Ida Farange

Character Analysis

Move over, Joan Crawford; Ida Farange may be the ultimate mean mom. She abandons Maisie for long stretches and then guilt-trips her for not being a devoted daughter. Nice one, Ida. Way to blame a six year old.

During her absences, Mrs. Farange likes to play pool—which isn't very ladylike of her, James thinks, expecting readers to agree. She also, ahem, gets intimate with lots and lots of men. Basically, she's the Victorian version of a barfly, involved in low-stakes pool sharking and hooking up with random dudes because she's eternally restless. For the sake of this story, put aside James's moralistic slut-shaming (those ridiculous Victorians, amirite?) and have fun hating Ida.

More of Ida's conquests are named in the novel than seen. But the ones we see are enough to give us an idea of the kind of company that Ida keeps behind her husband's back and while her daughter is languishing alone in the nursery. Her beaux are either younger or wealthier than she is, and Ida's main motivation in life seems to be finding the next one and the one after that. There's something weirdly pathological about all these boyfriends— she's the Jack the Ripper of serial monogamists.

There's a key scene in the novel when Maisie feels sympathy for her mom. Conversing with the Captain, one of Ida's many boy toys, Maisie wonders whether her mom may be just plain misunderstood. Nobody seems to love and care for Ida, after all. And Maisie can certainly relate to the pain of that.

But soon enough, James does away with these doubts about Ida's character. Her last appearance in the novel confirms that she's as harsh and unfeeling as ever:

"You'll never know what I've been through about you—never, never, never. I spare you everything, as I always have; though I daresay you know things that … would make me—well, no matter! You're old enough at any rate to know there are a lot of things I don't say that I easily might; though it would do me good, I assure you, to have spoken my mind for once in my life." (XXI.2)

Jeez, lady. Way to talk to your kindergartener.

At this point, you may be wondering: what made her so awful? Why does she reject Maisie to begin with, and why is she, unlike her daughter and Mrs. Wix, incapable of learning and changing her ways?

James doesn't offer any answers to these questions. Unlike Mrs. Wix, Ida has no backstory to explain how she got to be the way she is. This suggests that's just the way she is, period. It's useless to ask why when it comes to the worst kinds of people, James implies. And it makes even less sense to expect that these kinds of people could change.