Maisie

Character Analysis

See Maisie Learn

We're not being sarcastic—Maisie is a rare and precious snowflake. She's basically the coolest kid since Alice (except she probably wouldn't drink something just because it said "drink me") or Huck (except she's not quite old enough to go rafting). Presented with challenge after challenge, she overcomes—and, above all, she learns and learns and learns. And we learn with her.

Given that she's at the center of almost every scene in James's novel, we know that the novelist thinks she's worth spending lots and lots of time with. This lets us track the different phases she goes through and appreciate her growth that much more. By the end of the book, we feel close to Maisie; we've shared good times and lots of bad times with her, and her relief is ours, too.

Maisie may be sweet and sensitive, but she's also tough as nails, and we admire her from the very beginning for her ability to withstand whatever comes. Abandonment? Check. Unbelievably mean parents? Check. You name it; she's pretty much been through it. We know we weren't able to summon anything like her fortitude in rising to these challenges at the tender young age of six. We were way too busy getting angry about being given ants on a log for snack time again.

No Girl Is an Island

Having to put up with awful parents and a seemingly endless series of disappointments only makes little Maisie stronger. But James's point is also that even the strongest young people need the protection of their elders. And so Maisie's quest is to find the right protector or protectress.

Various candidates present themselves. During the first part of the novel, there's almost a revolving door of them, in fact, and readers don't know who the right man or woman will end up being. Miss Overmore, aka Mrs. Beale? Maybe. Sir Claude? Maybe. The dark horse, Mrs. Wix? Don't count her out just yet!

But it takes Maisie a long time, and some serious heartache, before she knows whom to choose:

She therefore recognised the hour that in troubled glimpses she had long foreseen, the hour when—the phrase for it came back to her from Mrs. Beale—with two fathers, two mothers and two homes, six protections in all, she shouldn't know "wherever" to go. (XII.1)

James keeps emphasizing the difference between one kind of "protection" and another—one true, the other false. Court-appointed protection, or custody, is the kind that doesn't work out for our heroine. From the very first, Maisie's parents fail as protectors, even though the justice system has ordered them to be just that. But true parental love—that's another story. They're seriously lacking in that department.

And so when we say Maisie is in search of protection, this is what we really mean: she longs for true love. And not the kind of true love Mrs. Wix reads about in romance novels. We mean the kind offered by a guardian and guide: a parent who isn't necessarily related to Maisie by blood (which isn't thicker than water in this novel, despite what you may have heard about family in real life). More than a blood relation, Maisie needs the kind of love offered by a true friend.

Read on for more of the skinny on James's unforgettable girl.