Christmas Reading '09: The Turn of the Screw

[Gladys]

In The Golden Bowl, he seems to be offering a rather funky view on marriage, and some think Maggie and the Prince will survive *the crack* in their union because of Papa's last words about his daughter's fine objects--but Maggie's very last perception in the book is that she looks at her husband with terror and pity, before burying her head in his shoulder. I tend to be less optimistic thereby.

Now reading The Wings of the Dove , I feel exhilarated rather than insecure reading Henry James: The Golden Bowl.

[Jozanny]

As a James reader, I do not think I ever felt insecure. Frustrated, yes. Determined to understand, yes. I took many things at face value that I no longer do, and I finally understand "the experiment" in The Europeans even if Eugenia remains a puzzle--however, much as in The Golden Bowl, there is a subtext about pair bonding in The Turn of The Screw.

But James leaves it up to the reader to latch onto their own points, for the most part. We see what we want to with our own values. I have done some reading on gender identification in children, and the evidence seems to indicate that boys and girls know fairly early how they identify in terms of gender, so it is not beyond the pale that Miles leans toward homosexual tendencies despite his age. It is simply not conclusive in this novella--nor if James is preying upon our fears, more or less, as well as coping with his possible repression--but again, no one actually knows. Some Jamesians like to believe that James was actively gay, in modern terms. Some think he was cellibate, and some think there was a middle ground, that as a young man James risked an affair or two.

I don't know, but I do get the sense, in his last works, that he wanted to come out, and that he was in pain about his preferences, though in TOS this is relatively oblique. He is not, I suppose, as obvious in his agenda as we can say EM Forster is. I think Forster was the first gay writer as we would characterize it today, genre wise. I don't mean that he was the first gay writer, just that he set the table for the modern advent of gay and lesbian activism. James was more coded, and much more complex in his views on intimacy between people.

[kasie]

So do you think Miles has been 'perverted' by Quint? And has he in turn being trying to 'pervert' other boys at his school? And does the uncle know about it? Did he know Quint had these tendencies? Is he himself been involved with Quint in the past? Is the reason he wants nothing to do with the children that he knows what has happened and feels guilty/responsible/attracted, even? Or am I reading too much into this?

And who says that last 'Peter Quint - you devil?' I read it as Miles, but who is the 'devil', Quint - or the governess?

[Virgil]

Ok, let me throw my two cents in at what I think this story is about. First, I don’t see any psychoanalytic anything in it, I don’t see any spiritual themes, or even really anything about the nature of good and evil. I don’t believe there are any real abstract themes in here. Bare (or is it bear?) in mind that I’m basing this off only a single reading and I really should read this again, and perhaps I will in the near future. But I don’t see any developed abstract theme throughout the work. Sure there are touches of this and touches of that, and they are either accidental or more likely calculated by James to lure you in and ultimately frustrate you. Ultimately as I see this story on this single reading, the core of it is about story telling and the nature of it.

The first question one must have is, why the frame structure at the beginning, and which never comes into play. Conrad uses that frame many times, and every time I can think of, like in Heart of Darkness, the intrudes into the story sporadically and certainly provides a conclusion at the end. Here the frame introduces the story and completely disappears, without even a coda at the end. James could have started with the Governess’s tale and excluded the frame opening, but the frame accentuates the notion of first person narrator, both because the frame itself is in first person (which it didn’t have to be) and it identifies the 20 year old text of an excitable young woman: “She was young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of serious duties and little company, of really great loneliness. She hesitated--took a couple of days to consult and consider.” (from the Introduction) And then the text starts in the Governess’s first person.

One of the key questions a reader must always ask himself with a first person narrator, is whether that narrator is reliable. With Douglass’s characterizing sentence I just quoted above, we have an undermining of the credibility of the Governess to perceive reality, and so we are given the possibility that she is unreliable. That is why James makes so much with the motif of vision. Are the Governess’s perceptions real or imagined. Now this is also a ghost story, and consciously chosen to be one. The nature of a ghost story rests on the credibility of whether the ghost is real and given this is in first person, we have a sort of double instability here. Is the ghost real or imagined? Is the narrator reliable or delusional?

We start the story believing, after all why should we really doubt her. The children are real, Mrs. Grose is real and she as an independent witness initially believes her. In fact we the reader are sort of at times in the shoes of Mrs. Grose. We judge the Governess through her eyes. Mrs. Grose is a simple person, one that would believe in ghosts readily, and, while we initially believe the Governess along with Mrs. Grose, we begin to doubt it as well. Mrs. Grose finally reaches a conclusion of doubt, and at some point even the Governess begins to doubt herself. So we start with what appears to be a reliable narrator and it turns to apparently unreliability. Even at one point it appears that the ghosts are independently verified, as we see in the beginning of chapter XX:

Miss Jessel stood before us on the opposite bank exactly as she had stood the other time, and I remember, strangely, as the first feeling now produced in me, my thrill of joy at having brought on a proof. She was there, and I was justified; she was there, and I was neither cruel nor mad. She was there for poor scared Mrs. Grose, but she was there most for Flora; and no moment of my monstrous time was perhaps so extraordinary as that in which I consciously threw out to her--with the sense that, pale and ravenous demon as she was, she would catch and understand it--an inarticulate message of gratitude.

But as it turns out, the Governess here only thinks it’s been verified. What appears to her as independent verification, is not. When the Governess points the ghost out, Mrs. Grose doesn’t see it:

"She's there, you little unhappy thing--there, there, there, and you see her as well as you see me!" I had said shortly before to Mrs. Grose that she was not at these times a child, but an old, old woman, and that description of her could not have been more strikingly confirmed than in the way in which, for all answer to this, she simply showed me, without a concession, an admission, of her eyes, a countenance of deeper and deeper, of indeed suddenly quite fixed, reprobation. I was by this time--if I can put the whole thing at all together--more appalled at what I may properly call her manner than at anything else, though it was simultaneously with this that I became aware of having Mrs. Grose also, and very formidably, to reckon with. My elder companion, the next moment, at any rate, blotted out everything but her own flushed face and her loud, shocked protest, a burst of high disapproval. "What a dreadful turn, to be sure, miss! Where on earth do you see anything?"

I could only grasp her more quickly yet, for even while she spoke the hideous plain presence stood undimmed and undaunted. It had already lasted a minute, and it lasted while I continued, seizing my colleague, quite thrusting her at it and presenting her to it, to insist with my pointing hand. "You don't see her exactly as we see?--you mean to say you don't now--now? She's as big as a blazing fire! Only look, dearest woman, look--!" She looked, even as I did, and gave me, with her deep groan of negation, repulsion, compassion--the mixture with her pity of her relief at her exemption--a sense, touching to me even then, that she would have backed me up if she could. I might well have needed that, for with this hard blow of the proof that her eyes were hopelessly sealed I felt my own situation horribly crumble…

So we are left with really doubting the Governess. So that they we the reader are in a situation of coming up with two possibilities. Either this proves the governess is unreliable or there is the possibility that the ghosts can make themselves visible to some and invisible to others. The story keeps turning in its instability.

Ultimately then the ghosts are experienced outside of the Governess’s perception, so that we now have another turn of the screw as James says. The narrator was not unreliable after all, and what appeared as a farfetched tale has been independently verified. Or it could be that elements of the tale are unreliable and elements aren’t. What James has done is create a story about the nature of story telling and the instability (I like that word as a characterization of the story) that lies at the heart of every one’s story. When someone, take a person here on lit net, recounts an event, to what level is the recounting reliable, through his own filtering of facts, conscious and unconscious, what is independently verified, and what mixture of the real hard facts and perception is presented.

[Jozanny]

Virgil, I disagree on two things: the story is Freudian. Papers have been written on it and it helped me understand why and how the governess sees and reacts as she does.

Two: it is spiritual. I grant you that James is a little more urbane and not as direct as Dickens, but Christian themes loom large in his master works, and they loom in TOS.

The tale begins the night before the birth of the Incarnate and lasts three days. Surely that isn't lost in the catholic in you.

The governess is the daughter of an episcopalian priest. Significant tensions occur during church services, which the children attend and the governess doesn't. Salvationist hints run through the entire story, my friend.

I will come back to the rest later tonight. I am a bit busy and just logged on to see the tv schedule and here I am yapping!

[Virgil]

Virgil, I disagree on two things: the story is Freudian. Papers have been written on it and it helped me understand why and how the governess sees and reacts as she does.

Two: it is spiritual. I grant you that James is a little more urbane and not as direct as Dickens, but Christian themes loom large in his master works, and they loom in TOS.

The tale begins the night before the birth of the Incarnate and lasts three days. Surely that isn't lost in the catholic in you.

The governess is the daughter of an episcopalian priest. Significant tensions occur during church services, which the children attend and the governess doesn't. Salvationist hints run through the entire story, my friend.

I will come back to the rest later tonight. I am a bit busy and just logged on to see the tv schedule and here I am yapping!

You're going to have to show me. Like I said, I think James purposely touches on those things and brings them to a dead end. But I do not think they are developed or thematic or even integrated with the anrrative. How does the fact that she's a minister's daughter have to do with seeing or not seeing ghosts? The Freudian idea completely baffles me. Of course you may ask why James brings in extraneous threads only to have them come to an unfruitful conclusion, but I can't quite answer that yet. It's an intuitive feeling that needs to be thought through, and unfortunately may require a second full reading. It has to do with the nature of storytelling.

[Gladys]

The tale begins the night before the birth of the Incarnate and lasts three days.

Are there more Christian allusions? Connecting Christmas with the Passion narrative is beyond me: who is the incarnate, crucified and redeeming Saviour here? And what role have ghosts in the Gospels?

Edit: Christmas Eve, Virgil, is a time of hope and promise but Golgotha soon follows. How about, 'He [Our governess] descended into hell. On the third day he [she] rose again'? Her short stay at Bly was an encounter with demons - metaphorically a descent into Hell. Too tenuous?

[Virgil]

Edit: Christmas Eve, Virgil, is a time of hope and promise but Golgotha soon follows. How about, 'He [Our governess] descended into hell. On the third day he [she] rose again'? Her short stay at Bly was an encounter with demons - metaphorically a descent into Hell. Too tenuous?

No I understand that. But what does that have to do with the story? I don't see the significance. The only significance of it being during Christmas is that James I think wants to link this story to Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Otherwise what else is the significance of Christmas?

[Gladys]

Otherwise what else is the significance of Christmas?

That Golgotha follows Christmas Eve: Hell follows hope?

It's interesting that the prime Biblical allusion in The Golden Bowl is almost equally cryptic: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken.

[Virgil]

I haven't read The Golden Bowl, so I can't comment. I just don't see any religiosity in this story. Other than some superficial details, which I maintain are dead ends in terms of reaching any theme, there really isn't any.

[Gladys]

I just don't see any religiosity in this story.

I agree. Even the psychology seems less than profound (like Freud himself). The governess writes this account decades after the event, and has become, according to Douglas and her own account, a sensible and intelligent woman. How could she have fabricated so much!

Unless someone can show me more subtlety than a few loose ends, I'm inclined to rank this novella with James's less than convincing, serialised who-dun-it The Other House, written two years earlier.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Like Jozanny is saying there are huge amounts of Freudian elements to this story that must be considered when weighing up what is going on - even if you ultimately reject them in favour of other explanations. However, I don't think that there are any simple answers in this story, I get the feeling that you are supposed to leave the story with more questions than answers - and I think in this James certainly succeeds.

[LitNetIsGreat]

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). 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.

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:

“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 think you could perhaps make a case for James himself having a bit of a joke here, though I don’t like to mix narrator with author ever; but nevertheless I think it is an interesting passage and a potential argument. It could also be saying that we won’t have answers at the end, like I said above, more questions come of this text than answers – or at least more points of view than answers and not many of them concrete.

It is also stated very early on that the Governess is in love:

Yes, she was in love. That is she had been. That came out – she couldn’t tell her story without it’s coming out.

This is immediately reinforced by the character Griffin (who some argue even invented just to reinforce this line):

Mrs Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more light. “Who was it she was in love with?”
“The story will tell” I took it upon myself to reply.

So we are already primed for the fact that the Governess was in love and this is even repeated twice. This is I think important - because James is someone who I don’t think uses language sparingly – it is all there for a reason, one way or another...

So to the meeting with the master:

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. You can see her romanticising in the passage which immediately carries on from this one:

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.

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. 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:

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:

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.

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:

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:

“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.

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:

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:

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:

Was there a “secret” at Bly – a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement?

For me the line above clearly suggests that she would want it to be so. Her wild over-active and susceptible imagination would seem to want it to be so very much and that her knight would come and rescue her from it all, just in all the romances. (Of course in Jane Eyre the Governess does marry the master.)

When she speaks of him to the houses keeper she describes him as like an actor:

“His mouth’s wide, and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he’s quite clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor”
“An actor”” it was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than Mrs Grose at that moment.
“I’ve never seen one, but as I suppose them. He’s tall, active, erect”.

[...]

“But he is handsome?”
I saw the way to help her. “remarkably!”
“And dressed - ?”
“In somebody’s clothes. They’re smart, but they’re not his own.”
She broke into a breathless affirmative groan. “they’re the masters’s!”

So this is part of the argument I suppose that she is transferring her desire from the master-like figure onto that of Quint, with the added point that Quint is really the actor, who of course plays the part of somebody else.

On her second vision of Quint it once again comes about after reading, this time Fielding’s Amelia. It further adds to the argument that after filling her head with romance and novels she is primed to see the “visions” which leads to the position that she is really “seeing” these figures through her own imagination and ultimately, her sexual desire for the master, or master-like imaginary figure. This at least would be one position from a Freudian point of view, though I have hardly even covered main few notes on this text form a psychoanalytical reading. There really is a huge amount out there from this perspective, I’ve not even had time to consider the Oedipal consequences of her desire onto Miles:

I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him. Dear little Miles, deal little Miles -!
My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it with indulgent good humour.

I mean come on! It is really quite packed through with psychoanalytical stuff, it is quite hard to avoid it, whether we like the perspective or not, and it is certainly not one of my favourite points of view, but it is simply difficult to ignore in this story!

[Virgil]

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.

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.

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.

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:
Quote:
“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.

Quote:
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.

You can see her romanticising in the passage which immediately carries on from this one:
Quote:
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?

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’.

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:
Quote:
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:
Quote:
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.

Quote:
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:
Quote:
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:
Quote:
“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??

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:
Quote:
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:
Quote:
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!

[Gladys]

I mean come on! It is really quite packed through with psychoanalytical stuff

All the passages you quote are most interesting, particularly: '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.'.

Whether or not Freud could pontificate on these passages, I agree with Virgil that the young governess seems an unremarkable romantic of the Mills and Boon variety, complete with subtle sexual innuendo. Many a young woman has consciously seen the world this way since time immemorial, so why invoke Freud? In her transcript, our venerable governess dispassionately recounts her romantic fantasies as an impressionable and insecure girl in a strange place.

Incidentally, Studies on Hysteria (with Josef Breuer) (Studien über Hysterie, 1895), was the only major work of Freud published before The Turn of the screw, 1898.

But the ghost turns out to be true and real!!

I agree, but do others?