- We meet Maisie, age six, and find out what her world is like while she's spending her "first term with her father" (I.2). (Notice that that could be a prison "term." But if so, then Maisie is being punished from the first for a crime that she did not commit.)
- After the impersonal preface, James's narrator shows us what it feels like to be Maisie, and the novel will remain close to her point of view throughout (though it will still be narrated in the third person, not the first).
- In short, Maisie has got a tough life ahead of her.
- Beale Farange doesn't hide his anger for her benefit and bad-mouths Maisie's mother in front of his daughter on the regular.
- We also meet Maisie's babysitter, Moddle (some name).
- Moddle is always telling Maisie what a bad pair her parents are (as if she needs reminding).
- Moddle promises Maisie that things will be better when she goes to stay with her mother.
- But the chapter ends with Maisie repeating an insult per her father's request, one that's sure to get Ida Farange's goat: "'He said I was to tell you, from him,' she faithfully reported, 'that you're a nasty, horrid pig!'" (I.4).
- Ouch.