exclaimed seriously. “But I don’t believe it…”
I think most serious editors these days would flag that and either remove “seriously” or change the tag entirely to “Daisy said,” because it’s clear from the words and exclamation point that Daisy is exclaiming and serious.
I’m curious to see if this type of excess gets pared back as we move to modern novellas and short stories.