What Maisie Knew

The pattern of ideas in What Maisie Knew is most accurately described as an accretion of awareness and understanding by the child Maisie, who is the object of a nasty and protracted custody battle in the wake of her parents' divorce. As of 1999, this seems an obvious subject for treatment on (say) the Lifetime cable network, but in fact James published this work in 1907 and set it in the context of London's contemporary high society. The setting is important because it is very much the context of social and economic privilege, where the principal actors involved, not being obliged to scratch out a working-class living, have the leisure to pursue the working-out of their psychoemotional states of being and the living arrangements to accommodate those state.

Who does not have much power, at least as the proceedings first get under way, is dear and winsome little Maisie. The child is very much acted upon rather than prime mover of action; however, as James explains in his preface to the story, he set himself the problem of point of view, i.e., telling the story from the child's point of view without either lapsing into a babyish motif or so drawing the chil

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ehind the appearance of dullness to her parents, Maisie's emotional intelligence grows sharper, though her ordinary education becomes problematic because of Mrs. Beale's change of household status. As a strategy of emotional survival, Maisie learns to transfer her affections from her parents, first, to the beautiful Mrs. Beale, then to the governess in Ida's household, Mrs. Wix, and finally and most completely to the dashingly handsome and gregarious Sir Claude. Maisie's childish infatuation with Sir Claude, who enters her life as a disinterested stepparent but soon transfers his own affections from Ida to Mrs. Beale, is fed by Maisie's "humble companion" Mrs. Wix. The narrator cites Mrs. Wix's "old-fashioned conscience" and "dingy decencies," which respond to Sir Claude's good-humored manner in the form of an infatuation that she maintains through the whole of his declining marriage to Ida and despite his helpless infatuation with Mrs. Beale. As the new marriages of her parents begin to disintegrate, Maisie is conscious only of having bought Mrs. Beale and Beale together, Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude together, and Sir Claude and Mrs. Wix together. When Maisie reveals this consciousness to Sir Claude and he explains that he and Ida a
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Approximate Word count = 2339
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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