29
Oct
2009
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
This is one of those books where nobody will ever know if it’s really a ghost story or if the narrator is nuts. Certainly, there seem to be two strictly divided camps in the world of literary criticism.
On the one hand, say the paranormalists (I think I just made that word up), Henry James never wrote anything in his notes or articles or lit crit indicating that this is anything other than a straight-up ghost story.
To which the psychoanalysts say, Hello? have you READ this story? Bitch is crazy.
And both hysterical women and creepy ghosts permeate 19th century literature, so we can’t rely on “time in which it was written” analysis to back either camp up.
I myself go with the bitch is crazy side, except that it is remarkable that Henry James never indicated in anything he said or wrote that this was more than just a ghost story. So that is weird.
Judge for yourself: The new governess to an orphaned boy and girl is hired by their uncle, who doesn’t live with them, and makes it clear that she is never to contact him about anything, no matter what. The governess starts seeing ghosts that the housekeeper tells her sounds like the former-governess and the uncle’s servant who were having an illicit affair and both died. The governess is certain that the children can see the ghosts and that the ghosts are after the children.
And then the end is all tragic.
The way the story is structured, it is sort of like playing telephone. In the beginning, the narrator is introducing the story, saying his friend read it to him. The friend had known the governess some time after the events of the story, and copied down her account. The narrator, then, apparently copies down his copy, so then we switch narrators to the governess.
It would have been helpful to go back to the original guy from the beginning at the end of the story to see what the audience’s thoughts were. Perhaps then we could get to the bottom of whether or not the ghosts were real or the governess was hallucinating.
Also, I would have liked to have known what ended up happening to the governess. There seems to be no foreshadowing to indicate anything and Wikipedia has failed me.
Regardless of whichever camp you choose, it’s a chilling read.
Buy The Turn of The Screw on Amazon
If you like this book/author, you might like:
(my reviews in blue)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Angelica by Arthur Phillips
Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque by Joyce Carol Oates
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Yellow Wall-paper Charlotte Perkins Gillman
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe
The Public Image by Murial Spark
The Master by Colm Toibin
Author, Author by David Lodge
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Other works by Henry James:
Washington Square
Roderick Hudson
The Portrait of a Lady
The Bostonians
Watch and Ward
The Europeans
The American
Confidence
Spoils of Poynton
The Tragic Muse
The Reverberator
The Other House
The Sacred Fount
What Maisie Knew
The Awkward Age
The Princess Casamassima
The Wings of the Dove
The Golden Bowl
The Outcry
The Ambassadors
The Sense of the Past
Four Meetings
Daisy Miller
Madame de Mauves
The Death of the Lion
The Figure in the Carpet
The Altar of the Dead
The Beast in the Jungle and Other Stories
The Coxon Fund
Mrs. Medwin
The Author of Beltraffio
The Aspern Papers and Other Stories
The Jolly Corner
A Bundle of Letters
In the Cage
A London Life
The Pupil
A Passionate Pilgrim
The Great Good Place
The New York Stories of Henry James
Henry James : Collected Travel Writings
The Portable Henry James
Essays in London and Elsewhere
French poets and novelists
Partial Portraits
Notes on Novelists
The Notebooks of Henry James
A Small Boy and Others
Notes of a Son & Brother
Guy Domville
Theatricals: Two Comedies: Tenants. Disengaged
Picture and text
Hawthorne
William Wetmore Story and his friends
Henry James: A Life in Letters
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Nice review of Turn of the Screw-Daisy Miller is another good choice for your challenge-
This is one I’ve always meant to read … a lot because of the title!
I didn’t know Henry James wrote stuff like this. I want to check it out.
This is sitting on the top of my TBR pile and ALMOST made it into the RIP Challenge but I ran out of time.
As much as I dislike the psychoanalystics, I went with the madness hypothesis too, simply because it’s what disturbed me the most.
I loved this when I read it it high school. I always wondered if it was the inspiration for that Nicole Kidman movie The Others.
I have not read Henry James in a long while. And I haven’t read this one either, though you have me intrigued…maybe its Halloween.
“This is one of those books where nobody will ever know if it’s really a ghost story or if the narrator is nuts. ” In a college English class, we watched two movies that interpreted this movie. One went one way, the other the other. Both were totally freaky.
I need to read it again, as I can’t remember which way I thought intially. I’m not into ghosts, so I probably thought the lady was crazy.
Not that anyone cares, but ‘apparitionists’ and ‘non-apparitionists’ are the technical terms for the ‘It’s ghosts, fools’ and ‘Bitch is crazy’ camps, respectively.
Also, if the story-tellers had returned at the end, that might have said one way or the other if it was ghosts or madness, and what makes the story so frightful is that you can’t decide either way, so you have to contend with BOTH. Ack.
Also, the governess ended up just fine. She was Douglas’ sister’s governess, you may recall, so her reputation obviously wasn’t tainted by the MYSTERIOUS EVENTS AT BLY!
Also, I just wrote a paper on how the frame narrative is what makes the story so ambiguous, and I feel like my Pedantic Switch is stuck in the ‘on’ position. *rinses brain in beer*