Our final, festive review of the year concludes with a seasonal classic: The Ghost Story. Enter The Turn Of The Screw, by Henry James.
The Turn of The Screw has been daubed a Gothic Horror classic. ‘Gothic’, at least in terms of literature, is a movement that grew in largely the 19th century. It has a focus on dark and foreboding themes, often with some elements of tragic romance. They frequently end unhappily, using an unresolved ‘curse’ as a rationale for a previous tragedy to affect a (chronologically) later protagonist. Gothic stories frequently employ a naive hero, as a vessel for the audience, who has to unpack a mystery as the story progresses. Often, as The Turn Of The Screw does, Gothic literature centres around a ‘haunted’ house, although this trope varies: in Stoker’s Dracula, it is a castle; in Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci there is a haunted forest or meadow.
The Turn Of The Screw follows these tropes. As it opens, much like Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, it begins with a meta-story, which is another layer of involution common to the Gothic theme. Several people are gathered in an old house, on Christmas Eve, telling ghost stories, as every good Christmas should have (to paraphrase James). One member of the party, between kicking logs on the fire, claims to have the best (ie worst) Ghost story, given to him by his housekeeper, in his safe in London.
Why our protagonist could not recount this story from memory, particularly if it is so compelling is unclear. But in any event he sends away for the manuscript, which is evidently in a beautiful hand, and when he receives it a few days later - seemingly reads it to the group.
In Twelfth Night, a beggar is made lord for the day and gets to watch a play acted before him as the lord. That play turns out to be Twelfth Night proper, and we never return to these inital characters. James employs the same device here. We never come back to the fireside to find out what the teller, or his listeners think of the story. While this creates intrigue, it is somewhat frustrating the reader is left to guess as to what their analysis would have been of the story that follows. It also sets up something slightly jarring at the centre of this book - who is the narrator? Is it the housekeeper, whose hand the story is apparently in? Or is it the man by the fire, reading it out? And if the latter, is he injecting his personality into it?
This is one of the many sources of ambiguity in this book that are never satisfactorily answered. And, the question of how reliable the narrator is comes up repeatedly.
The remainder of the story, right until the final word, is written from a governess’ perspective, in the first-person present tense.
From then we are off. The protagonist - a Governess - takes a job at Bly, an old English house with two turrets, where she has to look after an aristocrat’s cousins (?) whose parents are deceased. In her agreement to take on this role, the ‘Gentleman’ engaging her makes it clear that he does not want to know anything about Bly, or how the children are progressing, under any circumstances.
The first, and perhaps most frustrating question about this scenario is: why? Why would that occur? Why would he not want to know how his two wards are progressing? Why does he not wish to have any involvement with them? It is extremely strange, and as far as we can see there are only two compelling answers, either: A) The Gentleman is aware of, or has some involvement in the hauntings at Bly; or B) it is a silly device to set up the rest of the story. We found that some analyses of the work insist that the gentleman is the obverse in the novel, the great missing character. True, he is absence. But we cannot consider his absence the great narrative device it is claimed to be, especially when James himself reportedly wrote that this was a ‘straight forward’ ghost story.
When the Governess arrives at Bly, she finds a well-appointed and well-servanted house, and two young children - a boy and a girl - to look after. The boy - Miles - has evidently been expelled from school, and has prodigal manners. The girl - Flora, is taciturn, but generally well behaved. There is also a housekeeper, Mrs Grose.
Soon, the Governess starts seeing apparitions - the first is on the tower of the property, and at first blush could be taken for the Gentleman himself. She then sees the same apparition at the dining room window, and discusses it with Mrs Grose, describing the apparition in some detail. Grose recognises the individual from the description, and discloses that this is Peter Quint, the Gentleman’s valet who is now dead.
Another apparition makes itself known to the governess. This time it is Ms Jessel, the previous Governess.
To whom do these apparitions…. Appear? Well, only to the Governess it seems. Though the children appear, on occasion, to be stupefied by fear, and on other occasions behaving so oddly the reader might surmise they too have seen the apparitions. However, it is also possible they could just be afraid of the Governess’ reactions to her invisible antagonists.
Why would these ghosts appear? Unclear. The sin they are evidently guilty of is having been ‘too free’ with the children. What does this mean? In the 21st Century it might have a sinister connotation, however, we’re not sure whether ‘too free’ translates from the 19th century so well. It is ambiguous why the apparitions are there, why they appear to the governess, and what they are trying to achieve. Are they evil? Do they intend to fright? Do they intend to warn? These, like our other questions, go unanswered.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the ghosts is that other than appearing, and seeming malevolent, they seem utterly devoid of any power to do anything. Miss Jessel appears at the lake twice. She sits on the stairs and sobs, and and appears in the schoolroom. Quint stares, balefully, though a window. But that’s it. Presumably if the governess had got used to these apparitions, they would be no more harmful than a cloud on an otherwise sunny day.
Why does the Governess attribute malevolence to these apparitions? Why does she think they are trying to get the children? Are they in fact trying to do that, or is there another interpretation?
On one night the apparitions seem to have persuaded Flora outside. On another night Miles is taken in their thrall. But the children both appear unharmed, and why they went outside is never fully uncovered.
The biggest question, then, becomes whether the ghosts are real, or whether they were an invention of the governess. On reading this, we were conflicted on this topic. On the one hand, the Governess describes the appearances sufficiently well to Mrs Grose that Grose is able to identify them. Peter Quint’s red hair particularly seems to clinch it. Consequently, we are inclined to think that James intended them to be more than just a figment of the Governess’ mind. That said, plenty of critics think the apparitions did not exist and have viewed them as symbols or allegories of other things entirely (ie a descent into madness).
In terms of language, James does a great job in setting up the sense of foreboding. Reading it alone, with the lights off, in a dark home, certainly amps up the tension to the point where the reader begins to question every creak and crack. However, as with much Gothic fiction, the prose is florid: dense, with a very heavy sentence structure that instantly dates it, and makes it less accessible to the modern reader.
The denouement is shocking, but unsatisfactory. At the end, nearly everything turns on whether the children could see the ghosts. Again, the events at the conclusion of the book leads the reader to conclude that they can, but certitude never comes. None of the fundamental questions of the book are answered, which leaves it lacking finality.
Our own theory regarding the novel’s conclusion, we could not find in print when researching the novel, but are sure exists, is this: The Governess ultimately left Bly and went on to become Governess for the man at the fire at the beginning of the story - hence him coming into possession of, and giving credit to, the story. And could this person kicking the fire - 10 years our governess’s junior - be Miles himself? The hints certainly struck us; we must leave to others to determine whether this might be true or not, particularly given the story’s ending. If our theory is true, the story is certainly allegory, not a true account. If false, we have just read into this tale of ambiguity another possible interpretation.
The Turn Of The Screw, a pithy phrase if there was one, leaves more questions than it answers, and because of it falls a bit flat on the horror front. But this may be the point of the story, and indeed the brooding nature of the Gothic, after all.
Before you go…
Read Our Catalogue of Long Form Literary Criticism
If you like long form literary criticism, be sure to check out the best reviews of 2023:
Joseph Heller’s masterwork novel Catch-22
Booker Prize Winner Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea (our book of the year)
Booker Prize Winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of The Day
Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature winner Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift,
Breakout Australian Novelist Amy Taylor’s Search History
Or see of our full range of literary criticism in our archive.
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