You point out some good observations Neely. And just like there are critics who have supported the Freudian reading, there are others that dispute it. What you point out as Freudian can be read into any gothic novel. There is always a young lady who can be viewed as repressed. Just look over a dozen gothic novels. This is part of the genre. You can also say that Isabel Archer from James’ Portrait of a Lady, written before Freud in 1880, can be seen as repressed. Actually as I think over every single work James wrote, I think I can identify a character as repressed. This seems to be part of what his imagination leans to in characters, not necessarily a theme. I do also think there are some holes in your argument. Let me respond to the holes and then I’ll look for some common ground.
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Originally Posted by Neely
I think one of the main arguments from a psychoanalytical perspective is that we see the Governess as a sexually repressed figure (massively sexually repressed as I see it) and as this built-up repression can’t find a natural outlet it is transferred or projected in other areas. For example it could be seen in the visualisation of Quint and Jessop or in an Oedipal way to that of Miles (and I know that there have been other suggestions that go further too).
Oedipal? I thought Freud was quite clear that Oedipal was for a boy loving his mother, and did not apply to women. And Freud did not use the term Oedipal until 1910, a full 12 years after this story was written. Be that as it may, how widespread were Freud’s theories to his exact contemporaries? Does anyone know what the latest theories of anything within at least a decade of being widespread? Especially when mass communication was not like it is today? Freud was first writing of repression at almost the same time James is writing this story.
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I think that the mind of the Governess is extremely susceptible, found in her constant daydreaming and romanticising, and is therefore the perfect vehicle to convey such things. All this is pretty standard psychoanalytical stuff and The Turn of the Screw is very much a bit of a set text for psychoanalytical readings, so I am not stating anything unique or outrageous by far.
Like I said above, this is every gothic story. Every gothic story has a repressed woman in it. And how about the story that this owes the most to, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol – is Scrooge repressed? Now there is no way that Dickens was thinking of Freud, but if someone wanted to, they could make the same case that Scrooge is repressed. God, you could write a book on psychoanalyzing Scrooge. And I bet someone has. ;)
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Anyway, as I say, the most important element is that we see the Governess as a sexually repressed individual, I think this is the key to most of the psychoanalytical readings. Often people think that this is due to her obsession with the master of the house, which is perhaps true in a way, but I also think that such was there even before her meeting with him, as carried away in her vast imagination. But before this I think we are told in a tongue-in-cheek manner by Douglas what is half going on:
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“The story won’t tell,” said Douglas; “not in any literal, vulgar way.”
“More’s the pity then. That’s the only way I ever understand.”
(original italics)
I have read a number of Jame’s work, and he often uses the word “vulgar” to mean lower class or common. Frankly, that doesn’t necessarily refer to sex. What Douglas is answering is Mrs. Gryphon’s question of “Who was she in love with?” The story doesn’t say in some “literal, vulgar (meaning common story telling) way” but in an artful way. James is concerned with art and the art of story telling, and he is contrasting that with common, vulgar street anecdotes.
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This person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgement, at a house, in Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing – this of life, such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel, before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage.
This I think is an important passage. We see the mind of the Governess as someone who is already influenced by dreaming and romances as being impressed by this sort of knight of a figure. It is also emphasised that she was an anxious girl who has lived in a quiet vicarage – certainly not much room for sexual freedom there to boot! Though I think that it is not too big a leap to see that she may have escaped from her boredom in the vicarage by reading such romances that she already at this point relates in the master as something straight out of a romantic fiction, he is already a hero figure of an impressionable mind. Also note the word “dream” which is very important of course to Freud and any psychoanalytical reading.
And so whenever there is a young woman in love, the author is implying Freud? You mean when Madam Bovary dreams and romanticizes, when Anna Karenina dreams and romanticizes, when Catherine Earnshaw dreams and romanticizes, when Jane Erye dreams and romanticizes, the authors are referring to Freud, even though Freud didn’t even think of his theories for decades? Because a character dreams and romanticizes proves nothing. Young women dream and romanticize. In fact, young boys dream and romanticize. Pip (Great Expectations), Tom Sawyer, Tom Jones, and Don Quixote, for crying out loud. Was Don Quixote sexually repressed?
And sexual freedom? Until the 1960s there was no sexual freedom. In fact 99% of the people before the middle of the 20th century would be considered sexually repressed by your definition. James wouldn’t of thought her limited sexuality as unusual.
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You can see her romanticising in the passage which immediately carries on from this one:
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One could easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome and bold and pleasant, off-hand and gay and kind. He struck her, inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what struck her most of all and gave her the courage she afterwards showed was that he put the whole thing to her as a kind of favour, and obligation he should gratefully incur. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant – saw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits of charming ways with women. He had for his town residence a big house filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase.
Oh there is definitely romanticizing going on, that I agree. But that is a different thing from Freudian repression. That is not the same thing at all. Literature from the beginning of time has dealt with some form of romanticizing. What you quote there is that he’s a good looking guy that she’s attracted to. What does that have to do with Freudianism? As if characters before Freud were not attracted to each other?
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Now to me, if this is not the depiction of a romantic hero I don’t know what is. It seems that she may be in love with him, but certainly she is in love with “his type” the dashing prince or knight in shining armour. This passage comes on the next page to the one previously quoted, so to me the idea that she is in love, is obsessed, with the idea of some sort of chivalric romance is a fairly straightforward assumption to make. Put this together with a frustrated girl who comes from a vicarage and already with a figure that is loaded with a lot of Freudian potential.
Some but not conclusive. Like I just said before, just because a girl is attracted to guy does not imply the author was referring to Freud. My God, Jane Austen had no knowledge of Freud. Her female character all dream on some guy. And where does it say that the Governess was “frustrated?” That’s your term, not James’.
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It seems that she has already projected her feelings onto the master, so that the master becomes all of her previous desires all rolled into one figure. The fact that he might “gratefully incur” on her a favour if she does her job properly also to me suggests that she would go to any length (such as not contacting him over issues) when not asked to do so.
Douglas also emphasises this love/passion clearly, it says:
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And Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved me to throw in –
“The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid young man. She succumbed to it.
As if we really needed telling on this point, but once again James is prone to really labour the point home.
It should be noted that when she arrives at Bly she is impressed by his house and notes that:
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What I was to enjoy might be something beyond his promise.
We should probably see this primarily as meaning the property that she should enjoy, but it certainly could mean that her hope is much more than this. Either way she soon advances upon her own importance in the household, which could be seen as part of her added delusion and grandeur of power, and hope that she might eventually be more than a Governess to the master.
Sure, I agree, that she is attracted to the master, but why are you saying it’s Freudian? She’s actually quite conscious of the fact that she is. There is nothing unconscious about it.
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The large, impressive room, one of the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it, the full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see myself
I mean apart from seeing her room as the best in the house, you can almost feel the sexual tension in this brilliant line here, really the line itself is hugely one of sexual repression – note also that she is quick to mention the bed, along with the large, impressive fullness!
At the same time that she is quick to overplay her importance, (and thus her potential position as more than the Governess) she is quick to down play the house keeper as:
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Stout, simple, plain, clean wholesome woman
Which not only downplays her as a person and raises herself, but the very overt simplicity of James’s language here almost hurts, it is very bluntly expressed – and because it is James certainly means something!
If we have not got all this to work out for our self about the Governess, which hardly takes much of a leap into the outrageous theoretical world! the Governess claims herself that she is easily led:
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“I’m rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!”
You don’t say.
But then she then goes on to describe the place with its “empty chambers and dull corridors” which could certainly go to describe her own sexual or emotional self. The chapter ends with her assertion that she is “at the helm” of the house, again pushing her self-importance, although it is that as a Governess she does posses some degree of power, certainly above that of the serving staff, I think that there is ample evidence that suggests she places herself well above her own station in the hope of getting more from the master that her position dictates.
What isw Freudian about any of this? You are reading into all of that. The full figured draperies? The long glasses? The empty chambers? The dull corridors? That’s Freudian? What??
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If we look at the first vision of that of “Quint” then, to me, it cries out of that of a depiction of her imagination – and thus her sexual repression. It is even as obvious to state before she sees him that she would wish to see a vision:
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It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour; the children were tucked away and I had come out for my stroll. One of the thoughts that, as I don’t in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of a path and would stand before me and smile and approve. I didn’t ask more than that – I only asked he should know; and the only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome face. That was exactly present to me – by which I mean the face was – when, on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations and coming into view of the house. What arrested me on the spot – and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed real. He did stand there!
She goes on to say, which I think could be used to totally debunk the “ghost” theory of the image she sees as:
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The figure that faced me was – a few more seconds assured me – as little anyone else I know as it was the image that had been in my mind. I had not seen it in Harley Street – I had not seen it anywhere.
The figure which is standing above her on the tall “tower” with its “measure” and “elevation” which “loomed” in “grandeur” “very erect” - is the figure of her imagination - at the thrust of her sexual desire. Again, I don’t think James uses such words in an off-hand manner, even though the sexual connotations in this section can hardly be seriously overlooked. Immediately after this section she is quick to assert her love of mystery romances mentioning the famous text Udolpho and of course Jane Eyre:
Now here I agree with you. The ghost clearly is represented in sexual language. In the interest of saving space, I will agree with the rest of your analysis of how she uses sexual terms to describe the ghost. I agree there. But sexual language is a far different thing than a Freudian interpretation. So let’s say there is a repressed desire here. What’s the point? A Freudian story would go along the lines that the repressed desires would cause her to see a ghost, that the ghost was an outgrowth of the repression. And I would be inclined to agree with this as a Freudian story, if the ghost was imagined. But the ghost turns out to be true and real!! Therefore repression had nothing to do with it. And what does Miles’ death at the end have to do with her Freudian expressions? He dies because the ghost took his life. You have to tie her repression with the story line, otherwise it’s just an interesting detail, like she had blond hair. What does her Freudian repression have to do with the story? What is the theme that you are alluding to? All you did was point out a few observations. You have not tied anything into a coherent statement. I repeat, what does her repression have to do with the story?
I mean come on! :p
