Mental Illness In The Turn Of The Screw By Henry James

Mental Illness in The Turn of the Screw
“Mental illness leaves a huge legacy, not just for the person suffering it but for those around them.”- Lysette Anthony. In the book The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, the governess is suffering from some form of mental illness to where she is hallucinating ghosts. She is very confident in her thoughts, so she thinks anything that she is seeing, everyone else is seeing. The governess makes up ghosts in her mind that are following the kids she is in charge of, and she ends up hurting both of them herself.
In the story, the governess is the only person that ever claims to see the ghosts. The governess is alone outside when she first sees the ghost of Peter Quint, and is alone in the hallway at night

when she first sees Miss Jessel. But, later in the story when she sees the Miss Jessel again, Mrs. Grose and Flora are present and they both claim to see nothing. Miles distracts the governess and lets Flora escape from her. The governess and Mrs. Grose finally find her at the pond in their backyard and the governess claims Miss Jessel is present. Mrs Grose says, “ She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there- and you never see nothing my sweet!” (71). Mrs. Grose is looking right where the governess says Miss Jessel, is but she can not see anything. This shows that the governess is making up these figures in her mind. The governess believes that the ghosts are following Flora and Miles, but both the children deny ever seeing ghosts. The governess is the only person in the book to see the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel which can lead us to believe that she is hallucinating these figures.
Miles and Flora are only hurt when the governess interferes with them. When, the governess confronts Flora and tells her that Miss Jessel is following her, Flora wails, “Take me away, take me away- oh, take me away from her [the governess]!” (71). Flora becomes so spooked that she can’t sleep or relax without thinking the governess is going to come around her and frighten her again. Flora becomes so sick from the lack of sleep that she has to leave the estate with Mrs. Grose. At the end of the book, Miles gives up on pretending there are no ghosts, so he goes along with the governess and asks her where Peter Quint is at. The governess hugs Miles so tightly to “protect” him, that she ends up smothering him and he dies in her arms. The governess becomes over protective of the children and believes she can save them from these figures that she has made up, but in reality she is the only thing hurting them.
There is no evidence that Miles and Flora are actually interacting with ghosts, the governess assumes they do.

Throughout the whole book, the governess is assuming things about the children. From what Mrs. Grose tells her about Miles getting kicked out of school, she assumes he is bad. Knowing he is bad, she assumes that he is talking and planning with ghost because that is what a bad kid would do in her mind. Then, she assumes that Flora likes her without any confirmation. The governess says, “I felt quite sure that she [Flora] would presently like me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose for herself” (8). This shows that she is so overconfident of her thoughts that she, at first, has no doubt that Flora and Mrs. Grose like her. Later in the story, the governess see the ghosts and automatically thinks the children are seeing them. She never asks the kids if they see the ghosts she is confident that they are there. She is so over confident in herself that she does not ever think that the ghosts could just be hallucinations of her mind. Flora is eight and Miles is ten, so they are still childish and when they run away or try to pull a joke on the governess is not out of the ordinary. The governess blames their behavior on ghosts without even thinking that they are acting this way because they are young. The governess is so caught up in herself and what she thinks is going on, that she is not in touch with

reality.
The governess is so caught up in what she thinks is happening and what she thinks she sees that she loses touch with reality. This makes it clear for the reader that she could be suffering from some sort of mental illness where she imagines hallucinations. She is overconfident in herself and ends up hurting both the children while trying to protect them from hallucinations of her mind.