Henry James' Daisy Miller: The Tragedy of the Autonomous Self

1) The "World" as Sinful Construction

Craig M. Gay writes:

If we are 'conservative,' we have probably tended to think of the 'the world'--and hence 'worldliness'--in terms of temptations to various kinds of dissipation and to personal, and particularly sexual, immorality.  If we are 'liberal' in disposition, we have perhaps conceived of the 'world' in terms of socio-economic systems, and 'worldliness' as complicity in these evils.  Both views are certainly correct.  Personal immorality and socio-political injustices are indeed worldly evils to be condemned and avoided.  But what if it can be shown that both the 'conservative' and the 'liberal' positions, while partly correct, actually miss the heart of the matter?  What if the essence of 'the world'--and hence 'worldliness'--is not personal immorality and/or social injustice as such, but is instead an interpretation of reality that essentially excludes the reality of God from the business of life?

[. . . 'T]he world' is a human construction.  It represents a kind of false order that we construct for ourselves in the place of God's good creation.   Indeed, the cosmos is something we must continually reconstruct and maintain for ourselves in the face of threats posed to its unreal continuities and coherences by the real reality of created order and particularly by the reality of creation's Creator. [. . . We act as if ] the sorts of things we are able to observe in the ordinary course of events circumscribe the boundaries of the possible.  Our construction of 'the world,' in other words, is often premised upon the assumption that we are capable of comprehending reality in its totality, that we are capable of rendering it stable and predictable, and that we are capable-at least in principle--of making reality work for us. [. . .] Indeed, it is the very nature of 'the world' to prevent us from recognizing the existence of anything beyond sensible and temporal regularities.
[. . .] For once we have reduced reality to a 'world' of things and objects, which is the end-product of this convenient fiction, we can begin to exert our will over reality, and we can begin to act 'as gods' within. (5-7)

According to Gay, the world (or cosmos to invoke the New Testament term) is the way in which human beings seek to understand the world without God as its source and lord.  In modern times, we live our daily lives, make our economic, political, and many times even ethical decisions, and create and experience culture without considering God.  At best, we have privatized our spiritual lives in such a way that spirituality is reduced to something personal and domestic.

2) Conditions of the Modern Self:

• The modern self assumes an autonomy that seeks to reject the claims of authority, tradition, or community.
• The modern self searches for personal therapy that only results in the subjective experience of well-being.
• The true, the good, and the beautiful are undiscoverable, so they are judged as not applicable to human experience.
• The modern self has moved from an emphasis on redemption of character to liberation from social inhibitions.
• Identity is self-constructed through the self-consumption of products of desire.
• Such claims about identity and truth call for technical mastery of the environment, as well as a division between the public and private spheres of reality.

Adapted from Gay, Craig M. The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It's Tempting to Live As If God Doesn't Exist. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

3) Peter Berger's Six Propositions on The Nature of Western Individuality

The image above is of Torsten Renqvist's 1971 Ordet. It is an image of Christ. I have chosen to include it here because it represents a very Romantic notion of Christ, one who is a self-actualized hero. Christ projects himself by force of will outside of his circumstances. By the power of his imagination, he overcomes the wounding he receives in his hands. Renqvist's vision of Christ is essentially a modernist one, in which creed and religion have been reduced to a therapeutic desire for internal expression. In this sense, Ordet is emblematic of the false solutions that the modern self is left with.

James' Daisy Miller is concerned with a number of issues revolving around the expectations of societies (European and American), the mores of family, social set, and romance, as well as the search for acceptability within these spheres of influence. James in his essay "The Art of Fiction" argues that "a novel is a personal and direct impression of life," but it is one that seeks to produce what the author regards as a realistic portrait of life, both good and evil. The novel is particularly powerful for its ability to dramatize consciousness. Likewise, incidents follow from character; the plot results from the inclination of characters. In James' mind, it is a mistake to separate one from the other. Consider, as you work through the questions below, how James conceives of his characters' dilemmas. What is he saying about the nature of the world and individuals? Is he correct?