"Daisy Miller" and "The Awakening"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the short stories, "Daisy Miller" by Henry James and "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin equally deal with society's expectations of women in the late 1800s. In particular, the paper looks at how there are many parallels within the themes, characters and message and how they both depict their central characters endeavoring to saw the cast that society has stringently put them in. The paper also shows how the main characters of both stories, Daisy Miller and Edna Pontellier, share similar traits and how immaturity and indecisiveness seem to plague these women in their quest to define themselves. The paper notes that a concluding comparison linking these two narratives is their ending, with both women, like the story, coming to their end.

From the Paper:

"Similarity lies in the two texts' addressing the roles of women in society and an attempt to define new roles for women. Daisy Miller, in Daisy Miller, is a young American girl traveling in Europe. She is commonly referred to throughout the text as, "a pretty American flirt (Lauter, 287)." Mr. Frederick Winterbourne, another central character in the text who is for a short time enamored by Daisy, states that Americans are "allowed" flirting. However, he says, "Miss Daisy Miller exceeded the liberal license allowed to these young ladies, it was probable that anything might be expected of her (Lauter, 291)." What separates Daisy Miller from proper young women is not only her highly flirtatious nature, but also her going out with men unaccompanied by her mother. In the late 1800's, it was improper for an unmarried woman to be with another man without a chaperone."

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