Ladies and Gentlemen

The character, Winterbourne, while obsessing over Daisy Miller, also shows his focus on how gentlemen and ladies should act.
As he tries to figure out the character of Daisy Miller, he notes on her actions and how it fits into societal expectations. Because of her beauty, he expects her to fit into his fantasy of a perfectly polite girl of the "best society", yet it is the ways in which she shocks both him and all those watching her, that keep him interested.
When Winterbourne arrived in Rome, "he was annoyed at hearing of a state of affairs so little in harmony with an image of a very pretty girl looking out of an old Roman window and asking herself urgently when Mr. Winterbourne would arrive." He wanted her to fall for him easily and be dreaming about his arrival, yet he was greatly interesting her because of the way she had a slight scandal to her by going to the castle alone with him.
Winterbourne kept trying to convince himself and others that Daisy was a "nice girl". It isn't until towards the end of the book that, "he came back to the question whether this was in fact a nice girl. Would a nice girl - even allowing for her being a little American flirt - make a rendezvous with a presumably low-lived foreigner?" (33). And it isn't until after Daisy's death that Winterbourne isn't clouded by her prettiness and decides that she wasn't the dream girl he tried to make her out to be.
Whether Daisy was ignorant of how to act like a lady or not, she caught attention by not acting as one. Daisy embodies the way women are asked to fit a certain image by following the rules of behavior set for them. She tells Winterbourne clearly, "I have never allowed a gentlemen to dictate to me, or to interfere with anything I do." (32). And yet he keeps persisting that she must be the pretty doting sweetheart that he wants her to be.