rceptions easily and almost infinitely quickened. So handsomely fitted out, yet not in a manner too grossly to affront probability, she might well see me through the whole course of my design . . . and dignified by the most delightful difficulty, would be to make and to keep her so limited consciousness the very field of my picture while at the same time guarding with care the integrity of the objects represented (James viii-ix).
The tightness with which James solved the problem of point of view can be discerned in the very title of the story, for the narrative action is reportage of what Maisie knew, and, particularly at the closing moment of the novel, how she behaved based on that knowledge. The credibility with which Maisie's consciousness is rendered is critical because it makes clear just what Maisie does know at the beginning of the novel, as a very young child, what she gradually comes to know over the next several years and the course of the action, and how, at what appears to be the edge of late adolescence in the final pages of the story, she responds to the knowledge she receives. At the beginning of the story, the certain knowledge Maisie has, reinforced by her nanny Moddle, is that she is the focus of everyone else's energy and that her mere presence affects the behavior and comportment of her parents:
She was familiar, at the age of six, with the fact that everything had been changed on her account, everything ordered to enable [Beale] to give himself up to her. She was to remember always that . . . he did so give himself: "Your papa wishes you never to forget, you know, that he has been dreadfully put about" (James 11).
Maisie is affected by such knowledge because of what she takes to be the effect on the adults who impart it. Moddle's face distorts when she is forced to face the difficulties of settling the state of the family relationship. Maisie is bewildered by the disconnect between the hugs and kisses of h...