murmurs of a sleeper who has something on his mind and is trying
to awaken," but they hint at the concerns of his later
masterpieces. Many of them were influenced by the work of an
earlier nineteenth-century writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who
shared with James a fascination with the supernatural, a concern
with the restraints that society places on the individual, and
an interest in the way the past shapes the present.
Where Hawthorne had been obsessed by the American past, however,
James was increasingly drawn to Europe. America, he tended to
feel, was too new, too raw, and too simple to inspire literature
of the highest caliber. He loved the complexities of life in
Europe--the sense of history, the traditions, the more elaborate
manners of a more formal society. He was also influenced by
European authors, notably the French writers Honore de Balzac
and Gustave Flaubert, the English writers George Eliot and
William Makepeace Thackeray, and the Russian writer Ivan
Turgenev.
During the 1870s, James made several lengthy trips to Europe,
living first in Rome, then in Paris, and finally in England.
His decision to live abroad is considered the most important
decision of his career as a writer. For it was his years as an
American in Europe that provided him his greatest subject
matter--the stories of independent, confident, sometimes
dangerously naive residents of the new world confronting the
sophisticated, often corrupting subtleties of the old.
James explored this international theme (as it is usually
called) in his early novels, Roderick Hudson (1876) and The
American (1877) and in the first work that won him both critical
and popular acclaim, Daisy Miller. Though set in Europe, Daisy
Miller was in fact partly inspired by James's experiences in a
New York State resort, Saratoga. While writing a travel article
on the town, James was struck by the manners of the well-to-do
Americans he encountered there. The mothers and daughters all
seemed dressed up to do nothing; the teen-aged girls seemed
particularly idle. The younger children were wildly
undisciplined, allowed to stay up until all hours of the night
and often found dozing in the armchairs of hotel lobbies. Here
were the prototypes of Mrs. Miller, Daisy, and her brother
Randolph.
The rest of the inspiration came from Europe, however. During a
visit to Rome, Henry walked to the Colosseum with his brother,
William. It was a winter evening. The ruin loomed half in
moonlight and half in shadow. Standing on the spot where so
many Christians had been thrown to the lions horrified William,
but Henry saw beauty as well as tragedy in the Colosseum. He
would soon choose this exact setting for the climax of Daisy
