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<p>This paper examines the social question: is 19th century women's identity socially
determined or do 19th century women have the liberty to forge their own identities
as they see fit? In order to answer this question, this paper treats Henry James as
ethnographer and "Daisy Miller" and <underline>The Portrait of a Lady</underline>
as ethnographies of American women in Victorian Europe. The primary focus of this
paper is Isabel Archer and how she is constructed from Henry James's Daisy Miller
and George Eliot's Gwendolen Harleth, in order to demonstrate that while 19th century
women were victimized by the tyranny of Victorian patriarchy, 19th century women were
also capable of resisting and subverting normative Victorian social expectations for
women.</p>
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