Book Review: What Maisie Knew
Everything had something behind it: life was like a long corridor with rows of closed doors
Good grief. How do I begin to review a book about horrible people? This book is full of them and it is exhausting, that’s not to say the book wasn’t good or well written - but the characters are honestly terrible and selfish human beings. This story is told through the eyes of a small child, one who clearly doesn’t seem to understand adult games but understands enough to ultimately choose her own destiny in the end.
Divorce can bring out the absolute worst in people when there has been a breakdown in familiar relations and communication has all but gone out the window - divorce brings out nothing but bitterness, anger and pure selfishness. Maisie’s parents, Ida and Beale go through the bitterest of divorces. They are both presumed to be wealthy but are both miserly. They fight over Maisie, not because they care but because she is a useful tool for embittering and insulting the other. In short, Maisie’s parents are horrible people. Maisie is shuttled from one parent to the other every six months and hears nothing but awful things about the other parent. She is handed over to a governess or childminder and her parents, pretend she doesn’t exist.
This story does bring to light some interesting societal expectations of Henry James’ time. For instance, the question of marriage - divorce was not unusual, but it wasn’t common. When you marry, you are expected to stay married. Marital affairs were rife, but divorce wasn’t an option unless it was the only option. Then there is the societal expectation of children, I think Maisie was born of this expectation. In today’s society, I’m not too sure Maisie would’ve existed, Ida and Beale had Maisie because it was what was expected of them and not because they wanted her. That becomes painfully true as neither parent wants her unless they can gain something through using her.
One of my favourite parts of the book was the retrospective narrative. Maie is our leading lady and we see the world through her eyes but from a third-party perspective. Maisie is not the narrator, the narrator is always trying to guess what Maisie is thinking. Maisie’s parents assume she is stupid and proceed to call her all sorts of horrible names, but the narrator guesses that she is a lot more insightful and astute in understanding the various tempers of those around her. We, the reader, can see that she is a lot cleverer than she appears to everyone else.
When Maisie’s parents both remarry - her father to her former governess Mrs Beale, and her mother to a wealthy, but much younger, gentleman, Sir Claude - she finds kinship in her new step-parents. who both care for her fully and make sure that she is being educated and cared for. Sir Claude takes her on outings and shows her genuine affection as does her former governess, Mrs Beale. Maisie’s new governess Mrs Wix, does not like the new arrangement as she is aware of Mrs Beale’s and Sir Claude’s affair and finds the whole situation morally degenerate, which puts it nicely compared to what she thinks of Maisi’s parent's extra-marital affairs. That being said, the stance on morality seems a little too high-handed, perhaps I’m reading this too much from a 21st-century perspective, but Mrs Wix's morality clause seems too suffocating, too contrite and much too much for Maisie to fully grasp.
Maisie is put under too much pressure, even as a child, to understand what is going on around her. For a child to be embroiled in adult games is not fair, Maise should be allowed to be a child and the people around her, even the ones with good intentions, do not honour the fact that she is just a child.