How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Her first term was with her father, who spared her only in not letting her have the wild letters addressed to her by her mother: he confined himself to holding them up at her and shaking them, while he showed his teeth, and then amusing her by the way he chucked them, across the room, bang into the fire. (I.2)
James is a sly, subtle writer. He describes Maisie's visits to her father as a "term" which could describe either a) a prison term or b) a school term. Both are accurate: she's both imprisoned by her parents and getting an education by splitting her time between them.
Quote #2
She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. (II.2)
Maisie's education has nothing to do with reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic and everything to do with puzzling out the nasty, coded relationship between her two deadbeat parents.
Quote #3
They dealt, the governess and her pupil, in "subjects," but there were many the governess put off from week to week and that they never got to at all: she only used to say "We'll take that in its proper order." Her order was a circle as vast as the untravelled globe. She had not the spirit of adventure—the child could perfectly see how many subjects she was afraid of. She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth. She knew swarms of stories, mostly those of the novels she had read; relating them with a memory that never faltered and a wealth of detail that was Maisie's delight. (IV.3)
Here's what going to school looks like when your teacher happens to be Mrs. Wix. Sounds fun, right? Well, yes and no. James's narrator is a little judgmental about Mrs. Wix's lack of education, and here he pokes fun at her impatience with difficult school subjects. But, of course, Mrs. Wix does turn out to be a life-changing teacher, so James's poking of fun at her is countered by his appreciative depiction of the way she comes to Maisie's rescue in the end.