Daisy Miller, a young American woman of stunning beauty who is visiting Europe with her family, gives her fellow countryman Winterbourne a problem he cannot solve. Is she purposefully disobeying societal norms with her blunt speech and actions, or is she just unaware of them? She becomes close friends with an urbane young Italian, but when she refuses to follow the rules of proper behaviour, she puts herself in danger. The mysterious and dangerously independent American woman, a figure that would come to dominate James' subsequent masterpieces, received its first great portrait in Daisy Miller.