When Henry James produced What Maisie Knew late in his career, he had to employ a transcriber to write as he dictated, due to hand pain that may have been caused by arthritis. Some critics attribute to that mechanical challenge the change from James’s traditional style to a more elliptical approach that resulted in reduced clarity. However, his more elaborate style may have well complemented the subject matter of this novel, as the plot suggested more than it revealed about Maisie Farange.
Because James never reveals what the title references as to what his young protagonist knew, his covert style suits the topic. First published in The Chap Book between January and August 1897, the novel would next run as a serial in the New Review in 1898 before publication as a separate volume. Although not James’s most highly acclaimed novel, the book would continue to resonate with readers due to its topic of a child caught up in the conflicted relationships of an adult world. As divorce and subsequent child custody issues became all too common in the 20th century, a reading audience could better relate to Maisie’s situation.
Had Maisie suffered through only the divorce of her parents Beale and Ida Farange, neither of whom are particularly interested in her, the situation would have contained challenge enough. However, after her father marries her former governess, Miss Overmore, and her mother marries Sir Claude, the confusion over who will be responsible for Maisie only begins. The immature and decidedly unlikable Ida continues her sexual affairs, while Miss Overmore and Beale do not get along. They all realize they have made bad marriages too late.
The former Miss Overmore, now Mrs. Farange, and Sir Claude form an ironic partnership in their shared concern for Maisie, cared for primarily by Mrs. Wix, Maisie’s new governess. As the girl is passed about among the caretaker adults, she is unable to find a true caregiver. Eventually the second marriages for her birth parents dissolve, at which point Sir Claude and the former Miss Overmore marry. Readers may hope that Maisie will find at last a loving home with that step-couple, as they both share a genuine fondness for the girl.
However, because Miss Overmore Farange, now married to Sir Claude, cannot get along with Mrs. Wix, Maisie will not find a home with the couple to whom she seems best suited. She prefers the prickly Mrs. Wix because she is unshakably dependable. Even in her bad habits, she remains predictable, something the other parents in Maisie’s life do not.
The novel is told from Maisie’s naive point of view, and early on she contemplates her parents’ view of her as a stupid individual. Once she had absorbed that label, “she had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment.” Perhaps what Maisie knew grows from this feeling of separateness that all humans must eventually perceive in a painful epiphany during childhood. She knew the moment at which she had become her own person, and from that moment on, she could never again count on anyone, most especially those supposedly competent authority figures who surrounded her.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Johnson, Diane. Introduction to What Maisie Knew by Henry James. New York: The Modern Library, 2002, xi–xvii.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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