As humans, we're always looking to categorize, to type, to classify...We always want things and people to fit into pre-designated categories or types, making it easier for us to understand them. We don't like it when these people and things don't exactly fit into a "box" of some sort. Outliers are confusing.
Daisy Miller in Henry James' eponymous text stands out as one of these types of people we can't completely figure out. Daisy possesses an inherent complexity that troubles and intrigues us as readers. While Daisy appears extremely innocent and naïve on the surface, her conduct and manners speak otherwise; in the words of Winterbourne, Daisy is "very charming, but how deucedly sociable!" (James 10). We, along with Winterbourne, can't decide whether we like or dislike Daisy. Especially when she passes suddenly at the end of the story, we don't know whether to condemn her as a girl who paid the price for her pride, ignorance, and lack of decorum, or if she was indeed a naïve girl who was tragically misguided and confused?
I think it's important for us to relish this confusion and ambiguity a bit. It's far more interesting for us to explore various interpretations of Daisy and her storyline and to contemplate James' potential disparate intentions rather than to be frustrated with our not being able to categorize her in one way or another. Part of the beauty of this James piece is in how it gets us thinking about both Daisy and Winterbourne's characters (since Winterbourne is the lens through which we see and evaluate Daisy) in different ways.
I agree with your idea that we need to relish in the ambiguity of characters. I've also noticed that this type of enigmatic character is consistently seen in the works we read in class, such as with Bartleby or in many of Poe's stories. We also see characters that don't exactly fit into a "box" as you mention in your post, such as with Hester Prynne. Perhaps this complex psyche that is so commonly seen in these 19th century works is indicative of the changing nature of society at this time and the search for identity that many readers and writers experienced themselves.
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