Vivienne’s fear of pursuit mirrored his. From 1936 she feared a danger she could not name. Yet she sensed it coming. Might she disappear for her better safety (as her husband had)? Vivienne decided to give out a story that she had gone to America under the name of Daisy Miller, an American heroine of independence who is damaged by a Europeanised American, a gentleman of the utmost rectitude. In this seasonal allegory by Henry James, the gentleman’s chilling name is Winterbourne, and as the narrator of Daisy’s story his belittling view of her will take hold. She had loved him and he had disapproved of her by his mannered standards. All his detachment allows him to acknowledge is a minor part in her downfall when he stands, eventually, at her grave. The reader must question his version of events. Vivienne’s claim to be Daisy Miller, mad as it may appear, is her coded message as haunting as her image of hornets under the marriage bed.
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