"Sex in the Chapeau"—Accessories to What Maisie Knew

No one knows what Maisie knew, but we do know what she sees as she watches the adults of her world—' the mind of Mayfair'—operating in the sexual climate of the fin-de-siècle. What Maisie sees are accessories: gloves, sticks, umbrellas—and hats. These things do not logically cohere, because they are seen by a child whose world is criminally broken into incoherence but whose survival depends on making sense of these fragments. Hats, the embodiment of frivolity, flirtatiousness, and convention, become increasingly sites of anxiety and ambiguity. And like those other accessories they signal departure: if a child's main instinct is survival, its fear is of abandonment.