In What Maisie Knew (1897), Henry James, one of “the literary impressionists who led the novel’s transition from realism to modernism,” depicts how institutions, such as family or even extended family, are no longer the assured sanctuaries that they appeared to be in the Victorian era (Armstrong 66). This position is reinforced by the advent of the “[un]suspected ordeal that awaited [Maisie Beale’s] little unspotted soul” when, as an only child, she becomes the “billiard ball” or the “little feathered shuttlecock” in Beale and Ida Farange’s vicious game to defeat one other (James 6, 12). The little girl is compelled to prematurely bury her childhood (“poor little monkey!” becoming “an epitaph for the tomb”) due to the negligence of her divorced parents, of whom “neither [one] figured in the least as a happy example to youth and innocence” (James 4-5). Maisie, in self-preservation, develops “an inner self”―which does not project but conceals― in order to exist in a toxic environment (James 13).
Mastering the art of survival requires observation and imitation. Theater and sport are two of the models Maisie uses to teach herself how to endure. Maisie is becoming a talented performer and an aspiring “football” coach (James 81). On one hand, as called for, she becomes a “little idiot;” the nickname signaling her success in the “pacific art of stupidity:” someone who “would forget everything [and] would repeat nothing” to avoid being entrusted to deliver nasty messages between her parents (James 6, 53). On the other hand, Maisie, as “an old boy” and “a man of the world,” builds alliances among team players who are wrestling, as she is, with the game of life (James 60-61). Nonetheless, her reach is limited as a partition stands between her and those she seeks to influence. Maisie experiences “an odd air of being present at her history in as separate a manner as if she could only get at experience by flattening her nose against a pane of glass” from where she gains a distorted and partial view (James 81). But her efforts at being a connector between those who have little chance of coming together, as in the case of Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude and others, allows the little girl to distance herself from her mother’s engagement in “billiards” ―a sport in which she displays her “ladyship’s game” while contestants, one at a time, “must just hold on like grim death” (James 6, 68). In short, Maisie builds (or attempts to build) whereas Ida destroys.
Modernism has the potential to turn a household into a war zone―a space where the contenders are not seeking refuge but are looking forward to fighting. The narrator points out that “what marriage had mainly suggested to the Faranges was the high opportunity to quarrel,” an amusement that their breakup does not prevent them from achieving; on the contrary, it enhances it as “they felt more married than ever” (James 5). Competing against each other, even after splitting up, continues to entertain not only them but those in their social milieu, as the former couple knows “divorce has many pains, but it has one pleasure, the pleasure vengeful” (Ricks xiii). “There had been ‘sides’ before, and there were sides as much as ever; for the sider too the prospect opened out, taking the pleasant form of a superabundance of matter for desultory conversation” as their circle “drew together to differ about them” (James 5). The British upper middle class “was a society in which, for the most part, people were occupied only with chatter” which turns out to be more entertaining when those who are the focus of gossip cause so much “social attraction” (James 5-6). This is the case of the two “awfully good-looking” exes who are dueling over their daughter who “was provided for, thanks to a crafty godmother” on her father’s side (James 6-7).
Modernism turns homes into farms. The inhabitants belong to the animal kingdom and as such do not occupy a residence but seek refuge underneath a shelter. Maisie alternates between her “mamma’s roof” and her “father’s roof,” a choice of words that purposely omits the idea of home and the building of a nuclear family (James 18, 24). The opening of the novel introduces “the litigation” as a tipping point in the life of a child of “six years;” the litigation marking Maisie’s birth since there is nothing indicated prior to this event. Maisie is “divided in two and the portions tossed impartially to the disputants,” a powerful image that alludes to the invasion of the ills of the world into what was once the sacred confines of a household―the invasion represented by a child as a dismembered object (James 3, 9). Maisie, referred to as their “bone of contention,” soon becomes aware that home is far from a stable place, as it suffers continuous mutations, including the appearance and disappearance of parents, stepparents, governesses, friends and lovers who belong to all walks of life (James 4). James employs the grotesque in his portrayal of characters who push and pull in order to succeed in their pursuits, which are connected with the “ball” of desire, Maisie. For instance, the protagonist sees herself as “a mite;” others see her as a “poor little monkey,” “donkey,” “dozen magpies,” “clammy little fish,” “heartless little beast” and so forth (James 4, 9, 24, 68). The description of Maisie as a mite, that is, a “minuscule insect” that can be “parasitic on plants and animals,” underscores her dependency on others (Online Oxford Language Dictionaries). Her father, Beale, as seen through her mother’s eyes, is a “low brute,” “old brute” and “beastly papa” (James 4-5). Upon arriving at Ida’s “limit of a passion for Sir Claude,” she refers to her second husband as a “butterfly” and “an idle beast” (James 67, 69). Beale sees his former wife as “a nasty, horrid pig” whereas his second wife (Miss Overmore, the governess who becomes, per “her particular request,” Mrs. Beale) is depicted as a “dear old duck” (James 11, 24, 42). Maisie’s first impression of her goggled second governess at her mother’s house, Mrs. Wix, is of “the polished shell or corslet of a horrid beetle” (James 21). Meanwhile, the former Miss Overmore sees Mrs. Wix, her replacement at Ida’s once she moved to Beale’s, as “personally loathsome and as ignorant as a fish” (James 21, 43). All these animal-humans, whom in one way or the other Maisie relies on, do not remedy her own sense of homelessness. The legion of adults connected to Maisie’s world does not translate into a secure home for her, as she wonders how her future living conditions might be, especially after being rejected by both biological parents.
Modernism brings new social conventions and dissolves the old ways. Maisie’s surroundings expose her to a life in which the implicit agreement to follow rules and norms of propriety is broken, either openly or covertly. For example, Miss Overmore threatens to leave Beale and Maisie unless her father and employer-lover-husband-to-be “t[akes] back his nasty wicked fib” about where the governess stayed during her pupil’s absence (James 25). In response, the governess is quick to cite the British custom which establishes that “a lady couldn’t stay with a gentleman that way without some awfully proper reason,” a declaration that Maisie suspects is simply not true (James 25). The alternative to a household disjointed from social rules is that Maisie is baptized “to life with a liberality” that brings her the “freshest, merriest start” although the fear of being abandoned is ever present, especially as she is exposed to constant discoveries that awaken her sense of alertness regarding her own safety (James 9, 25). This fear is apparent in a scene in which Maisie is under the supervision of her nurse, Moddle, in Kensington Gardens, and she ponders “what would become of her if, on her rushing back [from playing], there [w]ould be no Moddle [waiting for her] on the bench” (James 9). However, Maisie will soon learn to rely more on someone like Moddle rather than on her own flesh and blood: “parents had come to seem precarious, but governesses were evidently to be trusted” (James 20). The protagonist, despite her young age, is fully aware that giving birth does not guarantee love for the child, a lesson she learns by observing three models: Mrs. Wix, who was “with passion and anguish, a mother” until her daughter was “killed on the spot;” Miss Overmore who is not; and lastly, her own mother “who is even less” than the other two. To put it succinctly, the “larger freedom with which [Maisie] is handled” along with the variety of impressions of the unorthodox education she acquires and the influence of “the two far-from-perfect people who do respect her” (Mrs. Wix and Sir Claude) allow Maisie to avoid a prophetically dire future (Ricks xiii, James 9).
Christopher Ricks in his introduction to the Penguin Edition points out that “Of all Henry James’s novels, What Maisie Knew may well be the one that “strikes its root deepest into the human heart” as a child is made the instrument or the pawn who is obliged to “serve their anger and seal their revenge” (Ricks xiii, James 5). The lack of a “human heart” in Beale and Ida Farange regarding their own daughter beckons the reader to acknowledge that “James’s tragi-comedy of a novel unwincingly contemplates the selfishness, self-delusion and self-destruction infecting a family that yet is graced by the goodness of a daughter” (Ricks xiii).
Works Cited
Armstrong, Paul. “What Is It Like to Be Conscious? Impressionism and the Problem of Qualia.” A History of the Modernist Novel, edited by Gregory Castle, Cambridge, 2015, pp. 66-85.
James, Henry. What Maisie Knew. Penguin, 2010.
Oxford English Dictionary Online. lexico.com/en/definition/mite.
Ricks, Christopher. Introduction. What Maisie Knew, by Henry James, Penguin, 2010, pp. xiii-xxvii.
