Knowing Maisie

“Knowing Maisie” describes how “we fellow witnesses,” as James deems us in the preface, witness the telepathic communication between Maisie and her guardians. Holmgren demonstrates that Maisie controls discourse by way of clairvoyant visions and telepathic insights rendered as proleptic events of plot; by describing her visions, the narrator inscribes the text with a narrative Maisie authors. As she ascends into artistry, Maisie replaces the narrator with Mrs. Wix, but she allows the narrator to narrate his own exit through his final, borrowed vision of Mrs. Wix’s mind.