ul for having found the formula that applied to Miss Daisy Miller" (Ibid).Following this incident, Winterbourne discusses Miss Miller with his aunt, and again we see him trying to categorize her. He asks Mrs. Costello if Daisy "is the sort of young lady who expects a man, sooner or later, to carry her off?" (James 143). Later in the same conversation he poses the question, "But don't they all do these things - the young girls in America?" (Ibid).His conventionality is struggling to place Daisy into a conventional category, so that he can know once and for all how to react to her. As he ends his conversation with Mrs. Costello he is impatient to see Daisy again, "and he was vexed with himself that, by instinct, he should not appreciate her justly" (Ibid). This statement is ironic, of course, because it is his conventionality that will not allow him to appreciate Daisy. His instincts, although blunted through a long subservience to convention, are attempting to lead him to the truth about her. They refuse to allow him to dismiss her simply as a 'flirt'. His instincts, in fact, draw him to Daisy, and he tells her, "You are a nice girl; but I wish you would flirt with me, and me only" (James 175). Although he still uses conventional language and categories, his instincts recognize within Daisy a deeper self, a self that cannot be defined with the single word, "flirt."Daisy, however, does not make Winterbourne's internal struggle an easy one. While in Rome, she takes up with an Italian named Giovanelli, a young man who is interested in marrying her for her money. The other ex-patriots recognize Giovanelli for what he is, but the innocent nouveau-riche Daisy does not. The other ex- patriots, the ultimate examples of conventionality, shun Daisy for fear that they will be judged by her.She is snubbed horribly at Mrs. Walker's party when the hostess turns her back on Daisy and her mother. Daisy's innocence is starkly emphasized here. For the fir...
