What Maisie Knew [antikvár]

GENERAL INTRODUCTION Wordsworth Classics are inexpensive editions designed to appeal to the general reader and students. We commissioned teachers and specialists to write wide ranging, jargon-free introductions and to provide notes that would assist the understanding of our readers rather than interpret the stories for them. In the same spirit, because the pleasures of reading are inseparable from the surprises, secrets and revelations that all narratives contain, we strongly advise you to enjoy this book before turning to the Introduction. General Adviser Keith Carabine Rutherford College University of Kent at Canterbury INTRODUCTION What Maisie Knew is about the impact of legal reform upon the dynamics of family life, and a portrayal of the effect that adult freedoms have upon a small child. Earlier nineteenth-century novelists such as Trollope and Dickens had traced the lengthy, controlling process of law on individual destinies. Henry James, publishing his novel in 1897, edging towards the new century, shows his characters as still, to some extent, circumscribed by traditional conventions, but also opportunistically getting away with as much as they can in terms of freedom of sexual behaviour. The changed framework of matrimonial law gives them the chance to rewrite the rules. Divorce was uncommon in 1897, although it was becoming more common since the legislation of the 1880s which gave more rights to women.' This in itself would be a subject I See Note i of the Notes to the text of the novel for brief details of legislation. PREFACE I recognise again, for the first of these three Tales,* another instance of the growth of the 'great oak' from the little acorn; since What Maisie Knew is at least a tree that spreads beyond any provision its small germ might on a first handling have appeared likely to make for it. The accidental mention had been made to me of the manner in which the simation of some luckless child of a divorced couple was affected, under my informant's eyes, by the remarriage of one of its parents - 1 forget which; so that, thanks to the limited desire for its company expressed by the step-parent, the law of its little Ufe, its being entertained in rotation by its father and its mother, wouldn't easily prevail. Whereas each of these persons had at first vindictively desired to keep it from the other, so at present the remarried relative sought now rather to be rid of it - that is, to leave it as much as possible, and beyond the appointed times and seasons, on the hands of the adversary; which malpractice, resented by the latter as bad faith, would of course be repaid and avenged by an equal treachery. The wretched infant was thus to find itself practically disowned, rebounding from racquet to racquet like a tennis-ball or a shutde-cock. This figure could but touch the fancy to the quick and strike one as the beginning of a story - a story commanding a great choice of developments. I recollect, however, prompdy thinking that for a proper symmetry the second parent should marry too - which in the case named to me indeed would probably soon occur, and was in any case what the ideal of the situation required. The second step-parent James's fiction was collected into a twenty-five volume New York Edition, published 1907-9. The Prefaces which he wrote for each volume were a major retrospective reflection on his art. This Preface forms the main part of the Preface to Volume 11, which also includes 'In the Cage' and 'The Pupil'. The references to the other two stories have been deleted.