• Who is Mrs. Wix, who is first introduced on pp. 20-1? How does she relate to the range of representations of womanhood in the novel? How does Masie feel about her?

The range of women we see in the novel so far are quite limited. We have Maisie’s mother, a woman with strong energy though not always the best to Maisie (in fact we don’t really see her act like a mother to Maisie that much. She has her own life and lives quite glamorously. The only other female character of substantial importance would be Miss Overmore. She is young and beautiful, educated and fashionable. She is the epitome of femininity in Maisie’s world. In a way, she can be considered to be similar to Mrs. Farange on surface level due to their feminine energy (the way they dress, their education, etc.) but the difference comes in the way they trat Maisie. Miss Overmore teaches Maisie and dfinitely seems to care a lot about her, if you don’t consider that it is her job to do all those things because she was hired to be Maisie’s governess. But then again, she essentially chooses to abandon her job as her governess because she ends up having an entanglement with Maisie’s father. So, is she really any different from Maisie’s mother if she also puts lovers before a child? 

            With that, the introduction of a woman like Mrs. Wix is almost akin to a breath of fresh air. Mrs. Wix is all that the other two women are not. She is not fashionable, she is older, and she does not have the background that both Mrs. Farange and Ms. Overmore have. She is the most motherly figure that Maisie has encountered so far in this novel and perhaps one of the best things to happen to Maisie in a way. She tells Maisie stories and treats her like what she is: a child. Although Maisie was more infatuated by the way Miss Overmore looked, because Miss Overmore is beautiful, it’s safe to assume that there is a comfort she feels from Mrs. Wix that she doesn’t get from both Miss Overmore and her own mother.