Family
Perhaps the strongest theme of What Maisie Knew is family. The story raises questions about the relative importance of biological, legal, and emotional bonds in constituting familial relationships. Maisie starts out with two biological parents, and along the way she gains two step-parents and is partially raised by a number of governesses and servants. She paradoxically feels as if she has five guardians (Ida, Beale, Sir Claude, Mrs. Beale, and Mrs. Wix), and at the same time none.
Out of these five guardians, Maisie is ironically least emotionally close to the two to whom she is closest biologically: her parents, Ida and Beale Farange. The fact that Maisie does not end up living with either of them at the end of the book shows that biological family is not the only kind of family. James also demonstrates that family goes beyond legal bonds by having Maisie choose to live with Mrs. Wix over either Sir Claude and Miss Overmore at the end of the story. Though Sir Claude and Miss Overmore are both her step-parents, and therefore have greater legal claims to custody of Maisie than Mrs. Wix does, Maisie knows that Mrs. Wix will provide the most loving and stable home. The character of Mrs. Wix could be said to symbolize family and motherhood throughout the novel. Maisie explicitly notes this from the beginning of her relationship with Mrs. Wix, thinking, "[Mrs. Wix] had been, with passion and anguish, a mother, and...this was something Miss Overmore was not, something (strangely, confusingly) that mamma was even less" (24). In this quote, Maisie herself realizes that family and motherhood go beyond circumstance or biological relation, and James foreshadows the ending of the book in which Mrs. Wix takes on the role of Maisie's mother.
Childhood and Innocence
Due to the neglect and emotional abuse Maisie suffers in early childhood, she loses her innocence at a younger age than most. In fact, the title of the book refers to how much Maisie knows about adult relationships from witnessing the turbulent marriages of Ida, Beale, Sir Claude, and Miss Overmore. This is evidenced by the final line of the book, a thought of Mrs. Wix's as the two characters leave Sir Claude and Miss Overmore: "She still had room for wonder at what Maisie knew" (216).
The reader, along with the older characters in What Maisie Knew, realize at particular moments that Maisie is wise, perceptive, and aware beyond her years. These moments are sometimes humorous and sometimes uncomfortable, but they always call attention to the effects of trauma on the psyche of young children. Both Sir Claude and Mrs. Wix, the characters who care most for Maisie, show their discomfort with Maisie's lack of innocence. Sir Claude attempts to deal with this by hiding things from Maisie, such as when he doesn't tell her about his continuing relationship with Miss Overmore because he doesn't want to get her "mixed up" (105). While Mrs. Wix bemoans Maisie's lack of "moral sense" (168), she also uses the girl's lack of innocence to treat her like more of a friend than a child at times, telling her stories about her life and gushing over her love for Sir Claude.
Maisie, having already lost her innocence, does not want to have innocence forced upon her through obfuscation, and becomes upset at being lied to about the communication and relationships between her guardians. However, Maisie also uses the fact that children are usually considered innocent to her benefit. She does this by playing dumb when she is pressured to pass rude messages between her mother and father or asked to divulge information about secret relationships.
Memory
In What Maisie Knew, James shows the way short-term and long-term memories influence characters' emotions and behavior. While it might be difficult to recall particular memories from early childhood, people are greatly influenced by experiences in the first years of their lives. James references this when he writes, "She found in her mind a collection of images and echoes to which meanings were attachable—images and echoes kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers, like games she wasn't big enough to play...A wonderful assortment of objects of this kind she was to discover there later" (17). This means that Maisie witnessed things during her parents' dysfunctional marriage and subsequent divorce that she was too young to understand at the time, and those memories will remain in her subconscious, affecting her feelings and decisions.
While Maisie's behavior is influenced by long-term memories of childhood trauma, she also has a childlike tendency toward letting go of memories of the past to focus on the present. Many times when she moves between her mother's and father's houses, she seems to entirely forget about the love she had for the people she was previously living with. In particular, she forgets about Mrs. Wix for long stretches of time even though they care about one another greatly. She also forgets about her anger at Sir Claude for staying away so long as soon as he returns, thinking to herself, "His presence was like an object brought so close to her face that she couldn't see round its edges" (88). This inability to see past the present shows that, at least on the conscious level, she is focusing her thoughts and behavior on short-term rather than long-term memories.
Jealousy
Jealousy plays a role in many of the relationships between characters in What Maisie Knew. On the outside, this jealousy is mostly over who loves whom. For example, Ida is jealous that Maisie loves Sir Claude more than her, resulting in her lashing out at both Maisie and Sir Claude. Another example of jealousy is shown when Mrs. Wix asks Maisie if she is jealous of Miss Overmore for her relationship with Sir Claude, and Maisie realizes that she is. This realization may prompt Maisie's demand that Sir Claude give up Miss Overmore if he wants to retain custody of Maisie.
However, jealousy is often a function of one's own insecurities. Ida's jealousy over Maisie loving other characters over her shows that she does, on some level, want to be a good mother. She may even feel her femininity threatened by her inability to care for her daughter as well as someone else—especially when the other person is a man. While Maisie does not seem to have strong feelings when asked about her jealousy of Miss Overmore, it is reasonable that she would feel threatened by someone who has taken her father and then her step-father's attention away from her. Her insecurity over being loved and cared for causes her jealousy of Miss Overmore. This shows the complex nature of jealousy. Though it is often a negative feeling that leads people to act viciously, it can be a result of commitments or attachments that are important and valuable.
Education
Throughout the novel, the instability of Maisie's childhood is made tangible through her lack of formal education. Maisie's parents divorce when Maisie is six years old, around the time that formal education often begins. The judge determines that she will move back and forth between her parents houses from that point on. This is the first thing that prevents her from receiving a normal education. Because her parents are wealthy, she is given a series of governesses who are supposed to teach her from home, but Miss Overmore turns out to be more interested in wooing Maisie's father, and Mrs. Wix, having evidently been chosen on a budget, has little formal education herself. Maisie is not sent away to school while living with her father, because he and Miss Overmore want to maintain an excuse for Miss Overmore's presence in the household as governess. Meanwhile, Maisie's mother doesn't seem to notice or care that Maisie isn't learning anything. In short, in the chaos of Maisie's early life, her education is almost completely neglected.
Maisie's lack of education becomes apparent when she gets a bit older and Sir Claude becomes more heavily involved in her affairs. He sends her to a few formal classes, where she notes that "The fountain of knowledge, in the form usually of a high voice that she took at first to be angry, plashed in the stillness of rows of faces thrust out like empty jugs" (104). In this quote, James critiques the pedagogical style of the time in which students were supposed to be silent vessels memorizing a professor's every word. The quote also shows how unfamiliar Maisie is with formal education at this point in her life, allowing her to take the distant, critical view she does. Maisie's lack of education is also displayed from her lack of knowledge of art and culture when Sir Claude takes her on outings and eventually travels with her to France. Maisie is able to feel confident in her knowledge compared to Moddle and Mrs. Wix, neither of whom received much formal education themselves as members of the lower class; however, when Miss Overmore arrives, she shows the level of education that a higher class woman would usually have—"It was she who, wherever they turned, was the interpreter, the historian and the guide" (182). As Maisie prepares to enter adolescence, she is emotionally mature but lacks the education typical of children her age. This gives tangible evidence of the effects of her upbringing on her mental development and life prospects.
Morality
In the preface to What Maisie Knew, James describes hearing the story of a child whose divorced parents each took custody part of the time until one parent remarried and didn't want to care for the child anymore. James details how he realized this could make a great story, especially if he exaggerated certain aspects to tug at readers' heartstrings even more. He decided that there would need to be a second step-parent added to the mix "for the misfortune of the little victim to become altogether exemplary" (4). It is clear from this anecdote that What Maisie Knew was from the outset a moral tale. James was emotionally affected by the story of a real-life Maisie, and he added details he thought would make the story even more shocking and extreme to more effectively communicate his idea of morality.
The beginning of the book is primarily concerned with the immorality of Ida and Beale Farange. It is not so much their divorce or adultery that is presented as immoral, but rather their lack of care for their child. Maisie is depicted as an innocent victim of her parents' selfish whims, and both Ida and Beale become more and more callous as the book goes on. By the end of the book, Mrs. Wix begins to passionately question Maisie's own morality, asking her repeatedly if she has a "moral sense" (168). Mrs. Wix seems to be questioning Maisie's morality because Maisie does not denounce Sir Claude and Miss Overmore's relationship. Maisie likely does not react strongly to Sir Claude and Miss Overmore's affair because of how many examples of adultery she has seen in her childhood, communicating James's overarching moral message that mistreating children or exposing them to trauma has long-lasting negative effects.
Social Class
In What Maisie Knew, supporting characters are used to demonstrate the importance of social class in 19th century English society. Maisie's governesses and servants illustrate a lower-class life. Moddle, Mrs. Wix, Susan Ash, and even Miss Overmore come from a variety of lower-class backgrounds, which is shown through their speech, education, and behavior. Miss Overmore seems to be the most comparatively well-off of all of Maisie's caretakers; while she is described by Ida as having grown up poor due to having many siblings, she has still received an education complete with study of languages and music and time abroad. On the other hand, Susan Ash borders on a parody of the English lower class with her exaggerated Cockney accent, which can be seen in quotes like, "[she] characterised her appeal as such a 'gime,' such a 'shime'" (123). Something that characterizes all of these lower class caretakers is that their behavior is dictated by their financial instability. Though they see the immorality of Maisie's parents and are at times mistreated or not paid, they are reliant on the Faranges for their livelihood and thus cannot protest or leave.
In contrast, the people with whom Ida and Beale have affairs represent upper-class society. Both Ida and Beale rely on their lovers to provide for them financially, so all of them besides Miss Overmore are of the upper class. Many have titles that imply their social class such as Sir Claude, Lord Eric, and the Countess. These characters have more room to act immorally, committing adultery fairly openly, because their status in society means they have more stability and options. By having Maisie's only interaction with upper-class people be through her parents' affairs, James casts upper-class society in a negative light.