SOURCE: "Reconsideration," in The New Republic, Vol. 167, No. 24 & 25, December 23 & 30, 1972, pp. 31-3.

In the following essay, Wood records her impressions of Daisy Miller, noting that Daisy, as an example of the typical American girl, is ultimately 'public property"—little more than an object to be acted upon.

And there she was, Daisy Miller, the American Girl, pretty, vulgar, vulnerable, formally presented to the public in 1878 by the young Henry James. She charmed, angered, and amused Anglo-American readers in her own day, provided her author with his only commercial success, and lingers potently today with still provocative claims on the American imagination. I know that her story has long held a tenacious and personal if somewhat elusive fascination for me. I read it over a decade ago on my first trip to Europe, in the midst of my own complicated discovery that I too was the American Girl; I passed...