Tensions in a Changing America: Conflicts Between Individual Desires and Social Authority in Daisy Miller, Tracks, and The Age of Innocence

Abstract

This essay examines the conflict between individual desires and social authority in Henry James’ Daisy Miller (1878), Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1923), and Louise Erdrich’s Tracks (1988), situating the tension within America’s evolving social and cultural frameworks. Each text highlights the struggle between emerging ideals of individualism and the lingering dominance of patriarchal, racial, and class-based hierarchies. In Daisy Miller, James critiques patriarchal and class authority through Daisy’s defiance of social norms and Winterbourne’s futile attempts to categorize her. Wharton’s The Age of Innocence mirrors this tension, with Ellen’s desire for autonomy clashing with the rigid structures of New York’s elite society, which silences her through exclusion. In Tracks, Erdrich contrasts Nanapush’s resistance to colonial oppression with Pauline’s self-imposed religious authority that erases her indigenous identity. Together, these works reveal how the promise of American individualism is continually undermined by entrenched social structures, offering diverse perspectives on the cost of navigating personal freedom in a constrained society.