How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[…] not for any good they could do her, but for the harm they could, with her unconscious aid, do to each other. (Preface.5)
Whoa, James. Way to start this novel out with a bleak bang. Maisie's parents do not subscribe to the doctor's "first, do no harm" rule of thumb. They mean to use Maisie to do as much damage to each other as possible.
Quote #2
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)
Again, this is James at his most cynical. Maisie's parents use the monetary inheritance left to Maisie—but at least they can't touch all of her inheritance. This aunt was "crafty" enough to know how scummy her nephew is, apparently.
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)
Nice, Dad, nice. This dude doesn't let his daughter have the letters her mother has written to her. He chucks them into the fire instead. To be fair, these letters were probably pretty nasty.
Quote #4
"The truth about me is simply that I'm the most unappreciated of—what do you call the fellows?—'family-men.' Yes, I'm a family-man; upon my honour I am!" (VIII.35)
Here's another chestnut from Sir Claude, who defines himself this way during his first conversation with Mrs. Beale. By the end of the book, we understand that he wishes he were a family man, but he's not quite there yet. So here, James is practicing a tricky kind of foreshadowing that uses irony.
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)
Family is such a sordid affair in What Maisie Knew that Maisie is aware, eventually, of every twist and turn of her parents' private passions. James is showing us the dark side of parents being too open about their feelings.
Quote #6
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)
Here, we see again what an unconventional family Maisie has. But this sentence also shows James's interest in radically redefining family as the terms "father" and "mother" start to sound hollow when it becomes clear that these parents really don't offer protection to Maisie.
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)
Mrs. Wix is working overtime to preserve the sanctity of the family unit; Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude frankly don't care. This is one of our first hints that Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude are up to no good—they insult Maisie's birth mother to Maisie's face and make fun of the idea of fidelity. This, by Victorian standards, ain't cool at all.
Quote #8
"What's more unusual than for any one to be given up, like you, by her parents?" (XXX.71)
Sir Claude asks Maisie this question, which sums up the poor girl's predicament and really drives home the idea that there's an absence where Maisie's family should be. This makes times tough, as we've seen, but in another sense, it's a positive since it means that Maisie is free to choose a family of her own eventually.