What Maisie Knew Abandonment Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #7

Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must be quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's. Have you never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men they love?"

Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly diverted. "Oh they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you to spare me?" (XIV.22)

Here, we see Mrs. Beale's and Sir Claude's selfish sides come through. They're talking about Maisie's mother's exploits, and they think it's okay because she abandoned Maisie. But they're effectively abandoning Maisie as well by talking smack about her parents and her beloved Mrs. Wix. Abandonment isn't just physical. It's also about emotional trust, and Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude are breaking Maisie's.

Quote #8

This was the second source—I have just alluded to the first—of the child's consciousness of something that, very hopefully, she described to herself as a new phase; and it also presented in the brightest light the fresh enthusiasm with which Mrs. Beale always reappeared and which really gave Maisie a happier sense than she had yet had of being very dear at least to two persons. That she had small remembrance at present of a third illustrates, I am afraid, a temporary oblivion of Mrs. Wix, an accident to be explained only by a state of unnatural excitement. (XVII.4)

Kids can be so cruel. Maisie has been abandoned so often that she's quick to bond with anyone who's around. Unfortunately, her bonding with Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude forces her to abandon the memory of Mrs. Wix.

Quote #9

"And for your keeping in with them?" Beale roared again; it was as if his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in saying that you're a monster?"

She turned it over. "A monster?"

"They've made one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. It shows the kind of people they are. Don't you understand," Beale pursued, "that when they've made you as horrid as they can—as horrid as themselves—they'll just simply chuck you?" (XIX.35)

Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Beale is being a jerk here: he's telling his daughter that the kind Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale have turned her into a monster. However, he kinda has a point. Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale are acting in a way that is immoral (by Victorian standards). If Maisie is left with them, her sense of (again, Victorian) morality will be warped.