How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Then it was that [Maisie] found the words spoken by her beastly papa to be, after all, in her little bewildered ears, from which, at her mother's appeal, they passed, in her clear shrill voice, straight to her little innocent lips. "He said I was to tell you, from him," she faithfully reported, "that you're a nasty horrid pig!" (I.4)
Note the marked contrast between Maisie's innocence and the message that is made to pass through her "innocent lips." Maisie's parents are actively corrupting her, this early moment suggests. James highlights yet again how hard it's going to be for his small heroine to protect her childish ways in a "beastly" and cruel world.
Quote #5
She had conceived her first passion, and the object of it was her governess. (III.6)
This sentence says two very interesting things about Innocence According to James. The first is that innocent children can feel passion and stay innocent. The second is that there are different kinds of passion, and that a child's emotional passion is purer than an adult's sexual passion.
Quote #6
Neither this, however, nor the old brown frock nor the diadem nor the button, made a difference for Maisie in the charm put forth through everything, the charm of Mrs. Wix's conveying that somehow, in her ugliness and her poverty, she was peculiarly and soothingly safe; safer than any one in the world, than papa, than mamma, than the lady with the arched eyebrows; safer even, though so much less beautiful, than Miss Overmore, on whose loveliness, as she supposed it, the little girl was faintly conscious that one couldn't rest with quite the same tucked-in and kissed-for-good-night feeling. (IV.3)
One of the lovely things about Maisie's innocence is the fact that it allows her to look past outward homeliness and see inner beauty. Experience in the world is shown to be a clouding influence—you can see more clearly through innocent eyes.