How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The child was provided for, thanks to a crafty godmother, a defunct aunt of Beale's, who had left her something in such a manner that the parents could appropriate only the income. (Preface.6)
There is a difference between being provided for and being taken care of. Maisie has been left some cash, but that is only a band-aid on the gaping wound produced by being effectively abandoned by her parents.
Quote #2
She was abandoned to her fate. (Preface.6).
There you have it, folks, plain and simple in Maisie's preface: this heroine's on her own.
Quote #3
Her first term was with her father, who spared her only in not letting her have the wild letters addressed to her by her mother: he confined himself to holding them up at her and shaking them, while he showed his teeth, and then amusing her by the way he chucked them, across the room, bang into the fire. (I.2)
This quote is so painful. Both parents are abandoning Maisie here—her mother sends her letters that include mostly spiteful words addressed to her father, and her father chucks these letters right into the fire. Where is the parental love?!
Quote #4
She puzzled out with imperfect signs, but with a prodigious spirit, that she had been a centre of hatred and a messenger of insult, and that everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so. (II.2)
Oof. This quote hurts, too. Maisie cannot believe that her parents would abandon her, so she comes to the conclusion that it is her fault that everything is so dysfunctional.
Quote #5
It was while this absence lasted that our young lady finally discovered what had happened in the house to be that her mother was no longer in love. (XI.4)
Sly Jamesian double-meaning alert. Maisie's mom is not only no longer in love with Sir Claude; Maisie's mom is no longer in love with Maisie.
Quote #6
"[…] he 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)
This sentence underscores the idea that Maisie's isolation isn't absolute. Which is just a fancy way of saying that she's not really alone, just blocked from accessing the "protections" that are theoretically available to her. Why? Well, because with the exception of Mrs. Wix, the adults in Maisie's world don't offer the protection they're supposed to.
Quote #7
Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must be quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's. Have you never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men they love?"
Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly diverted. "Oh they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you to spare me?" (XIV.22)
Here, we see Mrs. Beale's and Sir Claude's selfish sides come through. They're talking about Maisie's mother's exploits, and they think it's okay because she abandoned Maisie. But they're effectively abandoning Maisie as well by talking smack about her parents and her beloved Mrs. Wix. Abandonment isn't just physical. It's also about emotional trust, and Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude are breaking Maisie's.
Quote #8
This was the second source—I have just alluded to the first—of the child's consciousness of something that, very hopefully, she described to herself as a new phase; and it also presented in the brightest light the fresh enthusiasm with which Mrs. Beale always reappeared and which really gave Maisie a happier sense than she had yet had of being very dear at least to two persons. That she had small remembrance at present of a third illustrates, I am afraid, a temporary oblivion of Mrs. Wix, an accident to be explained only by a state of unnatural excitement. (XVII.4)
Kids can be so cruel. Maisie has been abandoned so often that she's quick to bond with anyone who's around. Unfortunately, her bonding with Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude forces her to abandon the memory of Mrs. Wix.
Quote #9
"And for your keeping in with them?" Beale roared again; it was as if his spirits rose and rose. "Do you realise, pray, that in saying that you're a monster?"
She turned it over. "A monster?"
"They've made one of you. Upon my honour it's quite awful. It shows the kind of people they are. Don't you understand," Beale pursued, "that when they've made you as horrid as they can—as horrid as themselves—they'll just simply chuck you?" (XIX.35)
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Beale is being a jerk here: he's telling his daughter that the kind Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale have turned her into a monster. However, he kinda has a point. Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale are acting in a way that is immoral (by Victorian standards). If Maisie is left with them, her sense of (again, Victorian) morality will be warped.
Quote #10
"Can you find your way alone?" (XXI.34)
Here, Sir Claude sends Maisie off. But notice that, taken out of context, this question also exemplifies the way all of Maisie's would-be parents treat her. Abandoning her, again, to her fate, birth parents and stepparents alike send her on her way, trusting that she'll be able to fend for herself. Luckily, this trust isn't totally misplaced—Maisie is the smartest of smart girls, as we've said. But one moral of this story is that even smart girls need adult protection, which is where the widow Mrs. Wix comes in.
Quote #11
Still they didn't separate; they stood smoking together under the stars. Then at last Sir Claude produced it. "I'm free—I'm free."
She looked up at him; it was the very spot on which a couple of hours before she had looked up at her mother. "You're free—you're free."(XXI.35)
Abandonment is just another word for nothing left to lose. Detaching yourself from toxic relationships can be freeing. This exchange foreshadows the fact that Maisie will be cutting herself loose from Sir Claude relatively soon.