Character Clues

Character Analysis

Thoughts and Opinions

Since so much of What Maisie Knew is about who knows what when, inner processes are James's main tools of characterization. Lots of things are unspoken but intuited, and our access to characters' experiences is often filtered through the narrator's dense description of their states of mind. This is especially true of Maisie, of course. After all, the book is not called What Mrs. Wix Knew and, even though we love Maisie's good old governess, we're grateful for that.

Speech and Dialogue

Often, James's chapters begin with big fat paragraphs that reflect on characters' thoughts and opinions. But then, these give way to longish stretches of dialogue—thankfully, since these break up the monotony of the long paragraphs and give readers a sense that things are finally moving along.

James sometimes uses characters' speech as a way to show how little self-awareness they have—as when Ida says to Maisie, "You'll never know what I've been through about you—never, never, never. I spare you everything, as I always have …" (XXI.2). The truth is that Ida has spared Maisie nothing, and so this is the height of hypocrisy.

And that's the other key point about adults' speech in Maisie: so often, it's oversharing, as even the maternal Mrs. Wix admits. This adult oversharing means that Maisie comes to know what she knows in part because she's told things—about secrecy, betrayal, and money—earlier than most children would be.