The Turn of the Screw [603981]

The Turn of the Screw

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Contents

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Sexuality in "The Turn of the Screw"………..3
Conclusions
References

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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.
-nefinalizat –

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THE AUTHOR

Henry James was born in New York City in 1843 , whose mastery of the
psychological novel markedly influ ence d 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[1], Ralph Waldo Emerson[2], Henry David
Thoreau[3], Washington Irving[4], and William Makepeace Thackeray[5].
William James, the older bro ther of James , profoundly influence d 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 [6].

1 Thomas Carlyle (1795 -1881) – was a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian
and teacher
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -1882) – was an American essayist, lecturer and poet who led the
transcendentalist movement of the min -19th century
3 Henry David Thoreau (1817 -1862) – was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist,
naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor and historian
4 Washington Irving (1783 -1859) – was an American short story writer, essayist, biographer,
histori an and diplomatic of the early 19th century
5 William Makepea ce Thackeray (1811 -1863) – was an English novelist of the 19 th
6 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Turn of the Screw.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC.
2004. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

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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 st ories 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 sho rt 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)[7].
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 cous in Mary “Minny” Temple, the model for several of his
heroines.

7 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Turn of the Screw.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC.
2004. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

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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[8]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 tha t 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[9], and
William served as its president from 1894 to 1896[10].
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 gho st 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

8 Guy Domville – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Domville

9 Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a non -profit organisation in the United Kingdom –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Psychical_Research

10 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Turn of the Screw.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC.
2004. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

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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 p resence 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 influentia l 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 li ke Henry Beers, Harold Goddard, and Edna Kenton had
previously suggested in the 1920 s. 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 for mer 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.

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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,

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which contains a letter from Miles’s he admaster 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 ba dly, in the ways boys ought to be. With Miles returned
home, things get increasingly weird [11].
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 ca tches 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. Fr om
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 supervisio n 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

11 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Turn of the Screw.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC.
2004. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

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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 bot hered [12].
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

12 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Turn of the Screw.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC.
2004. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

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towards children, Flora says that the governess is cruel and that she
wants to get away from her and th e 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 an d 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) .

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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

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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 [13].
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 co nstantly
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 concl usions 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
again st the governess’s accusations.
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

13 Cranfill, Thomas Mabry , and Robert Lanier Clark, Jr . An Anatomy ofThe Turn of the Screw .
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965 .

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the fact that Miles never refers to hi s own past and suspects that wicked
secrets belie his perfect exterior [14].
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 t oo 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 t hat 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 [15].

14 Cranfill, Thomas Mabry , and Robert Lanier Clark, Jr . An Anatomy ofThe Turn of the Screw .
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965 .
15 Cranfill, Thomas Mabry , and Robert Lanier Clark, Jr . An Anatomy ofThe Turn of the Screw .
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965 .

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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 miscon duct is
disquieting. The governess eventually becomes convinced that Flora sees
the ghost of Miss Jessel but keeps these sightings secret.
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 chi ld” 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 Flor a
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

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her to be, her strange, diabolical turns existi ng only in the governess’s
mind [16]
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.
Peter Quint is a former valet at Bly. Red -haired, handsome, a nd
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 believ es Quint’s ghost is haunting
Bly with th e intention of corrupting Miles [17]
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.

16 Cranfill, Thomas Mabry , and Robert Lanier Clark, Jr . An Anatomy ofThe Turn of the Screw .
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965 .
17 Cranfill, Thomas Mabry , and Robert Lanier Clark, Jr . An Anatomy ofThe Turn of the Screw .
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965 .

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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

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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
[18], but not in real life.
The prologue depicts an audience for the governess’s story that is
adult, worl dly, and cynical rather than nai ve 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 “s o 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 an d sexual
character of the story [19].
In the following lines, a brief analysis of each chapter of the novel is
made to bring more light.

18 The novel “ Jane Eyre . An Autobiography” written by Charlotte Bronte, published in 1847,
Londra.
19 Sheppard, E. A. Henry James and The Turn of the Screw . Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland
University Press, 1974 .

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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. Her perceptions of things at Bl y 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 describe s 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.
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 schoo l 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. 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 h e

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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 [20].
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 im agination 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.

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

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The reasons for suspecting the governess of hallucinating come later
in the story, when the governess behaves more erratically and her
understanding o f 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. 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 fantasi zing about running into someone,
perhaps her e mployer, 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 interpr etation. 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.
The governess’s first thoughts after seeing Peter Quint are to compare
her situation to t he plots of two popular gothic novels with romantic
heroines, Emily St. Aubert in The Mysteries of Udolpho [21] and Jane Eyre

21 The novel “ The Mysteries of Udolpho” written by Ann Radcliffe , published in 1794, Londra.

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in “Jane Eyre. An Autobiography ” [22], 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 sto ry
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; theref ore, 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 trustwort hy. 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 gov erness 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

22 The novel “ Jane Eyre . An Autobiography” written by Charlotte Bronte, published in 1847,
Londra.

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if we feel sure that Quint is a real ghost and not a product of the
governess’s mind, we may sti ll 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 clear ly a foil for the absent master, similarly attractive, and at on e 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 gov erness 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, availa ble. However, Quint’s sexual
availability is also terrifying, because the social consequences of sex with
a man like him would be so destructive. The governe ss’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 [23].
In chapters VI-VIII, as the governess learns about Quint and Jessel and
their relationship with th e children, her views toward them evolve from

23 Heller, Terry . The Turn of the Scr ew: Bewildered Vision. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989 .

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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 v igorously
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 assertio ns 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 b e 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 Quin t 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 becau se 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

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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 situ ation 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 wil ling 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 [24].
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 th at 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 po int 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

24 Cranfill, Thomas Mabry , and Robert Lanier Clark, Jr . An Anatomy ofThe Turn of the Screw .
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965 .

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she does see Quint and Jessel again, most of the suspense is no w
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 t hat we also can’t define [25].
We see things from the governess’s point of view, and the children a ppear
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
affectio nate, 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 gove rness 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 qu estions Miles , she is aware of answering
him “only with a vague repeated grimacing nod.” She always suppresses

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

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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 [26].

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 homos exuality [27].
Possibly, the ch aracters’ 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

26 Frames in James: The Tragic Muse, The Turn of the Screw , What Maisie Knew, and The
Ambassadors . British Columbia, Canada: University of Victoria, 1993 .
27 Beidler, Peter G . Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw and the Turn of
the Century . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989 .

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with the uncle, bu t 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 doo r 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 Mi ss Jessel has had a sexual affair. Miss Je ssel 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 occurr ence 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 huggi ng
him too hard and smothering him. This theory resonates with what the

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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 smot hers him is something of a stretch.
Miles’s death is the last unsolvable enigma of the story [28].
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.

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

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SEXUALITY IN “THE TURN OF THE SCREW”

Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
THE CORRUPTION OF TH E 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, th e 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 th an 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

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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 corruptio n 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

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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” opport unities 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 disas ter. 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 t he 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 suc ceeded 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.

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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 (which was marked), 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
terrifyin g effect.