Reviewing Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw"

For the past few weeks I’ve been posting reviews of stories that range from slightly unsettling (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) to outright horror (Dracula). Now I’ve come to the story that still has me spinning in circles: Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. 

It is a ghost story, told Russian-nesting-doll-style: The unnamed narrator is at a Christmas party in an old house, and a man named Douglas tells a story that was originally told to him by his sister’s governess, a heroine who thinks she is Jane Eyre but is more romantic and paranoid than Catherine Morland.

Douglas’ story unfolds thusly: a young impressionable woman takes up her first post as governess of two children, Flora and Miles, in an old country house called Bly. The children are orphans under the guardianship of their bachelor uncle, who wants nothing to do with them. The uncle sets the governess the task of teaching and caring for the children without involving him in any way. 

When the governess first takes up her post, the boy, Miles, is off at boarding-school. The governess is charmed by Flora, and things seem to be going well. Then Miles is expelled from school, without any explanation as to the reason. 

Around this time the governess begins to catch glimpses of a mysterious man in the distance staring at her. When she describes this man to the housekeeper, he is identified as the former valet, Peter Quint…who is dead.

Convinced that Quint is after Miles, the governess begins to keep a close guard on the children. When another ghost—the former governess, Miss Jessel—shows up, the governess knows that she is after Flora. The governess is stricken with paranoia that the ghosts are bent on finishing what they began when they were alive: “corrupting”* her charges. Both children seem to be unaware of these specters—yet the governess cannot help but suspect that they see the ghosts, too, and are lying to her about it. 

So begins a series of nocturnal sightings, strange behavior from the children, and the governess vacillating between writing to their uncle for help, or trying to stare down the ghosts on her own.

I said at the beginning of this post that this story keeps me spinning in circles (much like the turning of a screw, actually…). The first reason for this that I am not a fan of Henry James in general, yet I think this is a well-crafted story nevertheless. 

The second reason is that The Turn of the Screw brings up many questions about what really happened—particularly because the narrative structure is so complex, and the governess is not a reliable narrator—and there are so many interpretations that the truth cannot be determined. For instance: is the governess really a heroine fighting ghosts, or is she insane? Are the children innocent, or the willing pawns of supernatural evil? Are the ghosts (if they do exist) evil, or—like some ghost folklore would suggest—are they haunting Bly because they were wronged during their life?   

Finally, the ending brings up one question that cannot be asked without completely spoiling the book: why did Miles collapse, dead, in the governess’ arms?  Some interpretations claim that she killed him via psychological badgering (or perhaps all her “caresses” were really strangling and physical abuse). I do not completely believe this interpretation, since any governess who was deemed responsible for a child’s death would not have gotten another post—and it’s obvious that, since this governess went on to teach Douglas’ sister, she was exonerated from any guilt.

In the governess’ last confrontation of Quint, Miles dies suddenly, as if what was keeping him alive abandons his body. So here is my completely off-the-wall interpretation that has little substantiation in the text: Miles has been dead the entire time, and has only seemed alive because it was being supported by the supernatural forces of Quint and Jessel. This is why he is sent home from school without having done anything: he’s a corpse. This is why he, even more than Flora, seems aware of the ghosts and the governess’ suspicions of him.  Of course that doesn’t explain Flora’s weird behavior (she is survives the novel, distraught and outraged at the governess), unless she is somehow aware of her brother’s “undead” state and is keeping it a secret from their governess because of her tendency to overreact.

*Since this is a Victorian setting, the corruption is most likely sexual rather than any other moral corruption (like lying or being “bad”). At best Quint and Jessop carried on a love affair and the children were witnesses to it, or at worst they were child molesters, which would explain the governess’ horror and resolution not to let the ghosts near the children.  That is, unless all of this was in the governess’ delusional mind…

Recommended Reading Age: High School at least

Parental Notes: Ghosts and supernatural phenomena, sexuality, overcomplicated narrative structure, and general thematic creepiness.

Availability: Free on Kindle or hardcover. Although I still can't believe I'm suggesting anyone read Henry James--not because this book isn't well-written; my main problem with James is that his characters lack sympathy. They merely exist, not urging the reader (well, at least me) to root for any particular player in the story. 

Adaptations: I have only seen the 1999 version which was pretty faithful to the book (meaning it did nothing to answer any of my questions). The 1961 Deborah Kerr movie “The Innocents” apparently is also based on the book, as well as a new 2009 TV adaptation starring Michelle Dockery, are among the other notable adaptations.