What Maisie Knew (The Unabridged Edition): From the famous author of the realism movement, known for Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, The Bostonians, The Turn of The Screw, The Wings of the Dove, The American…

By Henry James

This carefully crafted ebook: "What Maisie Knew (The Unabridged Edition)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. What Maisie Knew is a novel by Henry James. It tells the story of the sensitive daughter of divorced, irresponsible parents. The book is also a masterly technical achievement by James, as it follows the title character from earliest childhood to precocious maturity. When Beale and Ida Farange are divorced, the court decrees that their only child, the very young Maisie, will shuttle back and forth between them, spending six months of the year with each. The parents are immoral and frivolous, and they use Maisie to intensify their hatred of each other. Beale Farange marries Miss Overmore, Maisie's pretty governess, while Ida marries the likeable but weak Sir Claude. Maisie gets a new governess: the frumpy, somewhat-ridiculous but devoted Mrs. Wix. Henry James (1843–1916) was an American-British writer who spent most of his writing career in Britain. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: e-artnow
• Release date: Jul 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9788026836582

Henry James

Henry James (1843-1916) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction. He spent most of his life in Europe, and much of his work regards the interactions and complexities between American and European characters. Among his works in this vein are The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The Ambassadors (1903). Through his influence, James ushered in the era of American realism in literature. In his lifetime he wrote 12 plays, 112 short stories, 20 novels, and many travel and critical works. He was nominated three times for the Noble Prize in Literature.

Book preview

Introduction

Table of Contents

The litigation seemed interminable and had in fact been complicated; but by the decision on the appeal the judgement of the divorce-court was confirmed as to the assignment of the child. The father, who, though bespattered from head to foot, had made good his case, was, in pursuance of this triumph, appointed to keep her: it was not so much that the mother’s character had been more absolutely damaged as that the brilliancy of a lady’s complexion (and this lady’s, in court, was immensely remarked) might be more regarded as showing the spots. Attached, however, to the second pronouncement was a condition that detracted, for Beale Farange, from its sweetness — an order that he should refund to his late wife the twenty-six hundred pounds put down by her, as it was called, some three years before, in the interest of the child’s maintenance and precisely on a proved understanding that he would take no proceedings: a sum of which he had had the administration and of which he could render not the least account. The obligation thus attributed to her adversary was no small balm to Ida’s resentment; it drew a part of the sting from her defeat and compelled Mr. Farange perceptibly to lower his crest. He was unable to produce the money or to raise it in any way; so that after a squabble scarcely less public and scarcely more decent than the original shock of battle his only issue from his predicament was a compromise proposed by his legal advisers and finally accepted by hers.

His debt was by this arrangement remitted to him and the little girl disposed of in a manner worthy of the judgement-seat of Solomon. She was divided in two and the portions tossed impartially to the disputants. They would take her, in rotation, for six months at a time; she would spend half the year with each. This was odd justice in the eyes of those who still blinked in the fierce light projected from the tribunal — a light in which neither parent figured in the least as a happy example to youth and innocence. What was to have been expected on the evidence was the nomination, in loco parentis, of some proper third person, some respectable or at least some presentable friend. Apparently, however, the circle of the Faranges had been scanned in vain for any such ornament; so that the only solution finally meeting all the difficulties was, save that of sending Maisie to a Home, the partition of the tutelary office in the manner I have mentioned. There were more reasons for her parents to agree to it than there had ever been for them to agree to anything; and they now prepared with her help to enjoy the distinction that waits upon vulgarity sufficiently attested. Their rupture had resounded, and after being perfectly insignificant together they would be decidedly striking apart. Had they not produced an impression that warranted people in looking for appeals in the newspapers for the rescue of the little one — reverberation, amid a vociferous public, of the idea that some movement should be started or some benevolent person should come forward? A good lady came indeed a step or two: she was distantly related to Mrs. Farange, to whom she proposed that, having children and nurseries wound up and going, she should be allowed to take home the bone of contention and, by working it into her system, relieve at least one of the parents. This would make every time, for Maisie, after her inevitable six months with Beale, much more of a change.

More of a change? Ida cried. Won’t it be enough of a change for her to come from that low brute to the person in the world who detests him most?

No, because you detest him so much that you’ll always talk to her about him. You’ll keep him before her by perpetually abusing him.

Mrs. Farange stared. Pray, then, am I to do nothing to counteract his villainous abuse of me?

The good lady, for a moment, made no reply: her silence was a grim judgement of the whole point of view. Poor little monkey! she at last exclaimed; and the words were an epitaph for the tomb of Maisie’s childhood. She was abandoned to her fate. What was clear to any spectator was that the only link binding her to either parent was this lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for bitterness, a deep little porcelain cup in which biting acids could be mixed. They had wanted her not for any good they could do her, but for the harm they could, with her unconscious aid, do each other. She should serve their anger and seal their revenge, for husband and wife had been alike crippled by the heavy hand of justice, which in the last resort met on neither side their indignant claim to get, as they called it, everything. If each was only to get half this seemed to concede that neither was so base as the other pretended, or, to put it differently, offered them both as bad indeed, since they were only as good as each other. The mother had wished to prevent the father from, as she said, so much as looking at the child; the father’s plea was that the mother’s lightest touch was simply contamination. These were the opposed principles in which Maisie was to be educated — she was to fit them together as she might. Nothing could have been more touching at first than her failure to suspect the ordeal that awaited her little unspotted soul. There were persons horrified to think what those in charge of it would combine to try to make of it: no one could conceive in advance that they would be able to make nothing ill.

This was a society in which for the most part people were occupied only with chatter, but the disunited couple had at last grounds for expecting a time of high activity. They girded their loins, they felt as if the quarrel had only begun. They felt indeed more married than ever, inasmuch as what marriage had mainly suggested to them was the unbroken opportunity to quarrel. 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. The many friends of the Faranges drew together to differ about them; contradiction grew young again over teacups and cigars. Everybody was always assuring everybody of something very shocking, and nobody would have been jolly if nobody had been outrageous. The pair appeared to have a social attraction which failed merely as regards each other: it was indeed a great deal to be able to say for Ida that no one but Beale desired her blood, and for Beale that if he should ever have his eyes scratched out it would be only by his wife. It was generally felt, to begin with, that they were awfully goodlooking — they had really not been analysed to a deeper residuum. They made up together for instance some twelve feet three of stature, and nothing was more discussed than the apportionment of this quantity. The sole flaw in Ida’s beauty was a length and reach of arm conducive perhaps to her having so often beaten her ex-husband at billiards, a game in which she showed a superiority largely accountable, as she maintained, for the resentment finding expression in his physical violence. Billiards was her great accomplishment and the distinction her name always first produced the mention of. Notwithstanding some very long lines everything about her that might have been large and that in many women profited by the licence was, with a single exception, admired and cited for its smallness. The exception was her eyes, which might have been of mere regulation size, but which overstepped the modesty of nature; her mouth, on the other hand, was barely perceptible, and odds were freely taken as to the measurement of her waist. She was a person who, when she was out — and she was always out — produced everywhere a sense of having been seen often, the sense indeed of a kind of abuse of visibility, so that it would have been, in the usual places rather vulgar to wonder at her. Strangers only did that; but they, to the amusement of the familiar, did it very much: it was an inevitable way of betraying an alien habit. Like her husband she carried clothes, carried them as a train carries passengers: people had been known to compare their taste and dispute about the accommodation they gave these articles, though inclining on the whole to the commendation of Ida as less overcrowded, especially with jewellery and flowers. Beale Farange had natural decorations, a kind of costume in his vast fair beard, burnished like a gold breastplate, and in the eternal glitter of the teeth that his long moustache had been trained not to hide and that gave him, in every possible situation, the look of the joy of life. He had been destined in his youth for diplomacy and momentarily attached, without a salary, to a legation which enabled him often to say In my time in the East: but contemporary history had somehow had no use for him, had hurried past him and left him in perpetual Piccadilly. Every one knew what he had — only twenty-five hundred. Poor Ida, who had run through everything, had now nothing but her carriage and her paralysed uncle. This old brute, as he was called, was supposed to have a lot put away. The child was provided for, thanks to a crafty godmother, a defunct aunt of Beale’s, who had left her something in such a manner that the parents could appropriate only the income.

Chapter I

Table of Contents

The child was provided for, but the new arrangement was inevitably confounding to a young intelligence intensely aware that something had happened which must matter a good deal and looking anxiously out for the effects of so great a cause. It was to be the fate of this patient little girl to see much more than she at first understood, but also even at first to understand much more than any little girl, however patient, had perhaps ever understood before. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or a story could have been so in the thick of the fight. She was taken into the confidence of passions on which she fixed just the stare she might have had for images bounding across the wall in the slide of a magic-lantern. Her little world was phantasmagoric — strange shadows dancing on a sheet. It was as if the whole performance had been given for her — a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre. She was in short introduced to life with a liberality in which the selfishness of others found its account, and there was nothing to avert the sacrifice but the modesty of her youth.

Her first term was with her father, who spared her only in not letting her have the wild letters addressed to her by her mother: he confined himself to holding them up at her and shaking them, while he showed his teeth, and then amusing her by the way he chucked them, across the room, bang into the fire. Even at that moment, however, she had a scared anticipation of fatigue, a guilty sense of not rising to the occasion, feeling the charm of the violence with which the stiff unopened envelopes, whose big monograms — Ida bristled with monograms — she would have liked to see, were made to whizz, like dangerous missiles, through the air. The greatest effect of the great cause was her own greater importance, chiefly revealed to her in the larger freedom with which she was handled, pulled hither and thither and kissed, and the proportionately greater niceness she was obliged to show. Her features had somehow become prominent; they were so perpetually nipped by the gentlemen who came to see her father and the smoke of whose cigarettes went into her face. Some of these gentlemen made her strike matches and light their cigarettes; others, holding her on knees violently jolted, pinched the calves of her legs till she shrieked — her shriek was much admired — and reproached them with being toothpicks. The word stuck in her mind and contributed to her feeling from this time that she was deficient in something that would meet the general desire. She found out what it was: it was a congenital tendency to the production of a substance to which Moddle, her nurse, gave a short ugly name, a name painfully associated at dinner with the part of the joint that she didn’t like. She had left behind her the time when she had no desires to meet, none at least save Moddle’s, who, in Kensington Gardens, was always on the bench when she came back to see if she had been playing too far. Moddle’s desire was merely that she shouldn’t do that, and she met it so easily that the only spots in that long brightness were the moments of her wondering what would become of her if, on her rushing back, there should be no Moddle on the bench. They still went to the Gardens, but there was a difference even there; she was impelled perpetually to look at the legs of other children and ask her nurse if they were toothpicks. Moddle was terribly truthful; she always said: Oh my dear, you’ll not find such another pair as your own. It seemed to have to do with something else that Moddle often said: You feel the strain — that’s where it is; and you’ll feel it still worse, you know.

Thus from the first Maisie not only felt it, but knew she felt it. A part of it was the consequence of her father’s telling her he felt it too, and telling Moddle, in her presence, that she must make a point of driving that home. She was familiar, at the age of six, with the fact that everything had been changed on her account, everything ordered to enable him to give himself up to her. She was to remember always the words in which Moddle impressed upon her that he did so give himself: Your papa wishes you never to forget, you know, that he has been dreadfully put about. If the skin on Moddle’s face had to Maisie the air of being unduly, almost painfully, stretched, it never presented that appearance so much as when she uttered, as she often had occasion to utter, such words. The child wondered if they didn’t make it hurt more than usual; but it was only after some time that she was able to attach to the picture of her father’s sufferings, and more particularly to her nurse’s manner about them, the meaning for which these things had waited. By the time she had grown sharper, as the gentlemen who had criticised her calves used to say, she found in her mind a collection of images and echoes to which meanings were attachable — images and echoes kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers, like games she wasn’t yet big enough to play. The great strain meanwhile was that of carrying by the right end the things her father said about her mother — things mostly indeed that Moddle, on a glimpse of them, as if they had been complicated toys or difficult books, took out of her hands and put away in the closet. A wonderful assortment of objects of this kind she was to discover there later, all tumbled up too with the things, shuffled into the same receptacle, that her mother had said about her father.

She had the knowledge that on a certain occasion which every day brought nearer her mother would be at the door to take her away, and this would have darkened all the days if the ingenious Moddle hadn’t written on a paper in very big easy words ever so many pleasures that she would enjoy at the other house. These promises ranged from a mother’s fond love to a nice poached egg to your tea, and took by the way the prospect of sitting up ever so late to see the lady in question dressed, in silks and velvets and diamonds and pearls, to go out: so that it was a real support to Maisie, at the supreme hour, to feel how, by Moddle’s direction, the paper was thrust away in her pocket and there clenched in her fist. The supreme hour was to furnish her with a vivid reminiscence, that of a strange outbreak in the drawingroom on the part of Moddle, who, in reply to something her father had just said, cried aloud: You ought to be perfectly ashamed of yourself — you ought to blush, sir, for the way you go on! The carriage, with her mother in it, was at the door; a gentleman who was there, who was always there, laughed out very loud; her father, who had her in his arms, said to Moddle: My dear woman, I’ll settle you presently! — after which he repeated, showing his teeth more than ever at Maisie while he hugged her, the words for which her nurse had taken him up. Maisie was not at the moment so fully conscious of them as of the wonder of Moddle’s sudden disrespect and crimson face; but she was able to produce them in the course of five minutes when, in the carriage, her mother, all kisses, ribbons, eyes, arms, strange sounds and sweet smells, said to her: And did your beastly papa, my precious angel, send any message to your own loving mamma? Then it was that she found the words spoken by her beastly papa to be, after all, in her little bewildered ears, from which, at her mother’s appeal, they passed, in her clear shrill voice, straight to her little innocent lips. He said I was to tell you, from him, she faithfully reported, that you’re a nasty horrid pig!

Chapter II

Table of Contents

In that lively sense of the immediate which is the very air of a child’s mind the past, on each occasion, became for her as indistinct as the future: she surrendered herself to the actual with a good faith that might have been touching to either parent. Crudely as they had calculated they were at first justified by the event: she was the little feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely keep flying between them. The evil they had the gift of thinking or pretending to think of each other they poured into her little gravely-gazing soul as into a boundless receptacle, and each of them had doubtless the best conscience in the world as to the duty of teaching her the stern truth that should be her safeguard against the other. She was at the age for which all stories are true and all conceptions are stories. The actual was the absolute, the present alone was vivid. The objurgation for instance launched in the carriage by her mother after she had at her father’s bidding punctually performed was a missive that dropped into her memory with the dry rattle of a letter falling into a pillar-box. Like the letter it was, as part of the contents of a well-stuffed postbag, delivered in due course at the right address. In the presence of these overflowings, after they had continued for a couple of years, the associates of either party sometimes felt that something should be done for what they called the real good, don’t you know? of the child. The only thing done, however, in general, took place when it was sighingly remarked that she fortunately wasn’t all the year round where she happened to be at the awkward moment, and that, furthermore, either from extreme cunning or from extreme stupidity, she appeared not to take things in.

The theory of her stupidity, eventually embraced by her parents, corresponded with a great date in her small still life: the complete vision, private but final, of the strange office she filled. It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths of her nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move their arms and legs; old forms and phrases began to have a sense that frightened her. She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. Her parted lips locked themselves with the determination to be employed no longer. She would forget everything, she would repeat nothing, and when, as a tribute to the successful application of her system, she began to be called a little idiot, she tasted a pleasure new and keen. When therefore, as she grew older, her parents in turn announced before her that she had grown shockingly dull, it was not from any real contraction of her little stream of life. She spoiled their fun, but she practically added to her own. She saw more and more; she saw too much. It was Miss Overmore, her first governess, who on a momentous occasion had sown the seeds of secrecy; sown them not by anything she said, but by a mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired. Moddle had become at this time, after alternations of residence of which the child had no clear record, an image faintly embalmed in the remembrance of hungry disappearances from the nursery and distressful lapses in the alphabet, sad embarrassments, in particular, when invited to recognise something her nurse described as the important letter haitch. Miss Overmore, however hungry, never disappeared: this marked her somehow as of higher rank, and the character was confirmed by a prettiness that Maisie supposed to be extraordinary. Mrs. Farange had described her as almost too pretty, and some one had asked what that mattered so long as Beale wasn’t there. Beale or no Beale, Maisie had heard her mother reply, I take her because she’s a lady and yet awfully poor. Rather nice people, but there are seven sisters at home. What do people mean?

Maisie didn’t know what people meant, but she knew very soon all the names of all the sisters; she could say them off better than she could say the multiplication-table. She privately wondered moreover, though she never asked, about the awful poverty, of which her companion also never spoke. Food at any rate came up by mysterious laws; Miss Overmore never, like Moddle, had on an apron, and when she ate she held her fork with her little finger curled out. The child, who watched her at many moments, watched her particularly at that one. I think you’re lovely, she often said to her; even mamma, who was lovely too, had not such a pretty way with the fork. Maisie associated this showier presence with her now being big, knowing of course that nursery-governesses were only for little girls who were not, as she said, really little. She vaguely knew, further, somehow, that the future was still bigger than she, and that a part of what made it so was the number of governesses lurking in it and ready to dart out. Everything that had happened when she was really little was dormant, everything but the positive certitude, bequeathed from afar by Moddle, that the natural way for a child to have her parents was separate and successive, like her mutton and her pudding or her bath and her nap.

Does he know he lies? — that was what she had vivaciously asked Miss Overmore on the occasion which was so suddenly to lead to a change in her life.

Does he know— Miss Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled over her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she poised in the act. Her task was homely, but her movement, like all her movements, graceful.

Why papa.

That he ‘lies’?

That’s what mamma says I’m to tell him— ‘that he lies and he knows he lies.’ Miss Overmore turned very red, though she laughed out till her head fell back; then she pricked again at her muffled hand so hard that Maisie wondered how she could bear it. Am I to tell him? the child went on. It was then that her companion addressed her in the unmistakeable language of a pair of eyes of deep dark grey. I can’t say No, they replied as distinctly as possible; I can’t say No, because I’m afraid of your mamma, don’t you see? Yet how can I say Yes after your papa has been so kind to me, talking to me so long the other day, smiling and flashing his beautiful teeth at me the time we met him in the Park, the time when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he left the gentlemen he was with and turned and walked with us, stayed with us for half an hour? Somehow in the light of Miss Overmore’s lovely eyes that incident came back to Maisie with a charm it hadn’t had at the time, and this in spite of the fact that after it was over her governess had never but once alluded to it. On their way home, when papa had quitted them, she had expressed the hope that the child wouldn’t mention it to mamma. Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked by her, that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and wonderingly conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection of what papa had said to Miss Overmore: I’ve only to look at you to see you’re a person I can appeal to for help to save my daughter. Maisie’s ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn’t diminish the pleasure of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them cling together as in some wild game of going round.

Chapter III

Table of Contents

She was therefore all the more startled when her mother said to her in connexion with something to be done before her next migration: You understand of course that she’s not going with you.

Maisie turned quite faint. Oh I thought she was.

It doesn’t in the least matter, you know, what you think, Mrs. Farange loudly replied; and you had better indeed for the future, miss, learn to keep your thoughts to yourself. This was exactly what Maisie had already learned, and the accomplishment was just the source of her mother’s irritation. It was of a horrid little critical system, a tendency, in her silence, to judge her elders, that this lady suspected her, liking as she did, for her own part, a child to be simple and confiding. She liked also to hear the report of the whacks she administered to Mr. Farange’s character, to his pretensions to peace of mind: the satisfaction of dealing them diminished when nothing came back. The day was at hand, and she saw it, when she should feel more delight in hurling Maisie at him than in snatching her away; so much so that her conscience winced under the acuteness of a candid friend who had remarked that the real end of all their tugging would be that each parent would try to make the little girl a burden to the other — a sort of game in which a fond mother clearly wouldn’t show to advantage. The prospect of not showing to advantage, a distinction in which she held she had never failed, begot in Ida Farange an ill humour of which several persons felt the effect. She determined that Beale at any rate should feel it; she reflected afresh that in the study of how to be odious to him she must never give way. Nothing could incommode him more than not to get the good, for the child, of a nice female appendage who had clearly taken a fancy to her. One of the things Ida said to the appendage was that Beale’s was a house in which no decent woman could consent to be seen. It was Miss Overmore herself who explained to Maisie that she had had a hope of being allowed to accompany her to her father’s, and that this hope had been dashed by the way her mother took it. "She says that

Reviews for What Maisie Knew (The Unabridged Edition)

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The heartbreaking 2013 movie, and an evocative paperback cover by Edward Gorey, brought me to this 1908 novel. Custody of Maisie, a six year old daughter of divorce, is shared by her venal father, vain mother, a nanny, and her mother's paramour. Maisie herself tries again and again to predict the actions of this horrible tribe of alleged adults before she falls between the cracks. It's kind of astounding that Henry James wrote a novel of this very same situation at least some sixty years before Kramer vs Kramer. Also progressive for the time period is that blame falls equally to both parents, and there's no automatic assumption that every woman possesses a maternal instinct - in fact, it's the mother's boyfriend who seems to be the most responsible adult in the room - until he isn't. The outdated, overly florid language makes for a very difficult read, but there are gems of forgotten verbiage - "animadvert", "peccant" - that make for tiny treasure hunt moments.

[christajls · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

At a young age Maisie's parents decide to tell her they're getting a divorce. From that point on, life as she knows it will never be the same. She is traded back and forth among them and forced to put up with their constant bickering. So despicable are her parents they even use this poor child as a messenger to pass along insults. Fortunately, Maisie finds allies in her parents new spouses, Claude and Mrs. Beale and her governess Mrs.Wix, though their own motives may not be so clear. Throughout it all Maisie is simply trying to find her place in an indifferent and cruel adult world.This book, though short, seemed to drag on forever! It is so verbose, disengaging and talk about run on sentences! It would often take me a couple re-reads through a sentence to figure out exactly what was going on. Even once I figured out what was going on I found the book couldn't hold my attention. Upon reflection I can determine this is only because I did not care about a single character in this book. I felt bad for Maisie because her parents are absolutely despicable and their spouses may love Maisie but there so shallow and self absorbed you have to wonder if they're really any better. Even Maisie herself wasn't such a great character. I found her annoying the way she automatically fell in love with everyone she met. She's supposed to be innocent but even innocent characters tend to learn something and by the end of the book I found myself wondering if she knew anything at all.It is clear that James has an amazing command of the English language. But this particular book is a little disorientating and not one I found myself getting lost in. It does put forth some interesting ideas and is a disturbing look at how horrible and selfish adults can be. In actuality the book may actually have been enjoyable if it just wasn't so overwritten.

[guendalina_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

James brings the reader back in time. It is unbelievable how the events are presented surrounded by that mist of misunderstanding and uneasiness only a child can experience when faced with the illogical adult world. Shockingly real.

[randoymwords · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the beginning of Henry James' style of impartation through obfuscation. Everything that happens in this novel is either in front of the young child Maisie, or offstage, referred to in polite, avoiding conversations. This doesn't work as strongly as it would in the 19th century. Divorces, and the usage of children as weapons before and after the proceedings, are now a relatively common event. So Maisie's being ping-ponged between parents, or even the parents' affairs, are not as shocking to the current reader as Henry James would have as an effect. This doesn't detract from the pure cleverness of the novel, however, as it shows us a young girl learning from her environment, and the adults, perhaps, learning from her.

[richardderus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Book Circle Reads 43Rating: 3.75* of fiveThe Book Description: What Maisie Knew (1897) represents one of James's finest reflections on the rites of passage from wonder to knowledge, and the question of their finality. The child of violently divorced parents, Maisie Farange opens her eyes on a distinctly modern world. Mothers and fathers keep changing their partners and names, while she herself becomes the pretext for all sorts of adult sexual intrigue. In this classic tale of the death of childhood, there is a savage comedy that owes much to Dickens. But for his portrayal of the child's capacity for intelligent wonder, James summons all the subtlety he devotes elsewhere to his most celebrated adult protagonists. Neglected and exploited by everyone around her, Maisie inspires James to dwell with extraordinary acuteness on the things that may pass between adult and child. In addition to a new introduction, this edition of the novel offers particularly detailed notes, bibliography, and a list of variant readings.My Review: Ida and Beale Farange, Maisie's parents, resemble Winter and Dick Derus, my own parents, very very closely. When I read this book in 1996, I was smacked in the teeth by the eerie similarities between the parenting styles of the adults. I'm still a widge unnerved by it. I am completely certain my father's never read the book since I've never ever seen or heard tell of him reading a novel, and I'm pretty confident that my mother wouldn't have read it, being as she was a thoroughgoing anti-Victorian in her reading preferences.But it's as if they absorbed it from the aether and used it as a how-to manual. Poor Maisie!My opinion of the book, then, is strongly colored by the coincidence of its resemblance to my own life. I rate it and respond to it based on that resonance; but that would, all other things being equal, put this much closer to five stars than I rate it here.I've cut a star off because I, unlike most of the professional critics who have discussed the book, find the long ending section set in Maisie's teenaged years (or so we all think, it's never made explicit) unconvincing and a lot too long to be anything by hamfistedly didactic and tendentious. Maisie faces a decision that no child should have to face and she handles it with an aplomb that I found convincing...for a while...because it was so clearly prefigured in the adults who surrounded her behaving so badly. But James was a moralist, and he grafted his Moral Point onto the logical, inevitable ruminations Maisie goes through to make her horrible decision, and ends up crashing the narrative car into the brick wall of Conviction.I do so hate that.

[samfsmith_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A classic novel, extensively researched, written about, and commented on. Maisie is the first fictional child to be the product of a broken home. Her parents hate each other, and treat Maisie as a weapon, something all to familiar to modern readers. Maisie ends up as a pawn between not only her parents but her stepparents and a governess. An awful mess, but a good read.

[baswood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was my first read of a book by Henry James and I thought I might not even get that far after struggling through his almost impenetrable preface to the 1909 American publication of the book. Finally I got to the novel itself, but there was no time to relax, as I plunged back into some intense verbiage and obfuscation as I tried to make sense of what was going on. A friend who recommended the book to me had labelled James as “Mr Wordy” and I could see what he meant, but it is not just the volume of words; in paragraphs that can stretch over two pages that is the real problem; it is the syntax itself. I have read that James’s style was a precursor to modernism and the stream of conscious technique and where there is some evidence of this in the novel, the impression I got was that James was looking back to the 19th century rather than forward to the 20th century. A difficult reading experience then, but was it worth the effort?The Story is a good one. We first meet Maisie as a young child who is subject to a court order following divorce proceedings. Her parents finally agree to have Maisie for half a year each, not we are told in consideration of each other, or of Maisie, but because of their ill feeling, they wish to saddle each other with the burden of the child. Maisie finds herself under the supervision or protection of two very different governesses. Her mother; Ida employs Mrs Wix; a widower whose concerns are mainly with Maisie’s moral welfare, while her father Mr Beale employs the beautiful Miss Overmore. Maisie’s parents are both in James’s words immoral characters who exude charm to all who meet them and it is no surprise that Miss Overmore soon becomes the second Mrs Beale and that Ida marries the equally charming Sir Claude. Maisie now has a step mother and a step father, but the real complications begin when these two step parents meet and start an affair of their own. Little Maisie grows up within this whirlwind of meetings and love affairs {Ida is soon seen with other men and Mr Beale is not far behind with seeing other women) and James shows us Maisie’s world through the eyes of this somewhat precocious child: though thankfully not in the first person..It is the world seen through Maisie’s eyes that gives this book it’s feeling of modernism, and James does this so well. He conveys her fears, her confusion, her gullibility, her sinless character, her desire to make the right choices and to please everybody around her. Maisie’s main concern especially in her most childish phase is to please everyone, but as the novel develops so does Maisie until faced with her difficult choice at the end of the novel she is empowered to do so. She is always careful and thoughtful about what she says and does and even when she fails to understand much of what is happening she manages to not cause too much upset. The brilliance of this novel is James’s ability to make us believe in all these facets of a young child character, we as readers can see and feel more than Maisie ever can about her situation and although she sometimes makes us cringe with the things she says, we admire her natural common sense.A child surrounded by charming manipulative characters as Maisie is, cannot herself fail to be charmed and we very rarely witness any bad behaviour towards the child, in fact quite the opposite and in Sir Claude’s case it may be that his love for his mistresse’s step daughter goes beyond the bounds of propriety. This lurking fear for Maisie’s safety is the hook that will ensure many readers will finish the novel, as well as some brilliant passages of prose and insights into the characters that are presented before us. I particularly enjoyed the sojourn to the channel port of Boulogne on the North coast of France, where Maisie’s future must eventually be decided. James captures for me the essence of this French town at the turn of the century and the hotel life of English ex-pats, who look wistfully back across the channel.For me it is Henry James’s moral standpoint that places his novel with both feet firmly in the 19th century. He tends to scream out moral rectitude to his readers. Mrs Wix is the moral force in the novel, it is she that has the task of saving Maisie from the charming people around her and although James is careful to present Mrs Wix character to us with warts and all (she is also hopelessly charmed and a little in love with Sir Claude), it is her moral viewpoint that will prevail, it is she that will scold Maisie that will force her to sort right from wrong. “Haven’t you really and truly any moral sense” she says in exasperation to Maisie and this reader felt that Henry James was addressing this question directly to him. It would be overstepping the mark to say that there is a brilliant novel here struggling to get out, because at times James writing style does enhance the confusion and fears of Maisie, however it also buries the story a little too deep to make this a comfortable reading experience. I found it difficult to concentrate fully at times and sleep inducing at others, but then I would wake up with a start; coming across a brilliant passage and find myself thinking “how good is that” I suppose therefore I am ambivalent about Henry James as a writer and certainly about this novel. I would not wish to read it through again, but it has made me wish to try another of his works, but not just yet. This was for me a three star read.

[chazzifrazz · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have finally finished this book. I decided to read a second Henry James novel just to see if it was the book or if I just was not a fan of his work. I can now say I am not a fan of his work.

The story line is the raising of a small girl by her divorced parents. Both parents dislike each other and use the child to find out what each other is doing and use that information to further their mutual dislike and share their feelings with the young child whenever the child is residing with one of the parents.

The parents remarry and the child is introduced to her step-parents. The step-parents each develop a relationship with the child. They become more caring and concerned with her well-being and enjoy spending time with her, unlike her biological parents.

There is also a governess in the cast. She also develops relationship with the child and each of the step-parents.

James' writing style is quite verbose and makes it difficult to understand the relationships and what each adult is trying to accomplish in their relationship with the child. James writes in long, winding sentences that seem to go forward and then double back on themselves to add extra information or explanation of what the meat of the sentence is.

I have read Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens and others and enjoyed them. Perhaps if I had read this while attending a lit class focused on James I might have a better opinion of his work. As it is...this is my last attempt at reading Henry James.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not sure what it was about this one but thus far my favourite of the James novels I've read. The story of Maisie stuck between her parents vitriol was somehow beautiful.

[liz_toronto · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's a difficult book but genius in construction. To me, the subject matter that was more cringe-inducing than the writing. It's written in third person, yet purely from the POV of Maisie, who thinks she knows a lot but doesn't because she's a child, surrounded by manipulative and selfish adults who think they are worldly and cunning and know nothing of themselves or other people. It's about knowledge, lack of, gaining of, and it takes a while to get to the point where we can understand the novel. This doesn't lessen my love for Henry James. (Kind of increased it, actually.)

[gbill_7 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Painful. I choked down about 200 of the 280 pages and then couldn't take anymore. At the risk of offending a Henry James afficionado (21-year-old goof or otherwise), I have to say, I am not a big fan of his. It's ironic, I love his friend Edith Wharton and will have to type up a few reviews raving about her. All this negativity gets me down.Anyway, Henry just always seems to get in the way of himself with his own commentary, and his books, including this one, are way too dense. 10 year old fruitcake dense. Osmium dense. George W. Bush dense. (Hey if I'm going to offend, why not cast the net wide :-) At his best his character's dialogue speaks for itself; unfortunately, this is rare, and at his worst, his long, awkward sentences need to be re-read to be remotely understood. But I'm sure it's just a personal taste thing and I'll be promptly corrected by a legion of erudite James lovers.What I liked about "What Maisie Knew":1. Concept of writing about divorce and awful adult behavior through a child's eyes in 1908 was well ahead of its time.2. Concept of rescuing this little paperback from 1954 from a Library book sale. Don't you love those? The cover alone did it.3. Nothing else. Oh, wait, one more. Finally deciding to put it down without finishing it. I felt too guilty to do so at page 70 when the urge first hit me. As I picked it up nightly and continued dutifully slogging through it like a condemned man, a little horned devil on one shoulder kept whispering to me, "don't finish it, you don't like it, there are so many books to read, so little time, why go on...". Naturally a little angel on the opposite shoulder appeared in James' defense, saying "don't listen to him, James was a genius, watch for the deft psychological touches, I'm sure the story will become compelling eventually, and oh by the way what will your LibraryThing friends say if you review something you didn't even finish...". What can I say? I think the last he was seen, the angel was nodding off out of boredom and had drool dangling out of his mouth, while the devil had gone from whispering to shouting, "life is too short! Go get another book!" So I did.

[pieterpad_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Perhaps the pivotal work in the evolution of James's style and the first of the "difficult" ones, the book considers a young girl tossed among separated parents and their lovers and spouses. The story is told from her point of view, so there are elements that never do become understood. Wonderful conversations and arguments in well-depicted settings; this novel owes much to James's recent preoccupation with the theater. Highly recommended.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I think this serves as an object lesson in why some people shouldn't be allowed to have children. Maisie is the daughter of parents who go through an acrimonious divorce. Part of the settlement is that she'll spend 6 months with each parent. They both use Maisie as a weapon to continue to wound the other. Maisie takes refuge in the governesses that populate her young life. They are almost equally at war with each other as her parents are. She ends up being pushed from one house and life to the other at increasing intervals. As the parents acquire new partners, so they have an increasing impact on Maisie's life. For the most part the adults are all self absorbed and irresponsible, while Maisie is of indeterminate age and clings to whoever shows her kindness and affection (however false that affection might be). This is an odd book. I can't say I enjoyed it. At times my ear was caught by a turn of phrase, but for the most part the language was flowery, the text melodramatic and most of the characters thoroughly unlikeable. I also found it impossible to place Maisie in age, at times she sounded very young, at others too old and knowing. Not so bad as I'll never try James again, but not good enough to rush out and read more. OK is as good as it gets.

[missizicks · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I've only read a couple of books by Henry James, but I've enjoyed them. What Maisie Knew was a chore. The premise is horrible - a child used by her divorced parents in a horrible game of revenge, forced into an adult frame of mind she barely understands but somehow manages to embrace. There were long passages where nothing happened that were described by James in verbose and repetitive language. It should not have taken me 11 days to get to the end, but I found myself doing anything and everything rather than sitting down to read this monstrosity.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Divorces are painful, especially when there are children involved. But divorces become extremely ugly when parents use the child as a weapon to hurt their former spouse. Maisie is a young girl when her parents Ida and Beale Farrange split up. Both parents are self-absorbed narcissists and are too selfish to have the commitment to stay in a relationship, let alone have the skills or the desire to be a good parent. Both parents don’t want to release their claim on Maisie as part of a power struggle with their partner, but since neither wants to really take care of her, they each farm her out to governesses. And here is where the plot becomes complicated. Mrs. Farrange hires a pretty young governess who falls in love and eventually marries Maisie’s father. Maisie’s mother also remarries – a wonderful and caring Sir Claude, but both Maisie’s mother and father lack the fidelity or desire to stay in any lasting relationship. And with a plot twist that you might expect from a Hollywood blockbuster, Maisie’s step parents – you guessed it – fall for each other. In the center of all of this romantic entanglement is poor Maisie. From the title of this book, What Maisie Knew, I was dreading some awful secret that the young girl would discover. But sadly, it seems like the lessons that Maisie learns are to not trust the adults in her life and that no relationship ever lasts. Good story. One comment about the audio narration. The book I listened to was performed by Maureen O’Brian. Her voices were good for most of the characters, except for Maisie. In the story, Maisie is a young girl – maybe in the range of 5 to 10 years old. She gives her a very high squeaky voice – almost what you would expect from a pixie or fairy. I found it slightly disconcerting and a distraction from the overall story.

[casabooks · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I didn't give up, I did NOT give up!!!! 307 pages - easy . .I can read that in 2 sittings - but this 307 pages, had only about 400 sentences, or so I could swear. And swear, I did - because I had to read every one of those sentences at least 3 - 4 times . . thus making this the longest book I've read in ages!!!
Mr. James is a well known author of many familiar classic titles. Obviously, my non-classical literary background did not prepare me for this one. Don't be fooled by the soft cover book on the "new books" shelves with the photo from last year's movie of the same title - this book was written in 1897 and is shockingly contemporary in it's premise of a horrible custody battle.
The prose is not contemporary, however, and even having been partnered with TWO precisely speaking (albeit sometimes 'wordy')juris doctorates, did not make this a quick read for me.
I did enjoy the book - enjoy the book - enjoy the book. Just wish I would have been able to read it with more ease. Tried to "google" a question of the average words per sentence, but all I saw were all the reports of convoluted sentences. Might have been smarter to have noticed that before I began.
I didn't give up!!! (Hope the movie is decently done - it's a good story and the reason I picked up the book, was to read before the movie . . )

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I didn't expect this to be so funny- like a drawing room comedy. Then you think, wait, is it still funny when one of the main characters is a young girl? And then you think, wait, is she clueless or just completely and utterly starving for love? And I'm not sure that was ever resolved. Would you rather live with people who use you for their own sexual ends, or a person who uses you for her own messed up moral ends? Funny, and then suddenly really, really sad.

[devenish_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The tangled tale of a small girl called Maisie and the adults that like a group of satellites surround and interact with her.None of the characters are at all sympathetic with the sole exception of Maisie. Not one of this authors better works by any means,it is in truth rather tedious.

[jbarringer-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found it interesting reading about parents as messed up as my own, and thanks to my own screwy family, I could relate to Maisie's plight very well. She and I have a lot in common. But, while I could relate to the story, I couldn't always precisely follow the story. In this book, Henry James uses so much current slang and pretentious, overly verbose language that it is a chore keeping up with what is going on in this book. In addition, while I sympathize with poor, dear Maisie, I must point out that she lives a very fancy,comfortable life despite the terrible misery James seems to be trying to describe. For readers in the 1900's or 1920's, especially well-to-do readers from conservative backgrounds, I am sure this book made a lot more sense. For me, as a modern 2014 reader who grew up in similar circumstances to the main character's, the choices Maisie makes and the circumstances for them come across a bit differently. I do think that Maisie did well in choosing as she did, because the possibility of her being drawn into a romance of her own, if she had chosen the other option she was given, would have been very awkward and jarring even to my modern moral sense.

Did I like this book? Not exactly. But, I do think it would make a great book to read and discuss in a class or a book club setting. There would be plenty to discuss.

[markbstephenson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A tough but very rewarding read. Maisie has the unenviable lot of being born to a handsome but worldly couple unready for either marriage or parenthood and is used by both parents as fodder for their contentious divorce and subsequent perpetual warfare. One might think this would be a very dark book ( it was written just after The Turn of the Screw) but that would be without reckoning with Maisie who is a marvel, a little genius, and ultimately a heroine. Some say she is a bit of a self portrait of HJ himself. Her stepfather, Claude is also very memorable, funny and likable.

[ffortsa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Henry James heard about a divorce case in which a young child had become a pawn and decided to write about it from the child's point of view. Thus we see the story through Maisie's experience (not first person, but from her perspective and limited knowledge). The courts have awarded her to each parent for 6 months of the year, and it seems neither really wants her. The use her at every transfer. even at the age of 6, to convey hostile messages to each other, and Maisie learns to play stupid to extricate herself from these furies. Each parent provides a governess (of varying quality), and each says there is no money to send her to a day or boarding school. Poor kid.Eventually each parent has a new spouse, but the pattern is set. One, Sir Claude, is loving but weak, the other, the once-governess at Maisie's father's house, now Mrs. Beale, has accomplished her goal of marriage and is not so interested anymore in Maisie. Maisie bonds most with Sir Claude, and when the opportunity comes to essentially run away with him, she takes it.But more confusion reigns. Neither second marriage is happy, Sir Claude has fallen for Mrs. Beale, and these two plus the governess Mrs. Wix arrive in France, trying to sort out what will become of them all. At the end, it is Maisie who determines her own future.What, after all this mistreatment, can a girl of 10 or 12 know?