Divorce In What Maisie Knew – What Does Divorce Mean For Kids?
Divorce, and eventually, What Maisie Knew
Divorce is bitter. It is the result and process of ripping two lives apart. It means that you don’t want to be together anymore. Not that you don’t love your children anymore. Right?
For most families, divorce means alimony, child support, and visitation rights. For my immediate family, it meant nothing because my wonderful parents didn’t get married, which I thank them for every day. I love them to death, but they didn’t share that feeling for each other. And I turned out with a very good outlook on love and marriage because of it. I know from my upbringing that it is unnecessary and possibly even wrong to get hitched just because you have an alien growing in your belly (sorry, but I love quoting Lily). It’s hard enough to raise a kid without having the extra baggage of being married to someone you aren’t in love with. I mean, you already have to raise a kid with them, please don’t make it more difficult on yourselves.
Divorce usually ends in years of bitterness and nasty lawyers fees. For Maisie, of Henry James’ What Maisie Knew, it also ends in being a middleman for your parents’ desire to hurt one another. She quickly learns that her parents abused her childly complaisance to send their poisonous messages back and forth beginning with a missive from her toothy father: “He said to tell you, from him…that you’re a nasty horrid pig”. This poor little six-year-old girl realizes that “everything was bad because she had been employed to make it so.”
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