English 015 - Americans Abroad
Fever to a Sexual Liberation
Fever to a Sexual Liberation
Category: 1E: Twain, James, Wharton | Simon Parsons
Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever and Henry James’ Daisy Miller illustrate a similar phenomenon, where socially repressed women in America find a certain sexual liberation in the refuge of being abroad. Immersed in a different environment, native instincts appear to change, or perhaps are not deemed as important, and an ensuing freedom results in enhanced promiscuity, flirting, and other, deeper forms of embracing individual sexuality. In so doing, American women abroad seem to significantly change their social behavior, from once repressed subjugates into new confident mavericks. They are often indifferent to native social conventions and show the capability to manipulate, akin to a puppeteer. These two stories show the transition of women’s behavior while staying in Rome, and in each it seems that the impetus behind change lies in the power of the mystical “Roman fever.”
Before the transitions can be marked, the question must be asked, what exactly is the “Roman fever”? Is it a physical condition one catches? Or, is it a self-imposed mental condition? In the latter lies the most cogent answer, befitting of both Wharton’s and James’s female characters. The “fever” which they contract, contrary to the physical superstition idea shared by Americans abroad, seems to unconsciously push women to alter their personalities so as to free themselves from previous sexual repression. A few early visible changes in their character include disregarding reputation and not paying heed to warnings by the “voice of civilized society” (James 54) in America. One can either see the changes as new-found confidence or shear recklessness, depending on one’s own viewpoint. Both these changes are revealed as Daisy Miller remarks during the carriage scene, “If this is improper, Mrs. Walker, then I’m all improper, and you had better give me right up. Goodbye; I hope you’ll have a lovely ride!” (James 54).
The setting of the two stories is also vital for the “Roman fever” to flourish. Rome at that time, like today, was the place where romance, love, and beauty thrived, with such scenes as the Coliseum in moonlight and the Sistine Chapel, to which American women were especially drawn. Also, both stories are set in a time period where women in America were not granted equal rights to men. Still well before the Rights Movement, women could not vote and were often repressed by men in their professions as well as at home. Here, it is important to look closer at some contemporary social issues of America which were changing in a way felt by both sexes. As stated in the introduction to Daisy Miller, the late 19th century marked a time of development with new modes of transportation from which geographical boundaries started to become blurred. Society reacted to their new ability to travel with an increase in treks across the Atlantic to Europe, which marked a “passage in many senses” (James viii). The first people to travel generally were those of “high society;” “comme il faut,” (James 24) both of which are set by their social codes. The clash of values abroad in this new world of mobility allowed space for the infamous “Roman fever” to take root in the female psyche.
In Henry James’s story Daisy Miller, the title character Daisy clearly exemplifies the change in character while in Rome. Daisy becomes an enigma to Winterbourne, who has spent several years abroad already in Geneva, as well as to the reader. Winterbourne first describes Daisy as “only a pretty American flirt,” (James 15) innocently blowing in the wind, as shown by her name “Daisy.” Later he changes his view of her when he says, “Daisy at any rate continued on this occasion to present herself as an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence” (James 51). Although, Winterbourne also realizes that if Daisy “exceeded the liberal license allowed to these women [,] it was probable she did go even by the American allowance rather far” (James 23). Still, her appearance never paralleled reality and Daisy thus established herself discreetly as a deeply rooted and confidently manipulative character by the end of the story.
Daisy successfully manipulated Winterbourne’s jeolousy by becoming promiscuous with Giovanelli. Winterbourne replies, in accordance with social conventions and perfectly aware of her character, by saying to her, “When you deal with natives you must go by the custom of the country. American flirting is a purely American silliness; it has—it its ineptitude of innocence—no place in this system” (James 62).
A specific point in the story that shows Daisy’s indifference to native customs and her growing confidence is the carriage scene. This scene offers a vital example of the transformation in character as she refuses to listen to the “truth” spoken by the “voice of civilized society,” (James 54) in the form of Mrs. Walker, which beckons her to leave Mr. Giovanelli and her improper behavior behind and enter the safety of the carriage, as her instincts should suggest. She chooses to turn away, and it exemplifies her change in behavior in which her repression gives way to emotional and sexual liberation and independence. However, in doing so, her confidence parallels the contraction of the “Roman fever,” and at the end of the story, Daisy feels completely free from her native instincts, limitations, and fears. She becomes completely indifferent to Winterbourne’s warnings and cries out unexpectedly, “I don’t care whether I have Roman fever or not!” (James 77). One meaning of this outburst shows her free from all bounds, but in another sense, she has lost her rational self. At the end of the story she does in fact develop a disease known superstitiously at the time as “Roman fever” and dies.
Looking now to Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever, the story starts with two women sitting and talking on an elevated terrace in retrospect of their past, gazing out on the Palatine which one asserts is “still the most beautiful view in the world” (Wharton 750). Written about the same time as Henry James’s story, Roman Fever deals similarly with the female experience in Rome in the late 19th century. What makes this work different is that we see permanent effects post-era rather than closing with a symbolic death. Two characters, Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley, both embody at their “ripe” age many of the permanent changes caused by the voyages in their youth.
One can argue also that the apparent competitiveness and ability of manipulation shared by the two women was once fostered by their sexual liberation and individuality from their previous trip to Rome. Like Daisy Miller, these two women were members of a generation of travelers who experienced in Rome only “sentimental dangers” (Wharton 754). They also remember “such beauty calling us, and the spice of disobedience thrown in, and no worse risk than catching cold during the cool hours after sunset” (Wharton 754). The women recall a time when the “Roman fever” was not something to fret over like their grandmothers had, but rather a feeling to embrace and seek after to find one’s true self. Thus, they feel somewhat sorry for their daughters whose generation does not experience the same feeling, a mood which fosters a sense of rebellion and sexual reawakening. “They don’t know it—but how much they’re missing!” (Wharton 754).
At the conclusion of the story between these women who have suffered and faced so much in their life, the climax of the competition arrives. Mrs. Ansley finally comes clean with Mrs. Slade, admitting she had an affair with Delpin, who was Mrs. Slade’s future husband, while in Rome. Mrs. Ansley then had her child Barbara who became a source of so much envy for Mrs. Slade. It is the conclusion to a drawn out experience with two adept characters shaped by the “Roman fever” they contracted as youth in Rome.
Both stories show women intentionally blocking instincts that were bred in America in an attempt to find their own individuality and independence abroad, albeit through a liberated sexuality. Their license to do such took the form of the metaphorical “Roman fever.” One cannot help but wonder, in this light, whether the later Women’s Rights Movement could have been shaped abroad, packaged, and returned as living cargo to America.
Posted by on October 01, 2003 at 09:40 PM