Maggie vs. Daisy

Daisy Miller is a vivacious young flirt hailing from upstate New York and residing in Europe, making a name for herself to say the least. Maggie is a timid, poor girl from a poor family residing in the slums of New York. How are they related? Well to be frank, it’s actually more intriguing to ponder how the aren’t.

Daisy Miller was published in 1878, and Maggie in 1893, this is worth mentioning when considering the completely different approaches these two authors take. Now it seems both stories are takes on womanhood and what it entails, but the protagonist of each are opposites. I would argue that they are both saying the same thing of womanhood, that a woman’s place is where she’s told it is. As horrible as it sounds, this was just the mindset during these time periods. Daisy Miller is a bit more offensive in my opinion, but it’s not like Maggie is an easy feminist read either.

Daisy is constantly being studied by Winterbourne, who is convinced she’s just being a wild young girl who lacks proper guidance. It isn’t until the very end that Winterbourne decides to label Daisy and than immediately loses interest in her. He tags her as someone who can’t be fixed, and sees himself to be above her. The whole time I was reading I thought Winterbourne was a total loser but that’s just an example of how times change. The story ends with Daisy dying of malaria, and she is blamed by everyone around her, for her own death, which I believe was James’ train of thought as well. Despite Daisy’s confidence throughout the whole story, James has the audacity to have her last words be a plea for Winterbourne, as if Daisy knew she was a “bad girl” all along. These ideals seem ancient but it’s honestly sad to think about men around the world today, in this very country, that hold similar beliefs to Winterbourne.

Maggie obviously finds the same fate as Daisy had, but she took a different path, I mean at least Daisy had fun. I imagine all stories of womanhood in this time period either ended in the kitchen or on a deathbed but thats a blog post for another day. Maggie, despite her upbringing, blossoms into a beautiful, polite young woman. Her mother is a degenerate drunk and her brother is a drunk simpleton. Maggie is respectful but she swoons for Pete. Pete is a man of the same neighborhood, and is considered one of the best scrappers around. All the men in this neighborhood seemed rather scum like, treating women with no respect and such, but yet again it was just the times. While courting Pete, Daisy convinces herself that she is in love and it’s being reciprocated, but that doesn’t stop her from dreaming of a better life. It’s almost as if Maggie would kill Daisy if she knew how Daisy carried herself. Maggie wanted nothing more than to be the exact woman that the characters in Daisy Miller begged Daisy to be. As the story goes on, we see this dreamy, playful and hopeful innocence inside of Maggie slowly perish. When Pete leaves her, it takes the first visibly damaging blow. With this slow loss of innocence, we see Maggie walk closer and closer to death, and this is where the paths of Daisy Miller and Maggie collide.

It is the wondering from the womanly place that gets both of these women killed. And both times it is completely and utterly their faults. Despite any class difference, or any difference in character, they are both known as wild girls chasing the depths of hell. They are completely different women and yet, they are renown as similar simply because they both didn’t fit the simple mold of a woman that had been beaten into so many brains during their respective time periods.