- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press (April 1966)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0198123078
- ISBN-13: 978-0198123071
- Shipping Weight: 503 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“Reading Henry James is like putting a new faculty to the test. This is the true morality.”—Anita Brookner
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: been no end of them about — that I will say for her!" Maisie felt bewildered and was afterwards for some time conscious of a vagueness, just slightly embarrassing, as to the subject of so much amusement and as to where her governess had really been. She did n't feel at all as if she had been seriously told, and no such feeling was supplied by anything that occurred later. Her embarrassment, of a precocious instinctive order, attached itself to the idea that this was another of the matters it was not for her, as her mother used to say, to go into. Therefore, under her father's roof during the time that followed, she made no attempt to clear up her ambiguity by an ingratiating way with housemaids; and it was an odd truth that the ambiguity itself took nothing from the fresh pleasure promised her by renewed contact with Miss Overmore. The confidence looked for by that young lady was of the fine sort that explanation can't improve, and she herself at any rate was a person superior to any confusion. For Maisie moreover concealment had never necessarily seemed deception; she had grown up among things as to which her foremost knowledge was that she was never to ask about them. It was far from new to her that the questions of the small are the peculiar diversion of the great: except the affairs of her doll Lisette there had scarcely ever been anything at her mother's that was explicable with a grave face. Nothing was so easy to her as to send the ladies who gathered there off into shrieks, and she might have practised upon them largely if she had been of a more calculating turn. Everything had something behind it: life was like a long, long corridor with rows of closed doors. She had learned that at these doors it was wise not to knock — this seemed to produce from within such sounds o...
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Modern James' Story,
By
This review is from: What Maisie Knew (Hardcover)
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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Underrated James Novel,
By A Customer
This review is from: What Maisie Knew (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
Everything in this novel evokes childhood's mysteries. It all seems to take place at knee or waist-level, with the brave Maisie (who "throbs" instead of speaks) attemtping to develop a moral code in the middle of a custody battle between parents who are less mature than she.A tough read, but give it time to weave its spell.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good insights into vicious divorces with children,
By bonewriter@compuserve.com (Kelly, Antioch, TN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: What Maisie Knew (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
Never mind the thickets of subordinate clauses. Henry James could look at ugly situations and use them as a means to explore human nature. Written about a century ago when divorce was rare, the novel deals with a little girl whose value to her appalling parents is as a weapon to use against each other. If that wasn't bad enough, nearly everyone who shows the child some kindness has a reason for doing so other than her welfare. What makes this other than pathetic is Maisie herself. She watches the adult's grim game of musical spouses with utter clarity. She may not understand everything she sees, but she is without illusions. She observes, she watches, she copes. Mrs Wix is appalled by Maisie's acceptance of her stepparent's adultery. What Mrs Wix doesn't understand is that Maisie has no conception of conventional morality. How could she? It certainly makes for an interesting protagonist. Maisie may be a strange little girl, but it is because she has lived a strange little life. Shs is more a miniature woman than a little girl because the twisted adults around her have stolen her childhood. In this, James was prophetic of what we have done to our children since he penned this novel at the dawn of the twentieth century.
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