The Turn of the Screw
is a short novel or a novella written by U.S.-born British author Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adaptation. Due to its ambiguous content and narrative skill, The Turn of the Screw
became a favorite text of New Criticism.
The account has lent itself to dozens of different interpretations, often mutually exclusive, including those of a Freudian nature. Many critics have tried to determine what exactly is the nature of evil within the story.
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THE TURN OF THE SCREW TICKETS
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Plot summary
An unnamed narrator listens to a male friend reading a manuscript written by a former
governess whom the latter claims to have known and who is now dead. The manuscript tells the story of how the young governess is hired by a man who has found himself responsible for his
niece and
nephew after the death of their parents. He lives in
London and has no interest in raising the children. The boy, Miles, is attending a
boarding school whilst his sister, Flora, is living at the country home in
Essex. She is currently being cared for by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. The governess's new employer gives her full charge of the children and explicitly states that she is not to bother him with communications of any sort. The governess travels to her new employer's country house and begins her duties.
Miles soon returns from school for the summer just after a letter from the headmaster stating that he has been expelled. Miles never speaks of the matter, and the governess is hesitant to raise the issue. She fears that there is some horrid secret behind the expulsion, but is too charmed by the adorable young boy to want to press the issue. Shortly thereafter, the governess begins to see around the grounds of the estate the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognize. These figures come and go at will without ever being seen or challenged by other members of the household, and they seem to the governess to be supernatural. She learns from Mrs. Grose that her predecessor, Miss Jessel, and Miss Jessel's illicit lover Peter Quint both died under curious circumstances. Prior to their death, they spent most of their time with Flora and Miles, and this fact takes on grim significance for the governess when she becomes convinced that the two children are secretly aware of the presence of the ghosts.
Major themes
Throughout his career James was attracted to the ghost story genre. However, he was not fond of literature's stereotypical ghosts, the old-fashioned 'screamers' and 'slashers'. Rather, he preferred to create ghosts that were eerie extensions of everyday reality—"the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy," as he put it in the
New York Edition
preface to his final ghost story,
The Jolly Corner
.
The Turn of the Screw
is no exception to this formula. In fact, some
critics have wondered if he didn't intend the "strange and sinister" to be embroidered only on the governess's mind and not on objective reality. The result has been a long-standing critical dispute over the
reality of the ghosts and the
sanity of the governess.
Beyond the dispute, critics have closely examined James's narrative technique in the story. The framing introduction and subsequent
first-person narrative by the governess have been studied by theorists of
fiction interested in the power of fictional narratives to convince or even manipulate readers.
The imagery of
The Turn of the Screw
is reminiscent of the
gothic genre. The emphasis on old and mysterious buildings throughout the novella reinforces this motif. James also relates the amount of light present in various scenes to the strength of the supernatural or ghostly forces apparently at work. The governess refers directly to
The Mysteries of Udolpho
and indirectly to
Jane Eyre
, evoking a comparison of the governess not only to
Jane Eyre
s protagonist, but to Bertha, the madwoman confined in Thornfield.
[1]
Literary significance and criticism
The dispute over the reality of the ghosts has had a real effect on some critics, most notably
Edmund Wilson, who was one of the first proponents of the insane governess theory. However, he was eventually forced to recant this view under fire from opposing critics who pointed to the governess's point-by-point description of Quint. Then John Silver ("A Note on the Freudian Reading of 'The Turn of the Screw'"
American Literature
, 1957) pointed out hints in the story that the governess might have gained previous knowledge of Quint's appearance in non-supernatural ways. This induced Wilson to recant his recantation and return to his original view that the governess was unbalanced and that the ghosts existed only in her imagination.
William Veeder sees Miles's eventual death as induced by the governess, but he traces the governess's motive back through two larger strands: English
imperialism (based on the oblique reference in the introduction to
India, where the parents of Miles and Flora died) and the way
patriarchy raises its daughters. Through a complex
psychoanalytic reading, Veeder concludes that the governess takes out her repressed rage toward her father and toward the master of Bly on Miles.
Other critics, however, have defended the governess strongly. They point out that James' letters, his
New York Edition
preface, and his
Notebooks
contain no definite evidence that
The Turn of the Screw
was intended as anything other than a straightforward ghost story. James's
Notebooks
entry indicates that he was originally inspired by a tale he heard from
Edward White Benson, the
Archbishop of Canterbury. This unconventional source, like almost everything else about the story, has generated critical commentary.
Film, TV and theatrical adaptations
- An opera, The Turn of the Screw
, written by Benjamin Britten in 1954
- The Turn of the Screw
(1959) an early live television play directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Ingrid Bergman
- Perhaps the most highly regarded adaptation is The Innocents
(1961) directed by Jack Clayton and starring Deborah Kerr
- Dan Curtis's well-regarded TV movie The Turn of the Screw
(1974) with Lynn Redgrave
- A 1974 adaptation for French TV
- The Turn of the Screw
(1982), which is actually a German-made operatic adaptation
- A 1989 adaptation for Shelley Duvall's Nightmare Classics
starring Amy Irving
- Rusty Lemorande's The Turn of the Screw
(1994) with Patsy Kensit and Julian Sands, which updated the story to the 1960s
- The TV movie The Haunting of Helen Walker/The Turn of the Screw
(1995) starring Valerie Bertinelli
- A theatrical adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher in which one woman plays the governess and a man fills the rest of the roles
- Presence of Mind
(1999), an acclaimed Spanish-made adaptation with Sadie Frost and Harvey Keitel
- A British TV adaptation The Turn of the Screw
(1999) with Jodhi May and Colin Firth
- A 2006 film, In a Dark Place
is ostensibly based upon the novel.
- The story has also been converted into a ballet by William Tuckett.
- On the TV series Lost
(2004), "Turn of the Screw" is the location of a training video from the Dharma Initiative Location, The Swan. Also known as The Hatch, Desmond Tells John Locke to look behind the book to find the film.
Allusions in literature
- Leon Edel identifies structural and tonal similarities between Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and "Turn of the Screw." [2]
- Joyce Carol Oates' story "The Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly" (featured in the collection Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque) is a retelling of the novel from the point of view of the ghosts.
- In Muriel Spark's The Public Image
(1968), the protagonist's husband writes a play to which the protagonist comments, "It resembles 'The Turn of the Screw'."
- There is also a modern adaptation of the novel in Toby Litt's "Ghost Story", published in 2004.
Reference books
- The Turn of the Screw: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism
edited by Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 1999) ISBN 0-393-95904-X
- The Tales of Henry James
by Edward Wagenknecht (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. 1984) ISBN 0-8044-2957-X
References
- See Prof Linda Kaufmann, Discourses of Desire, ISBN 0-8014-9510+5, for an argument that Bronte was actually the source of the tale, through Mary Sedgwick Benson.
- Colm Tóibín on Joseph Conrad | Books | The Guardian