The Effect of One Woman

When I was reading Daisy Miller, I was honestly looking for all the similar qualities that would depict Daisy as a “Mimi”. However, after reading Nafisi’s story of Daisy Miller, I was able to actually analyze the story and distinguish the similarities and differences. It’s funny because I had a total interpretation of Daisy as a girl who just wanted to live up to social standards of being an American woman, impress everyone, just wanted to be someone that she wasn’t. Even though she might be labeled as someone whose naive, I was still able to see Daisy as a woman with a free spirit and who wanted to follow these social standards to especially impress Winterbourne.

The Nafisi story was able to give me a better look at how other people/students looked upon the story of Daisy Miller and opened my eyes to more meaningful explanations. Many of the students had many interpretations to offer in relating these similar and different qualities. From the perspective of Nafisi, he saw the story of Daisy Miller as a narrative that “transformed basic concepts about the essential relationships between individuals, thereby changing traditional attitudes about peoples relationship to society…” (194). He saw Daisy’s story as unique and was fascinated by her character and her intentions. However, his students were also able to give their thoughts and opinions about Daisy. “He blurts out that Daisy is evil and deserves to die” or “Daisy Miller is obviously a bad girl; she is reactionary and decadent” (195). I heard and observed interpretations given of others about Daisy Miller and through Nafisi’s story, I was able to analyze not only her character but how other people felt and how its impacted them through living in Iran.

This story gives me the idea that the power of a narrative the danger of a single story can have a large impact. The danger of a single story keeps people from truly understanding the story of Daisy Miller and the true analytical interpretations from it.