The Turn of the Screw

Reading this book anyone would readily admit it faces an interpretative crisis partially because it is told from the governess's biased point of view and secondly because James' meant this to be a psychological study not a by-the-numbers ghost story. The governess's apparent infatuation with 'the man from Harley Street' makes her appear at times both in vain trying to possess and control the children and protect them from any danger real or imagined to gain the master's love and favor by fulfilling her duties. In other words she is attempting to make herself a heroine in a completely fictional adventure. Her repressed upbringing in a strict, class-conscious society makes her view both Quint and Miss Jessel's relationship as obscene and horrible for a view reasons: for one the previous governess was of a higher social class then the 'base menial' making their relationship both between themselves and with the children as evil and inexusable and for another being brought up in a religious home would have made even a little sin seem a colossal evil as evidenced by the differing connotations the governess and Mrs. Grose have of Miles' bad behaviour. For all these and more reasons one can conclude that the 'ghosts' are merely figments of the imagination of an unstable woman seeing how they appear and disappear according to her emotionally state. She neurotically and continually overacts to the smallest trifles and their are no foundations for many of her paradoxical conclusions such as when she assumes the children must communicate with the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel because they never speak of them: where facts aren't there she invents them or merely attempts to disguise her unfounded paranoia under a layer of feigned intelligence and intuition as seen in her relationship with the 'simple' Mrs. Grose who in reality shares a far healthier relationship with the children the governess. I personally think the children are innocent of her suspicions and have no relationship with the past ghosts one must also remember that they are but children, eight and ten, and their sometimes vague and incriminating language and behavior toward the governess can be a product of their immature childish minds and confusion at her strange questions and actions. The children especially Miles' are of a different and somewhat more liberal generation then the governess herself so his behavior such as at school or the desire for attention or a want of a father figure, to fellowship with other children his own age and expand his knowledge or 'field' of the world around him as is natural for a young boy. What Miles' did to get expelled from school was most likely speaking bad language which he may picked up from Quint and even Flora was influenced enough to recite it. Is it not possible then that the headmaster could have been referring to this influence, of nasty language picked up by Miles, and told to his fellow students that caused his permanent expulsion? If you read carefully there is far more evidence supporting the theory that the governess due to an unhealthy mind and unstable emotional state drove the children away and eventually 'lost' them; she became what she most hated and feared and ended up not being the protector but the ruiner of the children. James' traces brilliantly her gradual descent into delusions, paranoia and outright psychosis. He had an extensive knowledge of psychology and this work well illustrates many of the accepted theories of psychologists at the time which explored the inner workings of the both the conscious and unconscious mind. The structure of a horror story serves to lend it even more scholarly merit for where else then in a situation of fear is the mind more subjective to observation? The novel is naturally then very deep and open to many different interpretations but i think this serves to make it more interesting and thought-provoking not frustrating and giving it substance rather than mere sensationalism.

Interesting. I read that James wrote this with full intention of it being a ghost story, that he had always wanted to attempt writing a good one, and that he felt he succeeded. The mental state of his characters may have been played around with a bit to make them more interesting - and lets face it, most women of the period were probably somewhat repressed - but there are several clues in the story that indicate that it was not a hallucination, that what was happening was real.

I guess people are always going to disagree about this, but I find the ghost story angle to be a heck of a lot more interesting than the sexual repression interpretation.