Tossing Miss Daisy

I never thought I’d say this, but I think it’s time to toss Daisy off the bus.

That’s right: I’m tossing Daisy Miller off the American Lit Survey syllabus.

I’m sure this is hurting me more than it’s hurting Daisy. Henry James’s enigmatic American girl has been a staple of my syllabus every spring for more than a decade. Other authors, other works drift on and off the bus, but Daisy always remains firmly seated in a prime spot.

This year, though, I’ve already had to cancel two days of class because of sickness so I’m scrambling to get back on track, but there are just too many authors on this bus. Someone’s got to go.

The problem, see, is that you can’t just squeeze Daisy into a thin smidgen of a class between two other authors. Delicate she may be, but our Daisy sprawls a bit. Students need to be led at a studied pace through Daisy’s European adventure; they need to know what’s up with that whole International Theme and why readers were alternately appalled or delighted by Daisy’s exploits and what Winterbourne was allegedly “studying” in Geneva and why the Coliseum by moonlight was ideal for Winterbourne but fatal for Daisy.

That kind of contextualizaton takes space and time and speech and silence, long silences in which we watch Mr. Henry James watching Mr. Frederick Winterbourne watching Miss Daisy Miller. It’s impossible to accomplish that kind of intense observation while rocking along at highway speed while squished between Stephen Crane and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Looking over the entire semester’s schedule with special attention to the important writing assignment deadlines approaching in the coming week, the best solution at this point is to toss Daisy off the bus. And what can it hurt, really? No one ever died of a dearth of Daisy Miller.

At least that’s what I tell myself to quell the nightmare scenarios my mind keeps serving up. I have English majors in that class! What happens if one day one of those English majors stands before a Ph.D. committee, a co-op membership board, or a White House press corps and accidentally exposes the fact that he or she has never encountered Daisy Miller? “You call yourself an English major! What kind of two-bit English department gives a diploma to an English major who has never read ‘Daisy Miller’?”

These are the angry voices that keep me awake nights, but I think I’ve figured out a way to turn down the volume while also taking care of poor Daisy after she gets shoved to the curb like a battered steamer trunk. “Go find Daisy,” I’ll tell my English majors. “I had to kick her off the bus for the good of the class as a whole, but I’m leaving her in your care. Go back and find her, embrace her, take her home and clean her up, and then spend some time listening and watching, observing Mr. James observing Mr. Winterbourne observing Miss Miller. When you’re done, come back and tell me what you’ve learned. It won’t do a thing for your grade, but it will help you in ways I cannot possibly predict. Just trust me on this: rescue Daisy Miller after she gets kicked off the bus and someday she may save you from a similar fate.”

Will they do it? I don’t know. I hope so. I cling to that hope as my hand hovers over the “delete” key. The bus door swings open. Daisy looks out at the highway speeding past and then looks at me, pleading. Do I dare? Do I dare toss Daisy off the bus?