Marx and Henry James

I just re-read the Henry James novella Daisy Miller a short time ago, and saw that it was clearly layered with many ideals of the industrializing Western capitalist; therefore making it a perfect text to expose through a Marxist perspective. There is so much to write on this short and dense text, but not nearly enough time, so here is my brief and general introduction to what could be so much more…

Against the Social Bourgeoisie

With a modernizing West, class has become something that is no longer exclusively connected to monetary wealth. Even within the same general group of people, there are factors always present that act as measures of differentiation. There are members of every respective group that exist at the top of a social order with the rest falling somewhere below for one reason or another. Modernity and industry has become the defining force of change, with this change came ideals and moral sensibilities directed at all for the purpose of homogenizing (and therefore controlling).

In Europe during the latter half of the nineteenth century this shift was more present than anywhere. The power of European culture over the individual was essential to the propagation of the modern Western world. In the Henry James novella Daisy Miller there is a distinction between different types of class; every character belongs to one side of class or another. While the primary characters are all financially wealthy, they belong, as individuals, to different groups within the upper class. Daisy Miller can be understood as a study in contrast and a story of conflict; Daisy Miller is a character that is unrefined and crude, while at the same time innocent. The personal traits, as well as the internal and external confrontations are all revealed by setting Daisy against a modern European background concerned with distinctly established morals and social decorum. The ‘personal’ trait develops from class, and these traits result in confrontations between individuals and groups. It has aptly been stated that “[t]he motor for social change can come only from a sense of social difference that is based on a conflict of interest, not a liberal pluralism in which differences are finally subordinated to a consensus whose function is to maintain those differences essentially as they are” (Fiske 19).

This text exposes a reality of high society opposing low society, and though it’s not the same as a material base of distinction like rich against poor, it is very similar. These ‘moral’ criticisms levied at the members of low society (or ‘new money’ as in this text) are ultimately baseless no matter the reason, because the grounds of judgment never look at the individual. This rejection of the individual for the sake of the homogenized high society highlights the fact that “[t]here cannot be, nor is there nor will there ever be ‘equality’ between the oppressed and the oppressors, between the exploited and the exploiters” (Lenin 121). Daisy Miller presents a clear departure from any enlightened and modern way of thinking when it comes to the ideals of social decorum. If it is a matter of climbing the social chain no one can escape, and none are uninhibited by it’s power; and if it comes to staying in whatever position you exist, then none below you can expect an unbridled existence. The capitalistic desires consume all in this text, but none more than the woman—one ultimately comes to the conclusion that not just every woman in this text, but every woman in the world is bound by some form of male-centered capitalistic desires. Never is a “[m]an’s vision of woman […] objective, but [rather] an uneasy combination of what he wishes her to be and what he fears her to be, and it is to this mirror image that woman has had to comply… [A] woman is taught to desire not what her mother desired for herself, but what her father and all men find desirable in a woman. Not what she is, but should be” (Figes 17).

The proletariat share much in common with the socially destitute, no matter their pecuniary circumstances. The fate of Daisy Miller is a response from the social bourgeoisie to the threat of her presence. She is judged by the bourgeois ideologies that become intrinsic pieces of culture as “the emphatic and systematic proclamation of what is” (Adorno 118). It is difficult to understand the specific position of Daisy from a modern perspective, but looking at her as an individual set against an anti-individual mass culture makes her story one that persists as much today as before. Daisy Miller presents the a modern human condition with typical nineteenth century ending for a woman that contests her given position in the world. An individual that threatens a system is in the minority, which proves to be a very dangerous position whether that individual is right or wrong.

Works Cited

Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Stanford UP, 2002. Print.

Figes, Eva. Patriarchal Attitudes Women in Society. New York: Persea, 1987. Print.

Fiske, John. Understanding Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 1991. Print.

James, Henry. Daisy Miller. London: Penguin, 2007. Print.

Lenin, Vladimir I. V.I. Lenin, Collected Works. “Soviet Power and the Status of Women.” 4^th

ed. Vol. 30. Moscow: Progress, 1965. 120-23. Print.