The Governess In The Turn Of The Screw By Henry James

Ever since the new governess shows up to the household, Bly, in The Turn of the Screw, the story of the residents’ lives change forever. Things go from peaceful, beautiful, and orderly to chaotic, ugly, and messy. Every step the governess makes seems to worsen things, but why? Is it the children making things go awry? Or could it be the ghosts messing with the balance of the peace? Or maybe, is it the one person who you would expect to trust the most who is doing the most damage. The protector is the destroyer. The savior is the killer. In The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, the governess is insane because all her actions from sleeping and sensing demons, to assuming far-fetched notions and being the hero in every situation demonstrates

to the reader that the story could not be possible unless she was insane.
The first sign that leads the reader to believe the governess is insane is her lack of sleep.

Within the first 24 hours of the governess arriving at Bly the governess immediately notes that she “slept little that night” (7) . She attributes it to excitement, but the most common sign of insanity is restlessness. Not only was she not sleeping that night, but she thought she heard a child crying and footsteps outside her door and chose to ignore them. Her job as the governess is to handle things like that, but instead she stays in her room, wide awake. Later in the book, after the ghosts had been introduced, she again, didn’t sleep. Instead she went to Miles’s room where an odd conversation ensued and “a gust of frozen air”, which turned out to be Miles, blew out the candle (64). Only an insane governess would have a long conversation with her pupil in the middle of the night. The next time we catch her not sleeping, she runs into Peter Quint late at night, only to come back to her room to find that “Flora’s little bed was empty” (40). Time and time again we see the governor’s restless sleeping patterns and moreover, we see what odd things seem to occur during these

hours.
    The governess also makes many assumptions throughout the book that prove her insanity.

As humans, we can’t help but to jump to conclusions, but the governess’s assumptions are too misguided and are taken too far without substantial proof.  When she first arrives at Bly, she automatically infers that Ms. Grose, although not showing any hint of it, is relieved that the governess is there and simply “wish[es] not to show it” (7). This could be the case, or, as it would seem to any sane person, Ms. Grose could just be unmoved by the governess’s arrival. Her second assumption with Ms. Grose is when they agree on one thing and the governess assumes that “on every question [they should] be quite at one” (9). Some people can hope that a person may have similar ideas to them, but they wouldn’t expect to agree on everything all the time. People understand that we all have different views, but obviously the governess does not. Then, the governess goes on to guess that Miles got kicked out of school because “he’s an injury to others” (11). She has no specific proof that shows he was kicked out for any reason but she is quick to make the inference. She hasn’t talked to the school, the uncle, or even Miles himself to find out what happened, but instead goes along with her own imagination. She also makes many assumptions about the ghost when she hasn’t even been talking to them. She deduces the ghost of Peter Quint “was looking for Miles” but she only had a feeling to base that off of

(25). Over the entirety of the book, the governess makes assumptions that are too stretched to be sane and they all led to worse accounts.
    Another trait of the governess that confirms she is insane is her need to be the hero. It is great to be optimistic about a situation, but to have the undying need to be the savior for everyone can turn into a nasty habit. The first time she obviously shared her views on being the hero was when she was “at the helm” of the ship (9). She was referring to herself as the captain of Bly and the children. Later in the book, after the ghosts have been introduced she states that she “was capable of meeting to shelter [her] pupils” (24). She is saying that she can and will protect Miles and Flora with all her heart and be the hero. Soon after she tells that she “find[s] a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism” which is wonderful; except for that it is insane to find joy in a situation where your charges are supposedly trying to be killed by demons (27). Later, when she considers running away after seeing Ms. Jessle again, she knows there is “a sense that [she] must stay” to protect the kids (58). She is not the protector of the children; she is the reason they need protection. Lastly, at the end of the book she says that she would “rather die than hurt a hair of you” (64). This is completely insane because she has hurt him through her belief in the ghosts and by holding him out of school. The governess’s search for heroism being the motive behind each action is another testament to why she is insane.
    Another factor to prove the governess’s insanity is the similarities between her and the ghosts that could not be merely coincidental. Once she mentions that she overtook Ms. Grose “on the staircase [and they] went down together” (11). Then, much later in the book, the governess “saw that there was someone on the stair” (39). The governess saw Peter Quint where she was earlier in the book. This could have been a coincidence once, but this happened several more times. On her first day, she was up on the tower with Flora, and then later, she saw the ghost “at the very top of the tower to which, on the first morning, little Flora had conducted me” (15). She sees the ghost exactly where she was again.The second time she saw the ghost, she went outside to the exact place he was and she “applied [her] face to the pane and looked, as he had looked” (20). She is practically one and the same with the ghosts and it can not be merely coincidental. Not only was the governess in the same place as the ghosts, but she could also sense them without even looking up like when she was sitting by the pond with Flora and she “began to take in with certitude, and yet without direct vision, the presence, at a distance, of a third person” (28). How could she sense the ghost unless she was insane? The biggest signal of her insanity was when she saw Ms. Jessle but Flora and Ms. Grose did not see her, saying “she isn’t there” (71). The governess must truly be insane if she can sense the ghost and follow their exact movements.
    Throughout The Turn of the Screw, the governess’s insanity is almost masked by confusion and distractions, but it is still there. She is still insane because through all of her actions, in the end, she scares Flora into sickness and frightens and smuggles Miles to death. If that isn’t insanity, what is? Her story of ghosts and demons is just her attempting to mask her insanity, but the truth is, nothing can mask that.