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Chapter 3
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in What Maisie Knew, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Innocence and Corruption
Money and Society
Hypocrisy
Perspective and Understanding
Summary
Analysis
When Maisie returns to Ida’s she finds a new governess, the elderly Mrs. Wix. Maisie at first finds Mrs. Wix intimidating but soon learns more about her: Mrs. Wix’s own young daughter, Clara Matilda, was run over by a carriage and killed, a grief that Mrs. Wix never recovered from despite having a large family. Mrs. Wix treats Maisie like a surrogate daughter of her own. Maisie soon finds Mrs. Wix more comical than scary and eventually comes to feel secure with her—more secure than with either of her parents or Miss Overmore. Mrs. Wix is even poorer and significantly less qualified than Miss Overmore—Maisie perceives how much less she learns in Mrs. Wix’s lessons—but is able to delight Maisie with stories, either from romance novels or her own life.
Ida’s decision to hire Mrs. Wix is a direct reaction to Beale’s “theft” of Miss Overmore: Beale took Miss Overmore because she is young and beautiful, Ida believes, so she finds an old and unattractive governess to replace her. Elderly widows like Mrs. Wix also worked as governesses but, as in Mrs. Wix’s case, struggled to compete with younger and better-educated women. Still, because Mrs. Wix is shut out of the Faranges’ fashionable social scene, she is able to actually provide Maisie with genuine emotional support, something even Miss Overmore could not fully do.
Active
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