Sexuality In Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw

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INTRODUCTION

After more than a centurey, sex was a taboo subject. Advice for young wives did not come from magazines, but the church and pastor’s words were regarded as a point of law.

An example of clar lesson about intimate relationships is the “Codes and procedures about personal intimate relationships of the marital status get great spiritual sanctity of this blessed community and in God’s glory”, written by Ruth Smythers, wife of the pastor of the Methodist Church. This advice has been published in the newspaper “Guide to Spirituality” in 1894.

In the background of such concepts, four years later, in 1898, it is for the first time published the novella “The Turn of the Screw”, written by Henry Hames, which seems at first sight a story in part of gothic and ghost storys genres.

First appeared was in a serial format in Collier’s Weekly magazine (January 27 – April 16, 1898). Due to its original content, The Turn of the Screw became a favorite text of academics who subscribe the New Criticism. The middle decades of the 20th centurey were dominated by the New Criticis current, which was a formalist movement in literary theory of the American literary criticism. Later numerous plays and films have been made based on “The Turn of the Screw” story.

This paper aims to summarize the narrative thread of “The Turn of the Screw”, highlighting especially the sexuality expressed in the story.

First chapter is about author and his narrative experience. The second chapter is a brief summary of “The Turn of the Screw” story. In the third and four chapters are described the nature and the actions of each character form the story. The sexuality theme of the story is discussed in chapter five. The paper ands with conclusions and references.

THE AUTHOR

Henry James was born in New York City in 1843, whose mastery of the psychological novel markedly influenced twentieth-century literature.

His father was Henry James, Sr., an unconventional thinker who has inherited considerable wealth. James, Sr., became a follower of Swedenborgian mysticism, a belief system devoted to the study of philosophy, theology and spiritualism, and socialized with such eminent writers as Thomas Carlyle[], Ralph Waldo Emerson[], Henry David Thoreau[], Washington Irving[] and William Makepeace Thackeray[].

William James, the older brother of James, profoundly influenced the emerging science of psychology through his  Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). He also distinguished himself as an exponent of a brand of philosophical pragmatism he named “radical empiricism,” the idea that beliefs do not work because they are true, but are true because they work [].

The James children were educated in a variety of schools and with private tutors. In 1855 the James family began a three-year tour of Geneva, London and Paris, an experience that probably influenced James’s later preference for Europe over his native land. After a year at Harvard Law School, he began writing short stories and book reviews. He continued to travel widely from a base in England, where he chose to settle. He became a British subject in 1915, a year before his death in 1916 at the age of seventy-three. By the time James died, he had written more than a hundred short stories and novellas, as well as literary and dramatic criticism, plays, travel essays, book reviews and twenty novels, including The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904)[].

Although James had many friends and acquaintances, he maintained a certain reserve toward most people. An “obscure hurt,” as James later described a mysterious early injury he suffered in connection with a stable fire, haunted him throughout his life. He never married and the absence of any known romantic attachments has led some critics to speculate that he was a repressed or closeted homosexual. Others attribute the reason for James’s lifelong celibacy to the early death of his beloved cousin Mary “Minny” Temple, the model for several of his heroines.

James wrote The Turn of the Screw in 1897, at a low point in his life. In 1895 he had suffered a tremendous personal and professional blow when his play Guy Domville[]was booed off the London stage. Deeply wounded, James retreated from London and took refuge in Sussex, eventually taking a long-term lease on a rambling mansion called Lamb House. Shortly thereafter, he began writing The Turn of the Screw, one of several works from this period that revolve around large, rambling houses.

Like many writers and intellectuals of the time, James was fascinated by “spiritual phenomena,” a field that was taken very seriously and was the subject of much “scientific” inquiry. Henry James, Sr., and William James were both members of the Society for Psychical Research[], and William served as its president from 1894 to 1896[].

James had written ghost stories before The Turn of the Screw. It was a popular form, especially in England, where, as the prologue to The Turn of the Screw suggests, gathering for the purpose of telling ghost stories was something of a Christmastide tradition. According to James’s notebooks and his preface to the 1908 edition of The Turn of the Screw, the germ of the story had been a half-remembered anecdote told to him by Edward White Benson, the archbishop of Canterbury: a story of small children haunted by the ghosts of a pair of servants who wish them ill.

In Benson’s story, the evil spirits repeatedly tried to lure the children to their deaths. The spin James put on the story was to make everything—the presence of the ghosts, their moral depravity, their designs on the children—purely a function of hearsay. As careful readers have noted, the ghosts are visible only to one person in the tale—the governess who serves as both narrator and protagonist[].

The Turn of the Screw first appeared in Collier’s Weekly[] in twelve installments between January and April 1898. Not until after World War I did anyone question the reliability of the governess as a narrator. With the publication of a 1934 essay by the influential critic Edmund Wilson[], a revised view of the story began to gain currency. Wilson’s Freudian interpretation, that the governess is a sexually repressed hysteric and the ghosts mere figments of her overly excitable imagination, echoed what other critics like Henry Beers[], Harold Goddard[], and Edna Kenton[] had previously suggested in the 1920s.

Throughout the course of his life, Wilson continued to revise and rethink his interpretation of The Turn of the Screw, but all criticism since has had to confront the central ambiguity in the narrative. Is the governess a hopeless neurotic who hallucinates the figures of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, or is she a plucky young woman battling to save her charges from damnation? Adherents of both views abound, though the former take on the story is rarer. Other critics maintain that the beauty and terror of the tale reside in its utter ambiguity, arguing that both interpretations are possible and indeed necessary to make The Turn of the Screw the tour de force that it is [].

THE STORY

The story begins with the governess’s point of view as she narrates her strange experience.

The governess begins her story with her first day at Bly, a country home in Essex, in eastern England, where she meets Flora and a maid named Mrs. Grose. She is welcomed by the house carers, but nervous regarding Flora. The next day she receives a letter from her employer, which contains a letter from Miles’s headmaster saying that Miles cannot return to school. The letter does not specify what Miles has done to deserve expulsion. Worried, the governess questions Mrs. Grose about this problem regarding Miles, but she admits only that Miles has an occasion been badly, in the ways boys ought to be. With Miles returned home, things get increasingly weird [].

One evening, as the governess strolls around the grounds, she sees a strange man in a tower of the house and exchanges an intense stare with him. Later, she catches the same man glaring into the dining-room window, and she rushes outside to investigate, but the man is gone. Scared, she discusses her two experiences with Mrs. Grose, who identifies the strange man as Peter Quint, a former valet who is now dead. From this moment, the presence of the ghosts in story gets intensifies. One day, when the governess is at the lake with Flora, she sees a woman dressed in black and senses that the woman is Miss Jessel, her dead predecessor.

The governess finds out that the relationship between Peter Quint and Miss Jessel has been extremely unethical, especially in the presence of children, having a negative influence on children’s behavior.

Convinced that the ghost seeks Miles, the governess becomes rigid in her supervision of the children and days pass without incidents. In the same time Miles and Flora express increased affection for the governess.

The lull is broken one evening when some things startle the governess from her reading. She rises to investigate, moving to the landing above the staircase. There, a gust of wind extinguishes her candle, and she sees Quint halfway up the stairs. She refuses to back down, exchanging another intense stare with Quint until he vanishes. The governess does not sleep well during the next few nights. The appearances of ghots are more frequent around her and children and also she discovers that Miles and Flora are aware and attracted by them.

Figure 1. Miles and Flora (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

The governess concludes that Flora and Miles frequently meet with Miss Jessel and Quint. At this, Mrs. Grose urges the governess to appeal to her employer, but the governess refuses, reminding her colleague that the children’s uncle does not want to be bothered [].

Both Flora and Miles refuses to recognize that they see ghosts and after an incident near the lake, when the governess has a harsh behavior towards children, Flora says that the governess is cruel and that she wants to get away from her and the governess collapses on the ground in hysteries. The next day, Mrs. Grose informs the governess that Flora is sick. They decide that Mrs. Grose will take Flora to the children’s uncle while the governess stays at Bly with Miles.

Figure 2. Miles and the governess

With Flora and Mrs. Grose gone, Miles and the governess talk after dinner. Than the governess sees Quint outside and she watches him in horror, then points him out to Miles, who asks if it is Peter Quint and looks out the window in rain. He cries out, and then falls into the governess’s arms, dead (see Figure 2).

CHARACTER LIST

The Governess is a twenty-year old woman who has been put in charge of educating and supervising Flora and Miles at the country estate of Bly. The governess has had a very little experience, and her new job puts an immense responsibility on her, since she has no one to supervise or help her. She is intelligent as well as sensitive and emotionally volatile. Over the course of two short interviews with her employer, she fell in love with him, but she has no opportunity to see him or communicate with him. She is extremely protective of her charges and hopes to win her employer’s approval. She views herself as a zealous guardian, a heroine facing dark forces. However, we never know for certain whether the ghosts and visions the governess sees are real or only figments of her imagination. No on else ever admits to seeing what she sees, and her fears, at times, seem to border on insanity [].

Figure 3. The Governess, Miss. Ann (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

Mrs. Grose is a servant who acts as the governess’s companion and confidante. Mrs. Grose, who is illiterate, is very aware of her low standing in comparison with the governess and treats the governess with great respect. Mrs. Grose listens patiently to the governess’s constantly changing theories and insights, most often claiming to believe her but sometimes questioning whether the ghosts may not be imaginary. The governess, however, tends to overwhelm Mrs. Grose, often finishing Mrs. Grose’s sentences or leaping to conclusions about what Mrs. Grose is saying. Thus, it can sometimes be difficult for us to judge whether Mrs. Grose is as strongly on the governess’s side as the governess thinks. Mrs. Grose cares deeply about Flora and Miles and consistently defends them against the governess’s accusations.

Figure 4. Mr. Grose (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

Miles is a ten-year-old boy, the elder of the governess’s two charges. Miles is charming and very attractive. He seems unnaturally well behaved and agreeable for a child, never fights with his sister, and tries constantly to please his governess. He is expelled from school for an unspecified but seemingly sinister reason, and although he seems to be a good child, he often hints that he is capable of being bad. The governess is alarmed by the fact that Miles never refers to his own past and suspects that wicked secrets belie his perfect exterior [].

Figure 5. Miles (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

Miles might be either a cunning and deceitful plaything of ghosts or merely an innocent, unusually well-mannered young boy. The governess repeatedly changes her mind on the matter, leaving Miles’s true character in question. When the governess first meets Miles, she is struck by his “positive fragrance of purity” and the sense that he has known nothing but love. She finds herself excusing him for any potential mishap because he is too beautiful to misbehave. Yet she also senses a disturbing emptiness in Miles, an impersonality and lack of history, as though he is less than real.

Once the governess begins having her supernatural encounters, she comes to believe that Miles is plotting evil deeds with his ghostly counterpart, Quint, and indeed Miles does exhibit strange behavior. For example, he plans an incident so that the governess will think him “bad,” and he steals the letter she wrote to his uncle. Mrs. Grose tells us that Peter Quint was a bad influence on him, but we have no way to measure the extent or precise nature of this influence, and Miles’s misdeeds may be nothing more than childish pranks. The fact that Miles is otherwise unusually pleasant and well behaved suggests that the sinister quality of his behavior exists only in the governess’s mind. The governess eventually decides that Miles must be full of wickedness, reasoning that he is too “exquisite” to be anything else, a conclusion she bases only on her own subjective impressions and conjectures [].

Flora is an eight-year-old girl, the younger of the governess’s two charges. Flora is beautiful and well mannered, a pleasure to be around. Although the governess loves Flora, she is disturbed that Flora, like Miles, seems strangely impersonal and reticent about herself. Flora is affectionate and always ready with an embrace or a smile. She is so unusually well behaved that her first instance of misconduct is disquieting. The governess eventually becomes convinced that Flora sees the ghost of Miss Jessel but keeps these sightings secret.

Figure 6. Flora (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

Like Miles, Flora might be either angelic or diabolical. She appears to be a completely wonderful little girl, even preternaturally so, well behaved and a pleasure to be around. The governess thinks Flora possesses “extraordinary charm” and is the “most beautiful child” she has laid eyes on. Flora seems, however, to have a personality quite distinct from these glowing descriptions. When the governess questions Flora as to why she had been looking out the window, Flora’s explanation is evasive and unsatisfying. Flora’s next turn at the window turns out to be, according to Miles, part of a scheme to show the governess that Miles can be “bad” []. At this point, the governess has already assumed Flora to be conniving and deceptive, but this is the first instance in which Flora seems to be exhibiting unambiguous deceit[].

The story remains inconclusive, however, and we never know for sure what Flora and Miles are up to. Flora may very well be the innocent child the governess thought her to be, her strange, diabolical turns existing only in the governess’s mind []

The Children’s Uncle, the governess’s employer, a bachelor who lives in London. The uncle’s attractiveness is one of the main reasons the governess agrees to take on her role at Bly. The uncle is friendly and pleasant, likely rich, and successful in charming women. He hires the governess on the condition that she handles his niece, nephew, and all problems at Bly herself. He asks not to be bothered about them.

Figure 7. The Children’s Uncle (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

Peter Quint is a former valet at Bly. Red-haired, handsome, and exceedingly clever, Quint was “infamous” throughout the area of Bly. According to Mrs. Grose, he was a hound and “too free” with everyone, Miles and Flora included. The governess describes his specter as an unnaturally white, silent “horror.” She believes Quint’s ghost is haunting Bly with the intention of corrupting Miles [] .

Figure 8. Mr. Peter Quint and Miss Jessel (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

Miss Jessel is the governess’s predecessor. Mrs. Grose describes Miss Jessel as a lady, young and beautiful but “infamous.” Miss Jessel apparently had an inappropriate relationship with Quint, who was well below her class standing. The governess describes Miss Jessel’s black-clad ghost as miserable, pale and dreadful. The governess believes Miss Jessel’s ghost is haunting Bly with the intention of corrupting Flora.

ANALYSIS

From the beginning we know that the story to come is a ghost story and that it involves a governess who is in love with her employer. With this basic story premise, we would expect the story to be a gothic romance and to have an unrealistic plot, primarily in the sense that it would contain supernatural elements but also in the idea that a governess might aspire to rise above her station and win the love of a rich gentleman, something that happens in gothic romances such as Jane Eyre [], but not in real life.

The prologue depicts an audience for the governess’s story that is adult, worldly, and cynical rather than naive or sentimental. The narrator makes it clear that some of the guests are more sophisticated than others and that those who remain to hear Douglas’s story are a select group. This group is characterized as “arch,” meaning deliberately or even forcedly ironic and playful. The group’s members are fairly aggressive about reading between the lines of what Douglas says to draw sexual inferences, as Mrs. Griffin does about Douglas and the governess. The guest who wisecracks about the former governess dying of “so much respectability” is insinuating that the former governess is less than respectable, perhaps morally and sexually loose. This guest treats Douglas’s story skeptically, even cynically, refusing to take things at face value and ready to make inferences of a sexual nature. However, we should read this novel taking into consideration both realistic and sexual character of the story [].

In the following lines, a brief analysis of each chapter of the novel is made to bring more light.

From the first sentence of her narrative, the governess calls attention to her own sharp swings in mood and attitude, a focus that makes her seem sensitive, emotional, nervous, and introspective but not necessarily reliable.

Figure 9. The Bly House (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

Her perceptions of things at Bly are clearly shaped by her emotions and her imagination, and often her judgments seem excessively hasty or intense. Her reaction to Flora, in particular, seems excessive, as she describes Flora in such idealized terms (“radiant,” “beatific”) that we get little sense of Flora as a real child. The governess feels affection for Mrs. Grose, but her feelings often change quickly, though briefly, to suspicions. The governess’s sensitivity and volatility also create a feeling of uncertainty about whether we can trust her point of view. This question is one of the central problems of The Turn of the Screw, and it develops and deepens rather than resolves.

Figure 10. Mr. Grose and the Governess (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

Chapter II introduces the tantalizing mystery of what Miles did to get himself expelled from school. Although Miles looks like an angel and was one of the youngest boys there, he apparently did something so bad that the school didn’t think disciplining him would be sufficient, possibly because he poses some kind of danger to the other students. Strangely, the headmaster refuses to even mention in the letter what Miles did. Since James never lets us know what happened, we might conclude that guessing the answer is impossible. If we decide that an answer to this riddle exists and that we are supposed to read between the lines to figure it out, then the crime would have to be both something that was condemned by Victorian society and something that there was a taboo against speaking about.

Figure 11. Mr. Grose and the Governess when she receives the letter form the schol of Miles (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

In this case the facts suggest strongly that Miles’s infraction was sexual in nature. As we see in subsequent chapters, he may have been exposed to sex by unscrupulous former servants, and thus he may be imparting knowledge about sex to his peers at school or perhaps engaging in sexual behaviors. In Chapter XXIV, he finally admits that he “said things” to people he “liked” and that those people repeated the things he said to those they liked. His infraction might involve knowledge of heterosexual acts, masturbation, or homosexuality, but it is impossible to know for certain [].

The governess’s reaction to the headmaster’s letter is both odd and revealing. A more practical governess might follow up with the school, make persistent inquiries, obtain actual facts, and try to resolve the situation. Instead, this governess lets her imagination run wild, conjuring up the darkest possibilities, hinting at the sexual nature of his misdeed when she refers to the possibility of his corrupting the other students. Despite her curiosity and ability to imagine horrible scenarios, she avoids pursuing the facts. She seems to want the situation to be complicated and difficult rather than simple, apparently because she wants a heroic challenge that gives her the opportunity to win the gratitude of the absent employer with whom she’s in love.

Chapter III features the first supernatural event, the governess’s first sighting of the ghost of Peter Quint. To put this scene in perspective, it is important to know that one of the most debated questions of The Turn of the Screw is whether the ghosts are real or whether the governess hallucinates them and if is so, why she does so.

The reasons for suspecting the governess of hallucinating come later in the story, when the governess behaves more erratically and her understanding of the situation seems more questionable[].

However, Peter Quint’s appearance is not quite as random as it seems. In Chapter II, Mrs. Grose inadvertently alludes to Peter Quint without mentioning his name, saying that he liked his girls young and pretty, and the governess picks up on this slip, asking whom Mrs. Grose means, since it is obviously not the master.

Figure 12. Peter Quint first appearance at the window (print screen from the “The turn of the screw” movie, 2009)

This exchange could be seen as simple foreshadowing, but perhaps also as the planting of the idea in the governess’s mind that a strange and sexually predatory man is somehow associated with Bly. Another fact worth noting about Quint is that before the governess sees him, she is fantasizing about running into someone, perhaps her employer, during her walk. If we decide to look for evidence that Quint is a hallucination rather than a ghost, the fact that Quint’s appearance is so closely tied to the governess’s desire for the master might serve as the basis for a psychological interpretation. The governess’s mind may have produced Quint both as a substitute object of sexual desire and as a further pretext for heroism that will please her employer[].

Figure 13. The amor scene between Mr. Peter Quint and Miss Jessel dreamed by the governess

The governess’s first thoughts after seeing Peter Quint are to compare her situation to the plots of two popular gothic novels with romantic heroines, Emily St. Aubert in The Mysteries of Udolpho [] and Jane Eyre in “Jane Eyre. An Autobiography” [], the latter about a governess who marries her employer, which we know to be this governess’s fantasy.

The governess’s second sighting of Peter Quint, as he stares in through the window, differs from the first in that it is slightly more subjective. Her description of the first sighting focuses exclusively on what Quint looks like and what she sees him do, but this time she reports being seized by a flash of insight and certain knowledge that Quint is looking for someone other than her. This difference is important because the governess’s claims about the ghosts become increasingly more subjective as the story goes on. By Chapter VI, she claims to know that Quint was looking for Miles. We believe the governess because her first vision seems to be very factual, she observes a man, she doesn’t know he is a ghost, and she doesn’t know he looks like Quint; therefore, her vision must be trustworthy. As we read further, however, the governess claims to know or intuit many things that cannot be proven simply by the evidence of her senses. The less factual her impressions, the less certain we are that she is trustworthy. When Mrs. Grose sees the governess peering in from the spot where Quint was, she describes the governess as a terrifying and dreadful sight, hinting that the governess herself may be a source of terror to others rather than a hero or savior, as the governess would like to think.

The governess’s description for Mrs. Grose of Peter Quint’s appearance displays a strange mixture of attraction and repulsion. Even if we feel sure that Quint is a real ghost and not a product of the governess’s mind, we may still get the sense that the governess’s perceptions about Quint are not purely insightful and that, to a certain extent, the governess projects her own desires and fears onto him. Quint is clearly a foil for the absent master, similarly attractive, and at one time the master’s proxy at Bly, but emphatically not a gentleman like the master. We know that the governess fell in love with the master during their interviews, so we can assume that the master awakened sexual desires in the governess[].

However, the governess has no outlet for those feelings, because the precondition for winning the master’s approval is to endure his absence and not seek to communicate with him. She describes Quint as “tall, active, erect” and “remarkably” handsome, making it clear that she finds him attractive, but she also perceives him as aggressive and terrifying. We might infer that her frustrated desire for the master is what prompts her to see Quint as a sexual substitute, as someone who is attractive but, unlike the master, available. However, Quint’s sexual availability is also terrifying, because the social consequences of sex with a man like him would be so destructive. The governess’s fear of Quint’s sexuality or her fear of her own desire for him, seems to manifest itself as a contempt for his status as a servant, and throughout the story she dwells on the dangers and evils of his lower-class, servile, ungentlemanly condition [].

In chapters VI-VIII, as the governess learns about Quint and Jessel and their relationship with the children, her views toward them evolve from the idea that the ghosts are trying to get at the children and that she can shield them to suspecting that the children are already under the ghosts’ influence and are corrupted, and thus need to be even more vigorously watched and more aggressively rescued. From this point on, everything the children say or do may be duplicitous and ironic. Even if we believe that the ghosts are real, we don’t know whether the governess is right about the children. Her assertions that the children are aware of the ghosts are based on subjective impressions and intuitions, not on clear visual evidence. Moreover, the governess’s interpretation of events at Bly is opportunistic, even self-serving. She sees the problem of the ghosts and the chance to save the children as a “magnificent opportunity,” a chance to fulfill her fantasy of winning the master’s approval through an act of heroism.

The nature of the children’s relationship with Quint and Jessel is only hinted at, and it can be interpreted in different ways. We know from Mrs. Grose that Miles spent a lot of time with Quint, despite Mrs. Grose’s disapproval of a servant and master being so friendly. We also gather that Quint was “too free” with Miles and everyone else, that Quint and Jessel had an affair, and that Quint did what he liked with people. All of these statements are vague and ambiguous.

Seen in the most positive light, Mrs. Grose’s account can be interpreted to mean merely that Quint was a bad influence on Miles because of his lower-class manners. At worst, Mrs. Grose’s words might imply that Quint exposed Miles to sexual knowledge by telling him about sex, by letting Miles witness him having sex, or even by having sex with Miles. Similarly, Mrs. Grose’s assertion that Quint was “free” with everyone and did what he liked with people could mean merely that he was rude and spoke to people however he wanted, or it could mean that he seduced or sexually abused the other servants.

The governess is quick to interpret the situation in a sexual way, insisting that Miles and Flora understood the true nature of Quint and Jessel’s relationship and that they helped to cover it up. She sees the situation as much worse than does Mrs. Grose, perceiving herself as bolder as and more willing to face the truth than Mrs. Grose. We don’t know the truth for certain, and our sense that there are no limits to how bad the situation might be creates a feeling of vertigo and terror in us [].

In Chapter VIII, Mrs. Grose raises the idea that the governess might have imagined the ghosts, and the governess silences her by pointing out that she described each ghost down to the last detail and that Mrs. Grose identified them by these descriptions. The validity of this argument is ambiguous, however. This might be a fair description of how they identify Peter Quint, but in the case of Miss Jessel, not only does the governess not provide a detailed description, she is the one who asserts that the woman in black was Miss Jessel. This discrepancy is definitely noteworthy, giving us some reason to mistrust the governess, but it doesn’t settle the question one way or the other, because the governess’s point still seems valid as applied to Quint.

In the chapters IX-XIII is detail the governess’s struggle to protect and save the children, together with her growing impression that the children are deceiving her and that things are worse than she thought. Although she does see Quint and Jessel again, most of the suspense is now generated by what she suspects and imagines about the children’s dealings with the ghosts. She no longer fears confronting the ghosts but instead fears that she has lost the power to see them and that the ghosts are appearing to the children in her very presence, telling them something infernal or referring to “dreadful passages of intercourse in the past.” Now the terror is purely psychological, and we are drawn in to share her fears because, just like her, there seems to be something terrible going on that we also can’t define [].

We see things from the governess’s point of view, and the children appear to be a mixture of things, charming, affectionate, angelic, and wonderfully tactful but also duplicitous and subtle. We are given much less information about how the children may perceive the governess, but that which we are given is rather unsettling. The governess describes her own behavior as both extremely vigilant and watchful and extremely affectionate, she perpetually bows down and hugs the children. Yet her expressions of affection and her constant surveillance have oppressive and suffocating overtones, and there are hints that the children tolerate rather than welcome it. In moments of crisis, the governess seems downright frightening. Thinking Flora has lied, the governess grips her in a “spasm” and reports being surprised that Flora does not cry out in surprise or fright. When she questions Miles, she is aware of answering him “only with a vague repeated grimacing nod.” She always suppresses her urge to ask about the ghosts but instead cross-examines the children about what they say and do. If the children are innocent and do not see the ghosts, the governess’s behavior must seem strange and terrifying [].

Chapters XIV-XVII represent a struggle between  Miles and the governess, as he challenges her to send him back to school or justify why she has not. Miles clearly wants freedom from the governess’s scrutiny and control, but we do not know exactly why he wants this freedom. What Miles says he wants seems on the surface to be utterly ordinary, but in the context of the governess’s fears and suspicions, his words seem ominous and fraught with double meanings. For example, he says that he wants to be “with his own sort” and that the governess knows what boys want, words that could be innocent and banal or salacious. He may mean he wants to be around other boys, or he may be making a coded reference to his homosexuality [].

Possibly, the characters’ cryptic statements and vague suggestions of double entendres may be intended to satirize Victorian reticence about sexual matters.

Miles gains a psychological advantage over the governess when he tells her he will convince his uncle to come down and discuss his schooling, and the governess is too overcome with agitation at hearing this to go to church. The governess explains to the reader that she is worried about having to deal with the painful subject of Miles’s expulsion with the uncle, but it is possible that her agitation has more to do with her attraction to the uncle. Thus far, she has sublimated her feelings for her employer, pouring them into her effort to rescue the children and to shield the employer from any trouble.

At the end of Chapter XIII, she even asserts that his complete silence is intended to flatter and pay tribute to her. The idea of confronting the employer face to face has become quite alarming for her, and her experiences after she leaves the children at the church door suggest that she feels guilty about her desires. The best evidence for her feelings of guilt is when she begins to identify herself with Miss Jessel, whom she now sees as the most odious woman possible because Miss Jessel has had a sexual affair. Miss Jessel apparently represents something that the governess simultaneously identifies with, desires, and loathes.

On the surface, the conclusion of The Turn of the Screw seems to resolve the question of the governess’s reliability in her favor. When Miles blurts out “Peter Quint, you devil!” he seems to acknowledge his awareness of the ghost, and he also seems anxious, or perhaps terrified, to see Quint himself. When Miles dies, there seems to be little explanation for this occurrence other than the governess’s, he has been dispossessed and this has killed him.

However, if we reread the concluding chapters skeptically, this certainty may melt away. Miles’s outburst proves only that he knows that the governess thinks she sees Quint and that she thinks Miles sees him too. His words don’t really prove that he has ever seen Quint himself.

Readers who view the governess as mad tend to speculate that perhaps the governess killed him by hugging him too hard and smothering him. This theory resonates with what the governess has told us about her tendency to hug the children too much and with our impression that her affection is “suffocating,” but apart from that, the idea that she literally smothers him is something of a stretch. Miles’s death is the last unsolvable enigma of the story [].

Figure 14. The governess and Miles death in the end of the story

The governess’s final interview with Miles also tells us a little more about the mystery of Miles’s expulsion. Miles says now that all he did was to say things to a few people whom he liked and that they repeated these things to people they liked. He also admits that the things he said were probably bad enough to warrant expulsion. If Miles’s words are to be believed, the range of possibilities to explain his expulsion narrows considerably. He didn’t lie, cheat, or steal, and he wasn’t violent, abusive, or defiant of authority. His crime didn’t directly involve either authorities or enemies, so it doesn’t seem to be anything malicious. Among his friends, he talked about something that absolutely should not be talked about, at least not by a boy Miles’s age. The things Miles said to the boys he liked may well have concerned homosexuality or something else of a sexual nature.

Because The Turn of the Screw scrupulously observes the taboo against mentioning sex or homosexuality explicitly, the story insists that we supply the answer and take responsibility for seeing lurid and prurient meanings ourselves[].

SEXUALITY IN “THE TURN OF THE SCREW”

The Themes discuseed in this novel are multiple, which usually are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. For “The Turn of the Screw” novel has been proposed three themes.

THE CORRUPTION OF THE INNOCENT

The governess only rarely indicates that she is afraid the ghosts will physically harm or kill the children. In fact, Miles’s death comes as a shock to us as readers, because we are unprepared to think of the ghosts as a physical threat. Until she sends Flora away, the governess never seems to consider removing the children from the ghosts or trying to expel the ghosts from the house. Instead, the governess’s fears focus almost entirely on the potential “corruption” of the children, whether they were corrupted by Quint and Jessel when the latter were alive and whether they contiue to be similarly corrupted by the ghosts. Before she even knows about Quint, the governess guesses that Miles has been accused of corrupting other children. Although the word corruption is a euphemism that permits the governess to remain vague about what she means, the clear implication is that corruption means exposure to knowledge of sex[].

For the governess, the children’s exposure to knowledge of sex is a far more terrifying prospect than confronting the living dead or being killed. Consequently, her attempt to save the children takes the form of a relentless quest to find out what they know, to make them confess rather than to predict what might happen to them in the future[].

Her fear of innocence being corrupted seems to be a big part of the reason she approaches the problem so indirectly, it’s not just that the ghosts are unmentionable but that what the ghosts have said to them or introduced them to is unspeakable.

Because the corruption of the children is a matter of fearful speculation rather than an acknowledged fact, the story doesn’t make any clear and definitive statement about corruption. Certainly, the governess’s fears are destructive and do not result in her saving the children. Notably, while the governess is the character most fearful of and vigilant for corruption, she is also the least experienced and most curious character regarding sex. Mrs. Grose is married, and the uncle, though a bachelor, seems to be a ladies’ man. The governess is singularly horrified by Miss Jessel’s sexual infraction and apparently fascinated by it as well.

We might conclude that the governess’s fear of the children’s corruption represents her projection of her own fears and desires regarding sex onto her charges.

THE DESTRUCTIVENESS OF HEROISM

The governess’s youth and inexperience suggest that the responsibility of caring for the two children and being in charge of the entire estate is more than she could possibly bear, yet she does not look for help. Her isolation is largely her employer’s fault, because he chooses to remain absent and specifically tells her to deal with all problems by herself. However, the governess responds to her experiences at Bly by taking on even more responsibility, to bury the headmaster’s letter and keep Miles at home; to be the one who sees the ghosts rather than the children and who attempts to screen them from any exposure to the ghosts; and to save the children from the ghosts’ corrupting influence.

These decisions are all self-conscious, she is not forced to make them because she can’t think of another way to respond. Instead, she deliberately chooses to view these challenges as “magnificent” opportunities to please the master and deludes herself into thinking that the master recognizes her sacrifices. Clearly, she is misguided on both counts. The master never comes down or sends any letter, and her crusade to save the children is an even worse disaster. Flora leaves the estate sick and in hysterics, vowing never to speak to the governess again, and Miles dies. Whether or not the governess was correct in thinking that the children were being haunted, she was definitely wrong in thinking she could be the hero who saves them[].

The fact that the governess was misguided in adopting a heroic stance suggests several interpretations. One possibility is that the forces of corruption are too powerful for one person to oppose. Perhaps the governess could have succeeded only with the concerted efforts of the school and the uncle, and perhaps the children could not have been saved. Another possible reason why her heroism might have been inappropriate is that childhood and innocence may be too fragile to be protected in such an aggressive fashion. The governess’s attempt to police and guard the children may have proven to be more damaging than the knowledge from which she wanted to protect them.

FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS

One of the most challenging features of The Turn of the Screw is how frequently characters make indirect hints or use vague language rather than communicate directly and clearly. The headmaster expels Miles from school and refuses to specify why. The governess has several guesses about what he might have done, but she just says he might be “corrupting” the others, which is almost as uninformative as the original letter. The governess fears that the children understand the nature of Quint and Jessel’s relationship, but the nature of that relationship is never stated explicitly. The governess suspects that the ghosts are influencing the children in ways having to do with their relationship in the past, but she isn’t explicit about how exactly they are being influenced. This excessive reticence on the part of the characters could reflect James’s own reticence, or it could be interpreted as a satiric reflection on Victorian reticence about sex. More straightforwardly, it could be a technique for engaging the imagination to produce a more terrifying effect[].

CONCLUSIONS

The story’s issue, or question, can be baldly expressed: Is the governess mad?. If the ghosts are real, then she is sane, and her desperate efforts to protect her dear charges, though doomed in the end, are noble and self-sacrificing. If the ghosts are mere illusions, then she is suffering a bout of insanity, in which her “revelations” about the children’s unearthly communications, and her perception of them as allied to unspeakable evil, must reflect her deeply suppressed aggressions and hostility.

If we choose to accept the reality of the ghosts, “The Turn of the Screw” presents a bracing account of rampant terror. And if we accept the governess’s madness, we have a fascinating view of a shattering mental dissolution. But “The Turn of the Screw” is greater than either of these interpretations. When Miles asks the governess to send him off to boarding school, noting that he is “a fellow, don’t you see? Who’s well getting on” is he showing a guileless desire to be with boys his own age or is he confessing to the heartbreaking precocity of the abused child?. My opinion is that he hides an abuse. Also we can interpret the governess’s madness as a form of sexual hysteria.

Either interpretation of the the book (real ghosts/real madness) can seem worse than the other. If the governess is mad, she has unwittingly killed a bright and beautiful little boy, this is a tragedy, but a local one. If the ghosts are genuine, however, there are jagged cracks in the firmament above us all, and nobody is safe. The gratest of ghost stories have intuitively understood this radical asymmetry. Evil and Good are not equally or complementarily matched.

Also we can believe that the story is a representation of the struggle between morality (the governess) and immorality (the ghosts and their relationship). Good may triumph in the end, and the saved soul may find its way to the celestial bedrock of Heaven. But Evil, for all of its eventual defeat, will never go down easy.

REFERENCES

Beidler, Peter G. Ghosts, Demons and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw and the Turn of the Century Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999

Beidler, Peter G. Frames in James: The Tragic Muse, The Turn of the Screw, What Maisie Knew and The Ambassadors. British Columbia, Canada: University of Victoria, 1993.

Brad Leithauser, Ever Scarier: On “The Turn of the Screw, The New Yorker, October 29, 2012.

Cranfill, Thomas Mabry and Robery Lanier Clark Jr. An Anatomy of The Turn of the Screw, Austin University of Texas Pressm, 1965.

Edel, Leon. The Life of Henry Hames, New York: Penguin Books, 1963

Huler Terry. The Turn of the Screw: Bewildered Vision: Boston Twayne Publishers, 1989.

Lustig T.J. Henry Hames and the Ghostly. Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Novick, Sheldon M. Henry James: The Young Master New York, Random Hause, 1996,

Sheppard, E.A, Henry James and The Turn of the Screw Auckland, New Zealand, Auckland University Press, 1974.

Robert James L. Cliffs Notes on The Turn of the Screw, 04 Apr. 2017.