The story I told of Daisy Miller portrayed her in a negative light. I saw her as a young flirtatious lady who strung Winterbourne along and in a way used him because of his status as a well-off young man. By the end of the story I too came to the conclusion that “Daisy is evil and deserved to die” (Nafisi 195), just as Mr. Ghomi had mentioned. Throughout my personal analysis of Daisy Miller I overlooked the fact that she was a “defiant heroine” (Nafisi 194), and that she created the “main complications of the plot, through her refusal to comply” (Nafisi 195) according to the representation that Nafisi’s story told of Daisy Miller. To me, this relates to the ‘chair trick’ that Nafisi used to get her students to see that there are always different perspectives to a story and to the characters, so she warned her students that they must not pass an absolute judgement on any given individual. This is exactly what I did, however. I didn’t see past the mysterious personality of Daisy, and instead judged her on this negative angle only, instead of considering her as a role model for her refusal to be dictated to.
The truth behind Daisy Miller, which I learned from reading Nafisi’s story, was that she was considered to be the hero of the story because of her independence of thought and action. Daisy was willing to rely on her own judgements and so befriended Giovanelli in defiance of society. She trusted her own morals and travelled to Chillon with the baffled Winterbourne, and she treated her servants with familiarity. Daisy’s self-imposed morality caused her to be simple and innocent and gave her the freedom to do what she likes. This is admirable to Nafisi and her students because Daisy Miller “radically transformed basic concepts about the essential relationships between individuals, thereby changing traditional attitudes towards people’s relationships to society, their tasks and duties” (Nafisi 194), and this traditional world is all too familiar for Nafisi and her students as citizens of Iran. They too are subjected to a lawful society which places many restrictions on the relations between men and women, “I chose seven of my best student and invited them to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature. They were all women - to teach a mixed class in the privacy of my home was too risky, even if we were discussing harmless works of fiction” (Nafisi 3). Daisy was a role model for them and this literature class that Nafisi conducted was a place in which her and her students could go beyond the bounds of politics and established standards of behavior, “That room, for all of us, became a place of transgression” (Nafisi 8).
This just goes to show the power of narrative and the embedded meaning that is almost always hidden in them. Had I have not had the chance to read Nafisi’s and her students analysis of Daisy Miller, I would not know the true meaning of the story, nor would I understand the powerful message that Daisy reflects. On the other hand, this also goes back to the danger of a single story because it shows how just by reading the story of Daisy Miller, I saw her in a different light than Nafisi saw her for example. I read this story very literally and as a result I gained a very different understanding of the meaning compared to Nafisi who read it for the deeper meaning and for what Daisy represented, which was her dedication to go beyond social norms, and is essentially what Nafisi stands for also.
-- Taki Te Koi
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