SOURCE: "The Genteel Reader and Daisy Miller," in American Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Fall, 1965, pp. 568-81.

In the following essay, Randall maintains that Daisy Miller satirizes the mores and manners of late nineteenth-century American society.

In an age in which one president is criticized for having a Boston-Harvard accent and another has it held against him that his speech is that of the Pedernales Valley, the concern with manners is far from dead. Manners may be an expression of nationality, or section, as well as morals; and many are content to judge the person by them alone. In a stable society such as once might have been presumed to exist, this may have been possible. But society has not been stable in America or Europe for quite some time. Whenever two people meet, there is apt to be a comedy of misunderstanding, and when people from different cultures...