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Her observation of the irresponsible behaviour of almost all the adults she lives with eventually persuades her to rely on her most devoted friend—if the least superficially-attractive adult in her life—Mrs. The novel can be taken to be a criticism on societal infatuation and sexualisation toward childhood. Maisie becomes a malleable character onto whom all the adults project whatever they desire.
Wix, who might appear to be the most loving, projects onto Maisie the life of her dead child. The novel is also a thoroughgoing condemnation of parents and guardians abandoning their responsibilities to their children. James saw English society as becoming more corrupt and decadent, and What Maisie Knew is one of his harshest indictments of those who can't be bothered to live responsible lives. James leavens the sorry doings with a dose of dark humor. For instance, the dumpy Mrs.
Wix falls victim to an unintentionally humorous infatuation with the handsome Sir Claude. What Maisie Knew has attained a fairly strong critical position in the Jamesian canon. Edmund Wilson was one of many critics who admired both the book's technical proficiency and its judgment of a negligent and damaged society. Leavis , on the other hand, declared the book to be "perfection". Moreover, in the film version, unlike the book, Maisie's foster parents prove deeply loving to her and to each other and highly dependable. Maisie thus finds a happy life with them, with the character of Mrs.
Wix being virtually eliminated from the film's plot.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jun 26, Captain Sir Roddy, R. In the annals of classic fiction I have encountered some truly monstrous parents some of the parents in Austen or Dickens certainly come to mind , but the mother and father of little Maisie Farange must surely be the worst. Okay, now that I've gotten that off of my chest, perhaps I can provide an objective review of this novel. What Maisie Knew was written by Henry Ja In the annals of classic fiction I have encountered some truly monstrous parents some of the parents in Austen or Dickens certainly come to mind , but the mother and father of little Maisie Farange must surely be the worst.
The structure of this sophisticated novel is extraordinarily clever, as the entire plot is laid out from the perspective of the little girl, Maisie and keep the title of the novel in mind as you read too. The novel starts off with the parents being granted a divorce and the court awarding that custody of Maisie will be shared. This poor little girl has to spend six months with her father and then be packed off for six months with her mother.
What is even worse is that the parents use Maisie in their on-going fight-to-the-death with one another; at the same time they take on new spouses and then immediately begin adulterous relationships! And while Maisie is wise beyond her years and quite perceptive to what is going on around her in the world of the grown-ups that she is surrounded by, much of what she observes has to be interpreted through the lens of the experience of her own childhood and the little bit of love and kindness bestowed upon her from a scant few of the adults--but not her own parents--around her. Through the course of the novel Maisie does gravitate to the two characters that do seem offer her the hope and opportunity of kindness, love, and some semblance of stability, and those two characters are her governess, Mrs Wix, and her mother's second ex-husband Sir Claude.
Sir Claude has his own 'bag-of-issues' to deal with, but he is really and truly genuinely concerned about Maisie and her long-term welfare. He ends being more of father-figure to the little girl, by a long-shot, than her own father did on his very best day.
Ultimately, these two people, whom Maisie trusts with her heart and soul, do end up making the right decisions that give this little girl a chance for a wholesome life. Finally, it needs to be said that there's much in this novel that can offend modern sensibilities, particularly when it comes to how children are looked after or not , guardianship issues, or even the exercise of parental responsibilities or not! The reader needs to remember that there weren't governmental agencies like 'Child Protective Services' in Victorian England to provide that safety net for children in Maisie's situation.
Henry James, like Charles Dickens before him, seems to have been much affected by child welfare issues, and I have to think he was trying to make a point here that parental responsibility is a duty and an obligation and that love and a nurturing stable environment are what every child needs and deserves. As painful as it was to read, I'm glad that I read What Maisie Knew , and look forward to reading it again in the future. At this point, I would give this 3. But I still want to reach into the pages of this novel and throttle both of her parents! View all 5 comments.
View all 4 comments. Sep 09, Linda Robinson rated it it was amazing.
Thought I was over a mild obsession with Henry James, but not so much. And was transported back to college and my infatuation with James and his marvelous voyeuristic peerings into emotional sexual repression. Freud was obsessed with it. I thought Turn of the Screw was the best example before today. Oh blimey, that marvelous scene when The Governess first conjures Peter Quint, while her hands are roaming up and down the crenellation. Yowza, Freud must have drooled over that battlement elevation, if he ever bothered with fiction. Maisie is The Governess before she started seeing ghosts in the shrubbery.
The combination of innocence and observational understanding is chilling. And fantastic literary legerdemain. This is intriguing stuff, nestled enticingly in the same time Freud and James cast their weird and wonderful spells. That judgment is fascinating, too. The men in What Maisie Knew are feckless.
The women are shrill and conniving.
The play of narrative modalities carries more than one truth. Though Maisie is not a perfect book, it is filled with James' elaborate literary feats, those suspenseful sleights of hand that always induce pleasurable gasps at each successful intellectual vibration. Maisie put the kettle on, Maisie put the kettle on, Maisie put the kettle on, We'll all have tea It tells the story of the sensitive daughter of divorced, irresponsible parents. Of, anders gezegd, van de rijkdom van de menselijke ervaring, die James in het essay 'The art of fiction' prachtig karakteriseert als "never limited and never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every airborne particle in its tissue.
Is a child shaped by the machinations of these adults evil? Who among these characters has any power at all? Did Maisie create herself then? In school, I thought both James and Freud were scared stupid of girls. Nov 12, Michael rated it it was ok.
Try as I might, I just couldn't get into what I thought was going to be right up my alley. I blame that partly on circumstances -- I do much of my reading on the subway, and you just can't read James like that: So yes, I'll give James another chance when I can read him under more favorable conditions, but I also find his style needlessly cumbersome and obscure rathe Try as I might, I just couldn't get into what I thought was going to be right up my alley.
So yes, I'll give James another chance when I can read him under more favorable conditions, but I also find his style needlessly cumbersome and obscure rather than exacting; fussy and anal rather than psychologically penetrating. I never cared about any of the characters or situations in this novel -- lord knows I wanted to, but James' prose just bogged them down. What can I say? I feel like a philistine and am trying to qualify my disappointment to maybe give the novel the benefit of the doubt, but that's how I feel.
May 02, Duffy Pratt rated it liked it Shelves: James has a knack both for creating monsters and weaklings. This book seemed to contain nothing but, and depending on how you look at them, each its possible to see each character as being a bit of both. On the surface, it all drives towards a big moral choice for Masie. But I keep thinking that the choice is ultimately false. There's so much baseness underlying each of her options, that it was hard for me to see it as a moral choice at all.
Did she do the right thing? Did she even end up with t James has a knack both for creating monsters and weaklings. Did she even end up with the capacity to tell right from wrong? I don't think its clear at all. And I also saw the finality of the ending as being very arbitrary. Nothing would stop any of the characters from flip-flopping once again and re-crossing the channel.
If there was a finality, it was in Masie's being able to make a decision, whether it was right or wrong.
And James might insist upon this, but I'm not sure that I really buy it. What I liked most about this book is how James handles Masie's very troubling upbringing. He does a great job of showing a very shrewd child growing up with no moral example whatsoever. Her openness, and her keen perceptions without any conventional understanding of how things "ought" to be, are at times delightful.
What I didn't like so much this time was the writing. Sometimes Jame's dialogue is just awful. Especially when he falls back on the form of one person saying something vague but slightly ominous. The next repeats the same thing in the form of a question, usually asking who it was directed. The first then repeats the phrase, perhaps making it even vaguer, but adding a pronoun at the end with emphasis. The second person, the repeats the sentence again, but changes the pronoun.
He does this shit again and again, and it gets old and tiresome. Either that, or he understood that monsters tended to talk in this incredibly annoying, and monstrous fashion. Then there are some of his pet phrases. I'd like to be able to smack him once for every time he uses the phrase "hung fire. Or did he somehow take a copyright or trademark on it, so that it becomes a Henry James special. Another writer would take serious heat for so frequently relying on a phrase like this. I know James is not sacrosanct, because I've seen some absolutely brilliant parodies of his later style. But I do sometimes wonder -- he has a very distinct and strong style, but in the last couple of books I have thought it got in the way more than it helped.
Was it growing pains, as he developed his late style? Did he force the late style onto stuff where it didn't fit in his post-publication re-writes? Or are these books somehow just not as good as the late, great books -- or for that matter, the early, straightforward books like Daisy Miller and Washington Square. I was angry while reading this book. Children forced to act as adults, because the adults in their lives act like children. Maisie learned at an early age how to survive divorce.
Her parents stole her childhood from her, by making her a pawn in their disputes. Then they chose other people to influence Maisie who were just as bad. I liked the book, but had to get used to the dialogue of the times. They passed through my consciousness with nary a ripple; the impression that I carried away was…boredom. Recently, and after much mental to-ing and fro-ing, I picked up an audiotape version of The Turn of the Screw courtesy of the used-book section of the Azusa Public Library and was again unimpressed.
I believed that my relationship with Henry was at an end. What prompted me to give him another chance? The second — related — reason is that, like Maisie, my parents divorced when I was fairly young. Why I wish I could give it a full four stars: James tells her story in the third person but entirely from her point of view. Why I can only give it three stars: An only moderately discursive example: No one at all is — really. Wix and herself, of a neat lodging with their friend. Farange should make a row. The complexity works in parts — and there are some wickedly acerbic characterizations — but more often for me it was too affected and kept me from immersing myself entirely in the story.
Though the reading got easier as my brain got used to parsing the prose, I never got comfortable with it. Aug 05, Becky rated it liked it Shelves: After finishing this book, I recognize, in retrospect, that it's a thorough and insightful look at the psyche of a young girl, fought over by her divorced parents and, ultimately, her step-parents, yet while I was still in the process of reading it, I could hardly stand to keep turning the pages, perhaps due, in part, to the sheer number of phrases and, by extension, commas that Henry James packed into every sentence.
See what I did there? Sep 15, Sini rated it it was amazing. Vrij kort geleden werd ik helemaal weggeblazen door Henry James' "The portrait of a lady". Dat was zodanig overweldigend dat ik veel meer wou lezen van James. Dus las ik "What Maisie knew", een van zijn vele andere beroemde highlights, en dat was ook weer helemaal prachtig. Een boek dat door zijn vele lange en ongenadig subtiele zinnen tot langzaam lezen dwingt, en dat ons dan via die zinnen ook nog eens confronteert met allerlei menselijke laagheden en met onbeantwoordbare vragen.
Maar ook een Vrij kort geleden werd ik helemaal weggeblazen door Henry James' "The portrait of a lady". Maar ook een boek dat ik heel graag las, door de subtiliteit en stilistische brille van die zinnen. Weer werd ik overweldigd door de diepte van de reflectie, waarin ook de meest onbewuste en onopgemerkte facetten van de menselijke geest zorgvuldig werden omcirkeld. En weer werd ik verbluft door de dialogen, waaronder van alles stroomt en voortwoekert, en waarin de gesprekspartners veel meer onaangenaams over zichzelf onthullen dan ze zelf wel weten.
Een geniale psycholoog, die James, juist omdat hij zo'n geniale en veeleisende stilist is: Of, anders gezegd, van de rijkdom van de menselijke ervaring, die James in het essay 'The art of fiction' prachtig karakteriseert als "never limited and never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every airborne particle in its tissue.
Die ervaring, en die enorm subtiele gevoeligheid en receptiviteit, wordt nagestreefd in James' gevoelige en subtiele zinnen. Ook in "What Maisie knew". James zelf noemde dit boek een "ugly little comedy". Het verhaal heeft inderdaad alle trekken van een groteske en "ugly" farce, waarin een jong kind, Maisie, vermalen wordt door de bijna karikaturale slechtheid of onverschilligheid of daadloosheid van diverse volwassenen. Het bizarre vertrekpunt van het verhaal is de scheiding van Maisie ouders, die gekoppeld is aan de nogal barokke afspraak dat beide ouders Maisie om beurten een half jaar in huis nemen.
En tegelijk willen ze eigenlijk geen van beiden voor haar zorgen, terwijl ze op andere momenten weer het alleenrecht op haar opeisen, om haar twee seconden later weer te verstoten. Dit alles wordt nog grotesker en instabieler doordat beide gescheiden ouders weer hertrouwen, in huwelijken die eveneens in groteske onenigheid uitmonden. Bizar genoeg ontstaat er vervolgens weer een - uiteraard weer tot mislukken gedoemde- verhouding tussen beide stiefouders.
Stiefouders die zich als de vreemdste surrogaatouders aller tijden ontpoppen, en die - net als de oorspronkelijke ouders- op volkomen erratische wijze de liefde van Maisie claimen, zonder zelf oprecht en belangeloos van elkaar of van Maisie te houden. Dus nu heeft Maisie twee ouderparen, allebei conflictueus en disfunctioneel. En om het ingewikkelder te maken is er ook nog mrs Wix, de foeilelijke, stokoude, en door adembenemende persoonlijke tragiek heel zielige gouvernante van Maisie.
Een volkomen tragi-komische figuur met kwezelachtige trekken en een opvallende fysieke bijziendheid, die ook symbolisch lijkt voor beperkingen in haar wereldopvatting, maar wel iemand die oprecht van Maisie houdt.
Een kluwen van totale gevoelsambivalentie dus, waarin de heel jonge, en onbegrijpelijk onschuldige Maisie ingrijpende keuzes moet maken: En wat te doen met de tragi-komische surrogaatmoeder mrs. Beide stiefouders roepen, in de adembenemende laatste hoofdstukken, geregeld: Maisie zelf denkt ook "I am free, I am free", en haar wordt tevens ingeprent dat ze vrij is om te kiezen, maar voor haar is die vrijheid een bodemloze afgrond.
Een afgrond die ik interpreteerde als een existentialistische leegte, als de peilloze afgrond van onbeslisbaarheid die volgens existentialisten onder elke keuze gaapt. Voor Maisie is er in elk geval geen enkel houvast. Geen wonder dan ook dat ze aan het eind van het boek vooral ervaart hoe onmogelijk het is om te kiezen.
Geen wonder dat alles eindigt in teleurstelling, melancholie en voorgoed verloren hoop. En geen wonder dat het verhaal uitmondt in "the death of her childhood". Precies die desillusie, dat is wat Maisie uiteindelijk 'weet'. Door zijn wel heel fors aangezette dramatiek, gekoppeld aan allerlei uiterst verrassende maar vaak ook bizarre en groteske plotwendingen, heeft dit verhaal alle trekken van een farce.
Tegelijk is het uiterst strak geconstrueerd, en vol symmetrische spiegeleffecten en contrapunten: Ook is het boek strikt scenisch opgebouwd, met Maisie als niet-begrijpend middelpunt van het vaudeville van groteske ontwikkelingen. Die combinatie van farce met strakke constructie, en van totale onbeheerstheid van de emoties met de bijna maniakale strakheid van James' romanvorm, vond ik fascinerend. Alsof James die zo strakke vorm nodig had om niet te verzuipen in het moeras van troebele passies dat hij schetst. Of alsof hij vreest dat de lezer daarin verzuipt, zonder het houvast van die strakke vorm.
Maar nog veel fascinerender, en zelfs ronduit geniaal, vond ik het dubbele perspectief dat James steeds kiest. Zij heeft een blik die zich over veel verwondert, die veel vermoedt maar veel niet begrijpt, een blik ook die zeker aan het slot meer en meer wordt gevoed met duistere angst voor het onbegrijpelijke en onbevattelijke.
Dat is de blik die we als lezer moeten volgen, wat soms pijnlijk is, omdat we daardoor soms net zo opgesloten zitten als Maisie zelf in haar omstandigheden en in haar kinderlijke onbegrip. Maar we kijken niet direct met Maisie mee, zien niet letterlijk wat zij ziet en lezen wat zij denkt niet in letterlijk haar eigen woorden: Een verteller dus die in zijn woorden weergeeft wat Maisie ziet, denkt, weet, half bewust vermoedt en vreest. Een verteller bovendien die alle vreselijkheden met ironische distantie bekijkt, en precies daardoor een scherpte en navrante diepgang meegeeft die Maisie zelf, als kind, niet hebben kan.
Maar niet een verteller die, vanuit een volwassen meta-perspectief, alles verklaart en boven Maisies kinderlijke blik uitstijgt. Over Ida, Maisies moeder, wordt bijvoorbeeld gezegd: En dat kinderlijke weten, die kinderlijke blik, vermengt zich dan met de ironie van de verteller die, als volwassene, dit soort seksueel getinte zaken beter doorheeft en erom kan grijnzen.
Hetzelfde dubbele perspectief speelt ook in, bijvoorbeeld, de volgende scene, waarin Maisie voor het eerst sinds lange tijd haar moeder weer aantreft en onverwacht door haar wordt omhelsd: Most movies -- in particular those ostensibly made to appeal to young viewers -- don't go in for this dynamic. Instead, they offer up children who perform according to scripts and instructions by adults, which are, by definition, not what kids know, but what adults imagine or project or think they recall. What Maisie Knew shows this process, the one by which adults miss what's in front of them, or make children -- in this case, one child, Maisie, played by Onata Aprile -- into what they need in order for their worlds to make sense.
Rather, it offers images of her face and posture, her reactions to adults, intimating what she knows, encouraging you to wonder and so, perhaps, to remember. What Maisie Knew approximates its young protagonist's experience mostly by observing her. A "quiet" girl as so many of us have been termed , Maisie is herself relentlessly observant, surrounded by adults who act out in ways that are made all the more confusing and upsetting as you imagine the little girl's view.
Her mother, Susanna Julianne Moore , is a rock singer, with a tour and a crew and a crowd of friends who smoke and drink and party. Susanna is estranged from Maisie's father, the international art dealer Beale Steve Coogan , as soon as you first see them -- or rather, as they're offscreen, arguing over each other's immaturities, angry at broken promises, worried about their futures. That they attend so scarcely to Maisie, except when she is directly in front of them, is to the point here.
As you hear their raised voices, you also see Maisie's concern, unvoiced. Her nanny, Margo Joanna Vanderham , does her best to distract her charge, bringing her onto a terrace to play tic-tac-toe and eat pizza, their heads bent over the table as Beale pops up in the background to remark Margo's "hauntingly calm exterior" and then to announce his departure. The brief exchange establishes a pattern for the film, as the camera takes note of the adults, sometimes tilting up to suggest Maise's perspective, but keeps your attention on her face, the level low, the frame steady.
As Maisie heads to school, hand up to answer her teacher's question, surrounded by people her size, or walks along the lake in Central Park with Margo, absorbing the sunny day and the glorious sight of model ships on the water, you're aware that trouble persists sat home, because you're putting together a series of scenes. This even as you can't know how she understands the stress of living with Susanna, who locks a noisy Beale out of their home, or waiting at school with Beale, who comes to pick her up unannounced, before the day's end, until Susanna shows up, expressing her outrage with the sort of language that alarms her principal.
Her parents' official split occurs mainly offscreen, such that Maisie is left to deal with the agreement that neither her mother nor father wants. In an effort to demonstrate her maternal effort, Susanna has Maisie bring home a classmate, little Zoe Sadie Rae , who is at first impressed that she has a TV in her bedroom, delighted by a dinner topped off by cake and whipped cream, and then frightened by the party Susanna has with her rocker friends, all high, all strange to a seven-year-old's mind.
When Maisie hears Zoe crying while they lie together under a tent in her bedroom, all she can think to do is report it to Susanna, who duly calls Zoe's dad, who comes to rescue her. You can't know how Maisie processes this series of events, but witnessing Zoe's upset is perhaps a rupture, or at least an indication that what she's known as normal is not so for someone else.