VS: I certainly see in Maisie a “good child,” whose lineage stretches back to Wordsworth’s angelic children and includes the pure heroes of George MacDonald’s fantasy literature and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy-even Jane Eyre, although she is much more of a firecracker than Maisie.
Certainly, Maisie seems a part of the Dickensian “good child” tradition of figures like Oliver Twist and Little Nell, but I’m curious to know how James’s construction of her fits within a larger framework. Those questions, though, make me wonder what the place of Maisie is within the literary trajectory of representing children. Interestingly though, McGehee and Siegel’s film is the first major return to Maisie-a 1968 television adaptation notwithstanding-and I’m intrigued to think about why this might be, especially in thinking through why the filmmakers decision to re-set the plot in contemporary New York. The late-1990s and early-2000s saw the The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, Washington Square, and The Golden Bowl all made into major studio films, along with the loose adaptation of Turn of the Screw into The Others.įurthermore, a whole string of contemporary novels inspired by James were published in 2004, from Colm Toibin’s The Master to Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. While he has not generated the same kind of culture and film industry as authors like Austen or Dickens, James has enjoyed some significant success in the adaptation and appropriation circuits over the last twenty-five years.
RF: Given my areas of research, I’m interested in starting by thinking about the popular reception and adaptation history of Henry James, and of What Maisie Knew more particularly. What Maisie Knew is still playing in select theatres, and is available for digital download on iTunes and Amazon. In the collaborative spirit of the film’s directors, Scott McGehee and David Siegel, we decided to write a joint review, analyzing the film from our respective areas of expertise. The following conversation took place via e-mail in July and August 2013, after we each viewed the most recent film adaptation of Henry James’s 1897 novel, What Maisie Knew. Fong, Kalamazoo College, & Victoria Ford Smith, University of Connecticut
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