“The Turn of the Screw,” by Henry James is a novella that is open to countless of interpretations due to its ambiguity. There is a contradiction after contradiction about whether the Governess is sane enough to be able to see the ghosts of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint. In fact, since the novella was published, many critics have argued that the projections of the ghosts are subjective to the governess’s imagination, while others argue the opposite. The story revolves around a young woman, who has recently finished her education. She accepts her first job: being the Governess of little Flora and Miles. The two children are under the care of their uncle after the death of their parents. For this reason, the Governess moves to a grand mansion in …show more content…
Bly, where she is isolated from everything and everyone, her only companions are the children and Mrs. Grose, a servant. Unexpectedly, everything commences to feel eerie and enigmatic when the Governess begins to see strange apparitions around the house. Because the novel is a bundle of unexplainable and contradictions of free interpretation, the text can be perceived from more than one point of view. I will argue that the children know and are aware about the ghosts, however, some of the aspects of the story are deliberately open to interpretation. Despite James’s ambiguity, the story is able to prove that the children do have knowledge about the ghosts, confirming that Governess’s encounters with the ghosts are not product of her imagination. The external appearance has deceived more than one in history and literature. James does it presenting a harmless and angelic surface as part of the characterization of both children, Flora and Miles. During the first time the Governess meets Flora, her impression of her is rather positive, “But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl” (9). Throughout the story the children are often compared to angels. James utilizes words such as “beatific” and “radiant” to emphasize their goodness, clarity, and transparency—as if their souls were clean and free of any sins or misdeeds. Also, the word “beatific” has a connotation of religion, specifically to Christianity, which signifies “holy,” “blessed,” or “celestial.” The word choice is part of the governess’s first perception of Flora, which only implies that she regards Flora as an innocent child. The name of Flora is a variant of flowers, which usually symbolizes fragility, beauty—there are some flowers, such as the white Calla Lily that symbolizes purity and innocence. However, there are other floral species that have negative connotations, just as an example, the Deadly Nightshade symbolizes falsehood. So, the name Flora can have double meaning, either a positive one or a negative one. Despite the fact of the dual meaning, flowers will usually render a positive sense of goodness, since humans often use them, receive them, or give them during a merry time in their lives. Thus, the name Flora could conceal the real she, the deceitful Flora, because, just as the story itself, Flora’s name is open to interpretation. And possessing a deceitful presence contributes to the reader not being capable of entirely trusting the Governess and her claims about witnessing ghosts around the house. The external, physical look not only convinces the governess of Flora’s innocence but also of Miles’s.
The Governess reveals that she is in fact impressed by Flora, when she inquires about her sibling, the other child (Miles), to Mrs. Grose, “Is he too so very remarkable?” (9). Mrs. Grose responds, “You WILL be carried away by the little gentleman!” The way Mrs. Grose responds, almost in an ecstatic state, proves that she is easily deceived by the children’s external presence as well as the Governess. The first time the Governess meets Miles, she is reassured about their incorruptibility: “the same positive fragrance of purity, in which I had, from the first moment, seen his little sister” (13). Again, James uses a word that describes goodness and positive character traits. The word “purity” can easily be replaced with other synonyms, such as, “pureness” or “unsulliedness,” both also help to conceal the true characterization of the children. James’s word choice is deliberately handpicked in order to play with the reader’s mind. As the story unfolds, the reader has a more difficult time deciding whether the children are this “greater sweetness of innocence” (13). That is the way the Governess first refers about them and it is also the way they are presented to the reader. After the first impression of the children, it is more challenging to see them as the opposite, meaning as having a darker side; a fragrance of impurity. The purpose for James to have created this positive …show more content…
and angelic image of the children is to deceive the reader from ever doubting of the children’s innocence. If the reader has a hard time believing that the children have a darker side, then, they will easily be deceived to think about the governess’s projections of the ghosts as the product of her own imagination. Flora and Miles not only have an angelic surface, but they act as angels. According to the Governess their gentleness, especially in Miles, whose gentleness is almost unearthly and unlike of the other child: I remember feeling with Miles in especial as if he had had, as it were, no history. We expect of a small child a scant one, but there was in this beautiful little boy something extraordinary sensitive, yet extraordinarily happy, that, more than in any creature of his age I have seen, struck me as beginning anew each day. He had never for a second suffered. I took this as a direct disproof of his having really been chastised. If he had been wicked he would have “caught” it, and I should have caught it by the rebound. (18). The Governess reaffirms that it is quite unimaginable to repress the child, Miles. It is why she convinces herself not to do anything about the letter that informed her about the expulsion of Miles from school. She is easily deceived by the children’s initial good behavior. She is also very assured of herself that if the boy is indeed a fiend disguised as an angel, she would have caught it His happiness and lack of any negative feeling renders the Governess to believe in his goodness. In addition, the children’s manners and form of speech attributes immensely to how the reader perceive them: as the children whose naivety remains intact and later disproves any of the Governess’s attempts to prove that the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel exists. The character Miles is a mysterious character by nature. Notwithstanding, he also sheds light to one of the main reasons that leads the reader to question whether the children a completely innocent. Through Miles the reader gains certain proof that he and his sister are indeed aware, and know, about the ghosts’ presence in the mansion. One of the first doubts that the governess has about Miles is whether he is intrinsically a troublesome boy. The root to this doubt is after the governess receives a letter saying that the child has been dismissed from school and that it is impossible for the institution to keep him. The Governess immediately questions Miles’s innocence, saying, “Is he really BAD?” (11). It is reasonable for the Governess to wonder about Miles’s behavior, especially considering that she is practically an amateur in her job as a Governess, having recently finished her education. Therefore, the news about Miles being expelled from school produces some sort of anxiety in her. Nevertheless, according to Mrs. Grose, the Governess ought to “See him, miss, first. THEN believe it!” (11). To Mrs. Grose, the idea of the Governess questioning Miles as a vile boy is ludicrous, saying things like, “‘It’s too dreadful,’ cried Mrs. Grose, ‘to say such cruel things! Why, he’s scarce ten years old” (11). The instant the Governess tells her about Miles being expelled from school, the news triggers tears in Mrs. Grose’s eyes: “‘Is he really BAD?’ [said the governess.] The tears were still in her eyes. ‘Do the gentlemen say so’” (11). It is clearly that Mrs. Grose loves Miles to be so emotionally invested and letting tears run through her eyes. Mrs. Grose believes in Miles and they way he presents himself outwards. In fact, the mystery of why Miles was expelled is never answered directly throughout the story. The governess is constantly incapable of asking Miles why he was expelled from school. Occasionally, she would ask indirectly, “Were you very happy at school?” To what Miles answers, “He just considered. ‘Oh, I’m happy enough anywhere!” (50). For the most part of the story there is never a clear answer to one of the Governess’s biggest concerns, what did Miles did so terribly bad enough to get expelled from school? The openness and suspension to this interrogation allows the reader to have a shred of doubt about the children’s utter exoneration from being incapable to see the same ghosts that the Governess sees. Miles spent a great amount of time with Peter Quint when he was alive, according to Mrs.
Grose, “‘It was Quint’s own fancy. To play with him, I mean—to spoil him. She paused for a moment; then she added: ‘Quint was much too free’” (24). Mrs. Grose could be referring to Peter Quint having corrupted or being a bad influence to the children, especially Miles. The reason for Mrs. Grose to think it in such way is because Peter Quint behaved as he pleased. In fact, he made of the prior governess, Miss Jessel, infamous after they both got involved in romantic relationship. Quint practically broke the social hierarchy, which existed during James’s time, by sustaining this egregious relationship with Miss Jessel. Furthermore, considering that the relationship was against the rules, it proves how much of a troublemaker Quint was during his time on earth. As result, such rebellion and anarchy this could have had a strong influence and effect on Miles. The Governess wonders why then Miles does not ever mention Quint, “It does strike me that my pupils have never mentioned—” (24). The main reason it strikes the Governess why Miles has never mentioned anything about Quint is because of Mrs. Grose’s claims that Miles and Quint were great friends and used to spent a lot of time together. The Governess suspects that Miles never mentions Quint because he does not want her to think or suspect that he knows about Quint’s apparitions around the house, letting the reader think she is the only one
capable to see the ghosts as her hallucinations.
Unlike Aunt Abby, James offers a more sincere regard for Frado. He buys her a puppy and often protects her from his mother’s brutal thrashings. He even intends to bring her home with him to live. He does not possess the indifference of his father or the cowardice of his sister, Jane. Being one of the few characters who emits a genuine aura of concern James i...
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James continues to stir up an immense amount of controversy for such a short novel. Making a definite, educated decision on the actual truth considering the countless inquiries that develop while reading this story proves more difficult than winning a presidential election. That being understood, taking one particular side on any argument from a close reading of the story seems impossible, because the counter argument appears just as conceivable. Any side of the controversy remains equally disputable considerably supported by textual evidence from the novel. One issue which, like the rest, can be answered in more than one ways is why Mrs. Grose believes the Governess when she tells her about her ghost encounters. Usually one would second-guess such outlandish stories as the ones that the governess shares throughout the story, yet Mrs. Grose is very quick to believe our borderline-insane narrator. One of the explanations for such behavior could be the underlying fact that Mrs. Grose and the governess have a similar socio-economic background, therefore making them somewhat equals even if the governess does not always seem to think that way. This fact makes them susceptible to trusting and believing each other, and to believing that the ghosts are there, for the people that the ghosts are presenting used to be servants and therefore from a similar socio-economic background. To add on to that, Bruce Robbins proposes in his Marxist criticism of The Turn of the Screw that the idea of a ghost is synonymous to that of a servant, subconsciously making the two lower-class workers of Bly more vulnerable to believe that the ghosts were real; in other words, servants we...
The existence of the ghosts in The Turn of the Screw has always been in debate. Instead of directly discussing whether the ghosts are real or not, this essay will focus on the reliability of the governess, the narrator of the story. After making a close examination of her state of mind while she is at Bly, readers of The Turn of the Screw will have many more clues to ponder again and to decide to what extent the governess can be believed. While critics like Heilman argue that there are problems with the interpretation that the governess was psychopathic, textual evidence incorporated with scientific research show that the governess did go through a period of psychical disorder that caused her insomnia, out of which she created hallucinations.
From the first interactions with the young children, the governess's infatuation with their uncle, her employer, eventually proved to be her own failure in every fashion. In talk with the head maid, Ms. Grose, the governess explained her meeting with her employer and how she had fallen in love with him on their first meeting. Ms. Grose then began to explain that that was the nature of the her employer, to draw a women he could entrust his estate to, and that the governess was not the only one so taken by him to leave the infatuated governess without further communication.
The three events that mark Jane as an evolving dynamic character are when she is locked in the red room, self reflecting on her time at Gateshead, her friendship with Helen Burns at LoWood, her relationship with Mr. Rochester, and her last moments with a sick Mrs. Reed. Brought up as an orphan by her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, Jane is accustomed to her aunts vindictive comments and selfish tendencies. Left out of family gatherings, shoved and hit by her cousin, John Reed, and teased by her other cousins, Georgina and Eliza Reed, the reader almost cringes at the unfairness of it all. But even at the young age of ten, Jane knows the consequences of her actions if she were to speak out against any of them. At one point she wonders why she endures in silence for the pleasure of others. Why she is oppressed. "Always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned" (Bronte, 12). Jane’s life at Gateshead is not far from miserable. Not only is she bullied by her cousins and nagged by her aunt, but help from even Bessie, her nurse and sort of friend, seems out of her reach. In the red room scene Jane is drug by Ms. Ab...
...eives nothing from the children. It should be obvious to the reader at this point that the children are obviously in no way doing any wrong and are telling the truth to the best of their knowledge. The continual obsession of the governess over maintaining the protection and innocence of the children gets so severe that it causes Flora to come down with a serious fever and Miles grows seemingly weaker and sicker without his sister there with her.
throughout the novel that Peter Quint’s corruption of Miles could have been of a sexual nature.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James has been the cause of many debates about whether or not the ghosts are real, or if this is a case of a woman with psychological disturbances causing her to fabricate the ghosts. The story is told in the first person narrative by the governess and is told only through her thoughts and perceptions, which makes it difficult to be certain that anything she says or sees is reliable. It starts out to be a simple ghost story, but as the story unfolds it becomes obvious that the governess has jumps to conclusions and makes wild assumptions without proof and that the supposed ghosts are products of her mental instability which was brought on by her love of her employer
...t want to be the only one who does. It is another feeble attempt to prove her sanity to herself and to others. However, because she “is so easily carried away”, she soon believes that the children do in fact see the ghosts by reading into their every remark and behavior. By piecing all of this together, the governess proves to herself that she is not insane. The governess in The Turn of the Screw, is a highly unreliable narrator. From the beginning of the story, her energetic imagination is displayed to the reader. With this knowledge alone, it would not be irrational to conclude that she had imagined the appearances of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. However, these facts in addition to her unsubstantiated inferences allow the reader to intelligently label the governess as an unreliable narrator. Works Cited Poupard, Dennis. “Henry James.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism: Volume 24. Ed. Paula Kepos. Detroit: Gale research.; 1990. 313-315.
One factor that a reader may have trouble with when reading the book is understanding whether the apparitions that the governess sees and indeed ghosts or just figments of her imagination. It is an ambiguous plot within the story and the choice of them being real or not will eventually come down to reader and their interpretation of the story. From the beginning of the novella it is easy for the reader to have faith in the governess. There is no reason why we should not believe and her convictions are certain. She does, whether the reader believes it or not. As we continue reading the novella, no more proof of these apparitions is given. The children and Mrs Grose do not see the apparitions of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. The governess becomes an unreliable narrator through her tale as we are not given the story from any other
Peter G. Beidler informs us that there have been “hundreds” of analyses of Henry James’ spine-tingling novella, The Turn of the Screw (189). Norman Macleod suggests that James himself seems to be “an author intent on establishing a text that cannot be interpreted in a definite way” (Qtd in Beidler 198). Yet, the vast majority of analyses of The Turn of the Screw seem to revolve around two sub-themes: the reality of the ghosts and the death of Miles both of which are used to answer the question of the governess’s mental stability: is she a hero or a deranged lunatic? As Beidler points out, “It is an amazingly fine creepy, scary, soul-shuddering ghost story or, alternatively, it is an amazingly fine psychological case study of a neurotic young woman” (189). These two views of the governess seem to dominate the analytical world in terms of readings, typically being one view or the other and seldom being anything else. Unfortunately, most of the myriad readings focus only on the visible events as related by the governess. However, there is much that we are not told but that is pertinent to an accurate reading. Bruce Fleming argues that what we are not told in The Turn of the Screw is as important as what we are told (135). Wolfgang Iser suggests that there are “gaps” or holes within the sequence of the text. He further suggests that it is the reader’s responsibility to fill-in those gaps (Qtd in Beidler 226). The facts “not in evidence” are equal in importance to the information laid out before us. What happens “off-screen” or “off-stage” is just as important as what happens in front of the audience. Much of what we do not see and are not told impacts what we do see and are told so g...
The next unclear situation is when the Governess learns of Miles’ expulsion. This is one of the main mysteries within this story. The question, “What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school,” is the only question that the reader has throughout the conversation between the Governess and Mrs. Grose (165). Even though their conversation does inform the reader that the school has “absolutely decline[d]” Miles, it doesn’t clarify what exactly he has done to be expelled (165). The Governess comments, “That he’s an injury to the others” and “to corrupt” are her own opinions as to why Miles was expelled (165, 166). Nevertheless, her comment does not help the reader in any way because the remark in and of itself is unclear. Her first comment suggests that Miles might be causing physical harm to other students but her second ...
The work of Andrea Gencheva has an interesting point of view since she chose to look into the gothic aspect of The Turn of the Screw. Indeed, the oeuvre by Henry James meets the eligibility requirements. For instance, the setting takes place in a castle, Bly; it has an ambiance of secrecy and suspense; it has ghostly events with the appearances of the spectres of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel as well as overwrought feelings from the governess and also the metonymy of foreboding and woe.
While at Lowood, a state - run orphanage and educational facility, Jane’s first friend, Helen Burns, teaches her the importance of friendship along with other skills that will help Jane grow and emotionally mature in the future. She serves as a role model for Jane. Helen’s intelligence, commitment to her studies, and social graces all lead Jane to discover desirable attributes in Helen. Helen is treated quite poorly, however, “her ability to remain graceful and calm even in the face of (what Jane believes to be) unwarranted punishment makes the greatest impression on the younger girl” (Dunnington). Brontë uses this character as a way to exemplify the type of love that Jane deserves. This relationship allows Jane to understand the importance of having a true friend. Given Jane’s history at Gateshead, finding someone like Helen is monumental in her development as a person. Helen gives through honest friendship, a love that is
Henry James was one of the famous writers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was known as an innovative and independent novelist. One of James' novels, The Turn of the Screw (1898), has caused a lot of controversy among many critics, and each of them has had a particular interpretation. James' creative writing built a close connection between his novel and his readers. The reactions of the readers toward The Turn of the Screw can be researched psychologically by analyzing how James developed his story using questionable incidents, an unreliable narrator, unexpected changes, an interesting prologue, and effective images and words.