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Explain The Deeper Meaning Behind The Themes of The Book
Explain The Deeper Meaning Behind The Themes of The Book
becomes unable to differentiate between Daisys reputation and her true nature, between what appears to be immoral behavior and what is in reality only youthful, American impetuousness. He, too, judges by appearances and pays for it with the guilt he feels after Daisys death.
1.4 Sacrifice
Writing to a friend about Daisy Miller, Henry James said, The whole idea of the story is the little tragedy of a light, thin, natural, unsuspecting creature being sacrificed as it were to a social rumpus that went on quite over her head and to which she stood in no measurable relation. Daisy is, above all else, uncultivated. She has no understanding of the implications of her behavior, and in her ignorance lies her innocence. Her rejection by American society abroad and eventually Winterbourne (beginning with the symbolic scene in the Colosseum, site of Christian martyrdom)
indirectly leads to her death. Daisy is a martyr to the intolerance of Europeanized Americans.