I have finally caught up with all of the postings. I didn't want to spoil too much before I was finished. Great insight from everyone - thanks to all!
The Master was one of my favorite books that we read last year, and I'm glad that we read one of the books that was written during the same time period which
The Master covered. I found a version of the book which contained James's preface from 1907. This short essay added insight into how he developed the book and the message he intended to deliver. An interesting bit of trivia is the choice that the story ends in Boulogne where James as a young teenager suffered a severe illness and associated with his own transition into adulthood. I enjoyed the ambiguity of what Maisie knows/knew or didn't know, and the additional layer that the adult perceptions of the reader adds. As fantasyfan noted I liked that the book ended with optimism that Maisie would remain incorruptible as she continued to mature.
How common and accepted was divorce in this time period? The book treats it with more acceptance than I expected. My grandmother's parents divorced not too far from this time period. My great-grandmother remarried. My grandmother took her stepfather's surname, and the family moved to a new town where nobody would know them. The children were not allowed to tell people that their stepfather was not their biological father.
My library has the movie, and I may borrow it when I have time. I found this quote from the screenplay authors that illustrates Maisie as a survivor:
Quote:
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The durability of the novel is principally attributable to James's choice on an extremely resilient and generous-spirited child as, not only his protagonist, but as the lens through which we experience the bewildering chaos of adult life. She faces her trials with such grace that she is exactly the person we hope to be - and what more can one ask of a protagonist? As we wrote the script, no matter what changes we made to the plot of the novel, and there were may, we were always guided by what James called "the very principle of Maisie's appeal, her undestroyed freshness, in other words that vivacity of intelligence by which she indeed does vibrate in the infected air, indeed does flourish in her immoral world." And though the air she breathes is indeed exceedingly infected, that vibration of a girl protected from the toxicity of her situation by her inability to fully grasp it - and by her sterling good nature - produces a tone so pure that it rings as true and compelling in 2013 as it first must have in 1897.
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