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What Maisie Knew is a startling story about a child that was never allowed to be innocent. The setting is England in the 1890s. The novel opens with the nasty divorce of six-year-old Maisie's parents. By agreement, Maisie will spend six month alternating between the custody of her father and mother.
What Maisie Knew is a novel by Henry James. It was originally published in serial form in American literary magazine The Chap-Book in 1897, and re-released as a revised, abridged novel later that year.
May 17, 2012 · As the narrative develops, Maisie will be tossed from father to stepfather, from nanny to stepmother, from mother to lover, etc. Maisie is looking for something that resembles a family, but the adults around her are too busy pursuing their own selfish interests. _What Maisie Knew_ is an excellent and brutal depiction of adult immaturity.
What Maisie Knew is a scathing reprimand to what James saw as a corrupt society. Woven throughout this rebuke, readers will discover James’s own dark sense of humor, evidenced in Mrs. Wix’s infatuation with Sir Claude and Beale’s involvement with what he tells Maisie is an American countess.
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.
The dual perspective of a sophisticated narrator richly appreciative of the absurdities of the adult sexual merry-go-round and the candid vision of Maisie, 'rebounding' from one parent to another like a 'shuttlecock', together create an 'associational magic'.
