Freedom and its Constraints: Byronic Allusions in Henry James’s “Daisy Miller”
Joel J. Janicki, Soochow University,
Taipei, Taiwan joeljanicki @yahoo.com
Intertextuality is entwined in the nature of literature itself, both in the writing and reading of it.
Allusions add resonance and depth to critical interpretations of specific texts and serve to highlight
themes an author presents in given works. From the perspective of teaching English and American
literatures as a second language, allusions to English literature in a work by an American writer (and vice
versa), reinforce an awareness and appreciation of both literary traditions as well as the
interrelationship of ideas and values derived from those traditions.
The present study is devoted to a reading of Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” (1879) that takes into
account allusions to Byron’s works as well as the Byronic spirit implicit in the allusions. The specific focus
is devoted to an explication of allusions to two of Byron’s works, The Prisoner of Chillon (1815) and
Manfred (1816). Byron serves as an intriguing model for James’s eponymous heroine, serving as a
“study” for his masterpiece, A Portrait of a Lady, written in the two years following the publication of
“Daisy Miller.” Byron’s rebellious pride and his indignation at the ostracism accorded him by a
hypocritical society provide a context for examining James’s young free-spirited American female in
search of social companionship in a highly rigid and exclusive expatriate society. Byron’s two works
parallel “Daisy Miller” in terms of both setting--the Swiss Alps and the Roman Colisseum--and moral
purpose. The liberalness of nature and the natural embodied in Daisy threatened by the perniciosa–
symbolically interpreted here as the “bad air” of high society-- is strongly reinforced by the plight of
Byron’s heroes. Daisy’s defiant courage in upholding an uncompromising spirit of freedom and her
willingness to pay the highest price to be true to her ideals provide an engaging model for the American
female protagonists in James’s internationalist novels to come.
Key words: Byronic hero, prison, perniciosa, comme il faut, freedom