Decoding the Code: What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age

Abstract

Maisie Farange and Nanda Brookenham are deconstructors in the making. While their stories narrate primarily their acquisition of language, once these two crack the code they become dangerous, threatening the stability of the text. Indeed, with their knowledge, they are forced to leave town, in James’s pre-emptive way of ending. Mostly they keep quiet about their secret knowledge of the signs and signifieds, too busy trying to match them up and to reconcile the play of difference in their verbal milieux.

‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned’

(W. B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’)