What Maisie Knew

Doh! I meant Lolita. Well, I think that Maisie is a protyope for Lolita. She adapts to being shifted around by her parents and their various lovers by becoming something of a nymphette herself with Daddy Claude. This is a must read for all of us Nabakov fans. I'm quite sure he read it too.

WHAT MAISIE KNEW is probably the weirdest novel by Henry James. He had already written of seamy themes before this, but now he writes a variation of one of his favorite themes--that of the corruption of the innocent. Maisie is a young female child, perhaps six years old whose parents are getting divorced. In the best of situations divorce hits hard, and this was far from the best. Maisie's parents, Beale and Ida Farange are morally depraved and care not a whit for the welfare of their daughter. Maisie is a good-natured child who wants only to be loved by the parents she loves. Maisie is the prototypical Jamesian innocent about to be plunged into a maelstrom of decay. The terms of the divorce allow Maisie to live with each parent at six month intervals, and this she does. It is what she sees and happens to her that begin to cloud Maisie's moral universe. To begin with when she stays with her father, his friends paw her in ways that smack of sexual abuse. Maisie's mother, Ida, hires a governess, Miss Overmore, to care for Maisie. Soon enough Miss Overmore begins an affair with Maisie's father, Beale, ultimately marrying him. Ida follows suit by marrying her lover, Sir Claude. So now Maisie must adjust to a set of step parents. Claude's interest in his step-daughter verges on the incestuous--indeed later on when Maisie is thirteen, she outright propositions him. Ida hires a new governess, Mrs. Wix, to take the place of the erstwhile Miss Overmore. Mrs. Wix is a decent elderly woman who truly loves Maisie and tries to inculcate in her a moral center of goodness. This sense of goodness is put to the test immediately, when Maisie's remarried parents begin a new dance of musical lovers. As Maisie ages toward young girlhood, she shows signs that she has well learned the lessons of moral depravity that abound. She has no problem adjusting to a series of new adults zipping in and out of her life as parents, step parents, and lovers of parents. Maisie even makes it easy for these newcomers to pull the wool over the eyes of their cuckolded partners by making suggestions to facilitate what is by now a familiar routine or illicit romances. By the end of the novel, a thirteen year old Maisie desires Sir Claude as her own lover. Mrs. Wix, when she hears of this, angrily demands of Maisie what has happened to the sense of moral decorum that she thought was by now firmly instilled in Maisie. The answer, of course, is that the sense of propriety was doomed from the start since Maisie early on learned the difference between words of decorum and deeds of decorum. The Maisie at the end of WHAT MAZIE KNEW suggests that children--or adults for that matter--need a ongoing foundation of goodness to show that the ugliness they may see unfolding around them need not envelop them.

While this novel is a less popular work than some of the author's others, it should not be dismissed as a minor one. James' prose is refreshingly complex - a true balm in these illiterate times - and his narrative bears his distinctive creative style. Maisie is somewhat different in style from James' other works, but this is not a lapse in quality but rather a testament to his versatility as an author - he was not stuck in one particular mould. The choice of subject matter is fairly unique - I don't know of any other novels that deal with these topics in quite the same way. Social mores may have changed since James' time, but the way children are effected by such events remains the same. The story is narrated, but we see the events unfold through the child's eyes. The numerous dialogues between Maisie and her various adults portray brilliantly the veiled manner in which children are spoken to about 'inappropriate' subjects, and the vague scarcity of key details which a child should not be allowed to know is left to the reader to be unraveled. In this unraveling the reader is given a tangible sense of the child's confusion, her struggle to comprehend these unexplained happenings with her lack of definite information. It is James' intention that the reader should share in this confusion - that there should be some struggle to piece together what is occuring out of the direct line of sight. This helps to create a connection between the reader and the little heroine. Some criticize the novel for its consistantly dark tone - but this is hardly a basis on which to assign value to the work (or any work for that matter). Furthermore, what other tone could the novel have? This is after all an exploration of a group of supposed adults behaving very badly indeed towards a helpless child. The moral qualms are not all rooted in the Victorian age, many remain just as topical today as then - which is in itself quite an achievement.

I have not read any other James, except for Daisy Miller over 20 years ago, but picked this up on a friend's recommendation. Yes, you do have to read this book slower than most novels, but it is well worth it. It is a sharp, dark, and devastating satire on how adult use children. Each character that Maisie encounters uses her as a prop to meet their own emotional needs--any affection they give her is purely secondary. Perhaps many people do not like this book because it is so relentlessly dark. As the book goes on and Maisie is more and more aware of by the coldness around her the same behavior that makes the reader snicker in the first chapters becomes painful. If you are looking for a escapist period novel--skip this one. If you want something more probing--this is well worth picking up.

I think this is the most modern of Henry James' stories. Young Maisie's parents divorce and then seem to spend their lives using her to get a teach other, until they develop other interests. Sadly, the story resonates today - immature, self-centered parents and the children that they create. Henry James' insight into the life of such a child is brilliant.