Philosophy and literature [600811]

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Module title: Philosophy and literature
Module tutor: Dr. G. Dilă
Student: [anonimizat], 2nd year, MA student, 1st semester
Specialization: English – literature

WHAT MAISIE KNEW and the Concept of Family

This paper aims to analyze from cover to cover Henry James’ masterpiece novel What Maisie
Knew by putting an accent on the concept of family. The author is both a novelist and a literary critic,
and the details that he puts forward in the book are well mixed like milk and water with the narrative
techniques, ideas, concepts and theme of What Maisie Knew .
The American writer Henry James moved to Europe early on his professional career, being
naturalized as a British citizen. He is best known for a number of novels showing Americans
encountering Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady .
The post -Civil era, as the nation prospered economically, came to be known as the Gilded
Age. Industry flourished with many technological innovations coming to fruition. A few industries
were growing, such as coal, iron, gold, silver; the new intercontinental railway and transcontinental
telegraph gave access not only to material markets but also to an influx of immigrants from Europe
and Asia. Improvements were made to the printing press, more people became literate and the
popularity of the novel exploded, as well as the expansion of the periodical press. The increasing rates
of democracy and literacy provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in the rapid
shifts of the U.S. cultur e. The nation was transforming from a small, agricultural ex -colony to a huge,
modern, industrial nation, becoming a major world power.
While in the Great Britain the realistic movement coincided approximately with the Victorian
era, in American literature the term realism expresses the period from the Civil War to the turn of the
century. This literary movement attempted to create reality as it was and was characterized by its
attention to details. The plot was no longer the focus of the author but the foc us was on creating
complex characters with emphasize on accurate descriptions of setting, clothes, speech, everyday
quotidian activities. In American literature, Mark Twain and Henry James fall into this category of
realistic writers, and the latter is con sidered the foremost author of psychological realism; one of
James’ contribution to the art of fiction is his use of point of view.

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Acknowledged expert of psychological realism, Henry James earnestly attacks in the novel
What Maisie Knew the problem of t he adults’ responsibility towards the innocence, the candor and
the need for certainty and childhood stability. Published in 1897 as Henry James was experimenting
with narrative technique and fascinated by the idea of the child’s eye view, What Maisie Knew is a
subtle and devastating portrayal of an innocent drifting in a corrupt society.
When Beale and Ida Farange (Maisie’s parents) get divorced, the court decides that their child,
little Maisie, will travel regularly between her parents, who are immoral a nd selfish and they are
concerned with their child only when they want to hurt one another. Mr. Beale marries Miss
Overmore, Maisie’s governess, while her mother marries Sir Claude, Maisie gets a new governess,
Mrs. Wix, a devoted and ridiculous woman at t he same time. Later in the novel, Maisie’s parents cheat
on their spouses, and this fact led to the beginning of an affair between Sir Claude and Miss Overmore.
Even being abandoned by her parents, the little girl knows how to choose the people in her life in
order to get that emotional stability, and so she chooses Mrs. Wix, even though Sir Claude and Miss
Overmore care about her, because Mrs. Wix proves to be her most reliable adult guardian.
Deeply affected by the trauma of the separation of her parent s, Maisie tries to recreate from a
broken universe the unframed image of her world, and in the face of the reality that hurts and causes
her pain, she searches for any signs of affection and inner heat.
Throughout this novel, Henry James presents the visio n of a situation from Maisie’s point of
view and through her experience considering the messy existence of her divorced parents who ignored
her. The child’s specific manner to illustrate the reality brings to light the foolishness of the adults, of
the gro wnups and some truths, in an embroidery of comedy and enthusiasm which arrive from
Maisie’s idealism, from her limited capacity of understanding and from her naivety.
In his novels, Henry James constantly represents the character’s impressions, sensations and
perceptions, fact that gives the reader a subliminal understanding of his characters’ consciousness.
What Maisie Knew is a novel that can give a lot of examples of sensations and perceptions of a little
girl, feelings that help her to understand the e xternal world. Maisie’s childish perceptions allow her
to openly receive the new people from her life and judge them accordingly to her own impressions.
Throughout the novel, all the details indicates the fact that Henry James was loyal to his choice
consi dering the focalization, because his entire novel is written only from Maisie’s perspective, and
this detail makes that the lecture of the novel to be not only challenging, but confusing at the same
time. The simple and uncomplicated things are exposed fro m the child’s point of view in the intelligent
and complex manner of Henry James. A simple divorce and adultery case is viewed differently by the

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adults and the child. On the one hand (the parents), the divorce is a situation that can easily be
forgotten, and on the other hand (the child), the problem is felt more profoundly and has a bigger
impact over Maisie’s growing up and over her perceptions of the world. Finally, because of her own
perceptions and impressions, Maisie is learning to understand the wo rld and the people around her, in
order to reach some accurate conclusions and make reasonable decisions in life.
What Maisie Knew can also be seen as a bildungsroman because it shows how much Maisie
has grown up since her parents divorced and how she is a ware of the fact that she is just a little girl
and takes advantage of this fact in order to build her own impressions and opinions, having as final
result the making of the right choices for her security and her life. In the end of the novel, what Maisie
knew is that the only people that truly care about her were not her parents, but Sir Claude and Mrs.
Wix.
Throughout the novel, Maisie is facing a lot of problems despite her age. She is learning how
to choose on his own the good from the surroundings; de spite the fact that she is seen by her parents
only as a weapon in making one another jealous and hurting each other, Maisie is capable to keep her
innocence pure, to select from the people who are her family only the good parts and to use them in
making h er world a better place and to deal with what life has brought to her.
Maisie has thought over the novel that for her the concept of family is different than to other
children. For a little girl like Maisie, this problem should not exist, one’s parents sho uld care for their
child and not to use him or her in order to win some competition in the child’s eye, but for Maisie is
different, she has to be able to recognize the true love from the people surrounding her, she has to be
extremely careful in whom she should put her trust and in order to do that, Maisie has a lot of tricks,
and so based on her circumstances, she adopts three major strategies in order to receive what she
wants: selective ignorance, purposeful silence, and an active and verbal quest for k nowledge.
After Maisie is actually putting in function these strategies, the author proves that Maisie has
the ability to manipulate the environment in which she lives in order to gain knowledge, understanding
and unconditional love.
The end of the novel enlightens the fact that Maisie’s childhood disappears because she was
exposed many times to the corruption of the adult world. It is obvious how the little, innocent girl
transforms into a mature young mind because she is able to understand that family ca nnot only be the
ones who gave birth to you, but that family can also be a governess. Family is the people who raise
you and transform you into the person you become when you reach adulthood; family is the people
who put the needs of their child above the needs of their own, and thus Maisie is making the right

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choice when she starts to consider Mrs. Wix as her true family because she is the only one who gained
Maisie’s absolute trust and whom Maisie considered that she can make this emotional investment.
Consequently, the deductions of this analysis suggests that Henry James intentionally created
typical circumstances for the main character in order to test her learning skills from her own mistakes
and to drag the right conclusions. The character was brough t to an environment dominated by
temptations and vices, and was abandoned there with only one purpose and that was to form her own
life experience. It seems that Maisie has to pass an initiation and to be faced with some particular
rituals, to be able to l earn from her own mistakes otherwise she would have to face some extremely
consequences.
In the end Maisie knows exactly that she cannot trust in Sir Claude and Miss Overmore’s
relationship because it might not work, exactly like her parents relationship d id not work, so she
chooses the only person that she trusts, and of that she is certain that she will not be abandoned again,
and that person is Mrs. Wix, the person whom now Maisie can call Family.

Bibliography:

Brown, Kristyn. From Childhood to Maturity in Henry James’ What Maisie Knew . CHRYSALIS:
The Murray State University Journal of Undergraduate Research.
DeVine, Christine. Marginalized Maisie: Social Purity and What Maisie Knew . Victorian Newsletter,
2001. pp. 7 -15.
Edel, L. Henry James: Complete Stories: 1892 – 1898 . New York: The Library of America, 1996.
Honeyman, Susan E. What Maisie Knew and the Impossible Representation of Childhood . Henry
James Review, 2001. pp. 67 -80.
James, Henry. What Maisie Kn ew. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985.
Smith, Geoffrey D. How Maisie Knows: The Behavioral Path to Knowledge . Studies in the Novel,
1983. pp. 224 -236.
Theroux, Paul. Introduction in Henry James’ What Maisie Knew . Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1897. pp. 7-19.
Van Spanckeren, Kathryn. Outline of American Literature , Revised Edition. Global Publishing
Solutions, 1994. pp.47 -52.