What Maisie Knew

The game of billiards symbolizes sexual and romantic promiscuity, and specifically the emasculating promiscuity of Ida Farange. Billiards, also known as pool, is a popular game involving a table, a cue (or stick), and set of balls shot into holes in the table corners. Ida is renowned for her skill at the game, as well as her height, two typically unfeminine characteristics. She is also, as the novel shows, a serial cheater who is implied to have betrayed not only Beale and Sir Claude but also the men she cheats on them with, including Mr. Perriam and the Captain. Ida’s cheating is emasculating because of the way she continues to command respect in the social world while doing it, a privilege that is stereotypically associated with men. This is certainly true of Ida’s her husbands, who for their part constantly betray her with other women too. These qualities notably differentiate Ida from the archetypical “fallen woman”—a woman whose sexual promiscuity has ruined her reputation—and reveal a contrast even between her and Mrs. Beale. While Ida continues to inspire awe (as well as disgust) in the typically Victorian, moralistic Mrs. Wix, Mrs. Beale’s cheating only provokes Mrs. Wix’s derision. Ida’s ability to take charge of her situation, to “win” the game of social and romantic competition as well as a game of billiards, offers a unique insight into both her character and the shifting social norms of the late Victorian era that the novel depicts.