Something that struck me was Maisie’s realization that she had “two fathers, two mothers and two homes, six protections in all, she shouldn’t know ‘wherever’ to go” (Ch. 12).
When I picked up the reading from Chapter 10, I was confused by the question Sir Clause posed to Maisie, regarding Mrs. Beale: “Do you think she really cares for you?” What confused me was the name that Miss Overmore had taken after marrying Beale Farange—I had thought that “Mrs. Beale” referred to Ida Farange, and it wasn’t until later on in the chapter when both Mrs. Beale and Ida were mentioned within the same sentence that I had realized my error. This deliberate choice by James to change Miss Overmore to Mrs. Beale without informing the reader presents us with the same confusion that Maisie faces over her multiple parents. Part of this confusion comes from the fact that Maisie’s four parents (Beale Farange & Mrs. Beale, Ida Farange & Sir Claude) have all encountered one another. Before Mrs. Beale had married Beale, she was know to both us and Maisie as the governess Miss Overmore, employed by Ida. Additionally, it’s revealed that Sir Claude had been visiting Mrs. Beale on multiple occasions, which he’s lied about to Maisie.
As Ida begins to spend less and less time with both her daughter and new husband, she delegates the responsibility of her daughter—whose custody she’d furiously fought for in her divorce—to Sir Claude; she even directly tells Maisie that “I’ve washed my hands of you” (Ch. 11). Ida’s deterioration as Maisie’s mother leaves her with no concrete maternal figure, as Maisie has a caring governess in addition to a stepmother. Maisie asks Sir Claude if she has brought him and Mrs. Beale together, as she’d brought Beale and Mrs. Beale together, and asks if the three of them can live together. This request shows the fluidity of who occupies the parental positions of Maisie. Rather than it being one couple (whether it be the Beales or Ida and Sir Claude), Maisie seems to want her parents to be those who are closest to her, both physically and emotionally. In the earlier chapters, Maisie shows loyalty to her father as she spent the first six months with him. After Miss Overmore is introduced when Maisie is sent to Ida’s, Maisie adopts her as the maternal figure in her life; Maisie is overjoyed when Miss Overmore abandons her post at Ida’s to move in with Maisie and her father. Not long after, when it’s revealed that Ida has remarried, Maisie becomes infatuated with (the photograph of) Sir Claude, and replaces him as her paternal figure when her custody returns to Ida.
Maisie’s choice of parents are a mix of proximity and loyalty. This is shown in Chapter 13, when Sir Claude brings Maisie to the Beale’s new house, and she remarks that if she is to return to them she must give him up, “as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to mamma’s.” Though Maisie realizes she has multiple parents, she still processes the idea of mother and father as singular; she cannot consider Mrs. Beale if she is at her mother’s, and when she is at her father’s with Mrs. Beale she does not consider Ida to be her mother. James uses the multiple adults in Maisie’s life to establish confusion for her, as she must deliberate which one of the adults she wishes to be her true parents.
