HEMINGWAY AND JAMES Compare and contrast Jamess and Hemingways depictions of American women abroad - Essay Example

Henry in his text called “Daisy Miller’ describes American women abroad as people who do not stock to the social norms in the countries where they go. When we take for instance the character of Daisy, Henry describes her as a vagrant who does not obey the expatriate social customs. In most cases when male authors write about women, they tend to portray them as people who are always causing troubles, and the same also applies to the female authors. Henry tells us about what happens to an immature lady when she is not conservative and decides to go around the city without being looked after.

The writer depicts Daisy as a tramp due to her actions or deeds and the society at the time. All through Daisy’s travelling, we find that her actions were regarded as improper for a young woman who is not married. For instance, when she first visited Vevey, she started talking, without a chaperone, to Winterbourne, who is a male from American and is on a visit to his aunt’s home in Vevey (Henry, 472). This clearly shows how female Americans behave when they are in foreign countries in accordance with their own wishes, thanks to modernization.

The act by Daisy to go about talking to men is a contradiction to the social customs of Vevey as during that specific time, it was not appropriate for a lady to engage in conversations with a male without being under the supervision of her mother or even a chaperone. The reason why Daisy is depicted by the authors as a tramp is as a result of her going around and conversing with Winterbourne when in the actual sense, she is supposed to be a conservative lady who is always with her mother or even goes out only in the company of a chaperone.

In addition to the young girl going against the social custom by engaging in a conversion with a male without being supervised, she also does the unbelievable by going with Winterbourne to see the castle without being accompanied by a chaperone. At this particular