A Fresh Turn on The Turn of the Screw — with quotation marks restored

Author’s note: Awhile ago, I put up a version of this essay from which I had removed all quotation remarks because the program on this site often tends to distort quotation marks. However, a very astute critic of mine found the essay difficult to read for that reason. I am putting it up with quotation marks restored. It was originally published in “The Hatchet: The Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.”

The Borden case continues to enthrall over a century after it was committed for many reasons, including the respectability of its Victorian personages and the mystery that hovers over so many facets of the case. In these ways, this real life horror resembles a Victorian horror classic, Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw.

James was a writer known for his subtle style as well as his deep understanding of human psychology and his ability to invest his fiction with the most intriguing nuances. The very title, The Turn of the Screw, is rich with eerie promise, a promise more than fulfilled in the pages of the brief but absorbing novel.

The story itself has a layered narration. An “I” who is never named tells the reader that he or she – the gender of this narrator is never stated — and a group were in an old house listening to a chilling tale of horror that left members of the group “breathless.” Another member of the party told a less effective tale. Then a man named Douglas introduces a supposedly true ghost story with which he is familiar. He regards it as even more haunting than the one that is said to have captivated the audience because that story had a ghost appearing to a child. Douglas asks, “If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to two children — ?”

It is significant that this brings up the title of the novel. The presence of a child in a ghost tale gives it a “turn of the screw.” Why is this so? It could be because children represent innocence and the supernatural a kind of ultimate violation of that innocence. It could also be because the line between reality and fantasy is more fluid for children than it is for psychologically normal adults and the otherworld seems more their natural element.

The group soon learns that the experience of which Douglas speaks was not his own but that of a woman he respected and admired who died some twenty years previously. Ten years older than Douglas, she had been his sister’s governess. He says she possessed a beautiful handwriting in which she set down the chilling story. That manuscript is under lock and key at Douglas’s home but he promises to send for it and read it aloud to those of the group who wish to hear about the woman’s “dreadful” experience.

Douglas sends for the papers. Before beginning to read from them, he gives the hushed group some background. The woman whose story he will tell was the youngest daughter in the large family of a country parson. When she was twenty years old, she journeyed to London to answer an advertisement for a governess position. The prospective employer was a young, handsome bachelor who was guardian to two children, his nephew and niece. They had been orphaned by the deaths of their parents in India. He wanted the young woman to take up employment in his country home of Bly, a large estate currently being supervised by a housekeeper named Mrs. Grose. He continues that the previous governess had “done for [the children] quite beautifully” and had been “a most respectable person” but that her death had left them without a governess.

The uncle attached a special condition to the woman’s employment. She must never trouble him but “meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone.”

Soon after this prologue, Douglas begins reading directly from the dead woman’s manuscript and the rest of the story is told in first-person from her viewpoint.

Her introduction to Bly appears to her to portend good. She is charmed by the little girl named Flora, considering the youngster “the most beautiful child I had ever seen.” Mrs. Grose appears a “plain, clean, wholesome woman.”

A couple of days later, our narrator meets Flora’s slightly older brother, ten-year-old Miles, and the story sounds its first disconcerting note. Our governess reads a letter from the headmaster of the little boy’s school saying that the lad is forbidden to come back. However, the reason for the expulsion is not given.

The governess is understandably baffled, wondering what this little boy could have done that was so very bad.

Soon she begins wondering about another mystery, that of her predecessor’s death. She inquires of Mrs. Grose who tells her that the former governess was “young and pretty” like the questioner. Mrs. Grose seems uncomfortable as she remembers the woman who was “particular” about “some things” with the implication that she was none-too-“particular” about – what? The housekeeper does not want to “tell tales” about the dead but reveals that the deceased governess left Bly for a holiday and died while away.

Our narrator finds herself enjoying her work of educating her young charges, not the least because they are such very well behaved children. In Miles she finds “something divine that I have never found to the same degree in any child – his indescribable air of knowing nothing in the world but love.” However, hovering at the back of her consciousness is the fact that this sweet child was expelled from school and she has no clue as to why.

Soon the governess has an experience that alters her perception of Bly and its inhabitants. On an afternoon stroll, she sees a man in the tower of the residence. She and the unknown man fix each other in a long stare until finally he moves out of her line of vision. She does not know why but she is deeply disturbed by this silent, distant encounter.

Putting this encounter behind her, she focuses on her work with her young pupils. She writes, “the attraction of my small charges was a constant joy.” However, she is inevitably troubled by the “deep obscurity [that] continued to cover the region of the boy’s conduct at school.” She decides that Miles must have just been too “good” for ‘the little horrid, unclean school world.”

The narrator is soon again discomfited by another silent encounter with the same man whose presence had previously so upset her.

She describes the man she has seen to Mrs. Grose who immediately recognizes the fellow described and names him as Peter Quint who had previously been the valet at Bly. Mrs. Grose continues, “Mr. Quint is dead.”

The governess is now convinced that she has twice seen a ghost. She gets more information from Mrs. Grose about the living Quint. He was a man who was “much too free” and possessed “vices more than suspected” and who was close to Miles. Quint had died on his way back from a public house when he apparently slipped drunkenly on an icy slope and slammed on his head.

Alarmed, the governess is convinced that this specter wants to make himself known to the children, especially Miles. She believes that only she can protect the children from Quint’s malevolent spirit.

A pivotal scene follows this realization. She and little Flora are beside the pond on the Bly estate. The governess becomes “aware” of a “presence” on the other side of the pond, although she has not actually seen it. Looking directly across the pond, the governess faces an apparition that she soon describes to Mrs. Grose. The apparition was “a woman in black, pale and dreadful” that the present governess concludes is “my predecessor – the one who died.” Then Mrs. Grose names that predecessor as Miss Jessel.

While the governess looks at the mysterious figure, Flora continues playing, seemingly oblivious to anything untoward. However, the governess is certain that Flora has seen an apparition and then just continued with her childlike business.

The governess becomes convinced that both Flora and Miles are in some kind of secret communication with the dead Peter Quint and Miss Jessel.

The Turn of the Screw is the subject of great critical controversy, a controversy that is similar to that surrounding the case to which this journal owes its existence, in its ability to generate theories and counter theories.

Are ghosts “really” tormenting the characters’ of the novel? Or is the governess hallucinating and projecting her delusions onto the children?

Critics can be found championing each view. Those who believe it is a straight ghost story and that the governess is a trustworthy narrator point to Douglas’s glowing description of her character. Douglas says, “She was the most agreeable woman I’ve ever known in her position; she would have been worthy of any whatever.” He continues that he had many long talks with her and found her “clever and nice.”

To those who see The Turn of the Screw as a ghost story rather than a story about madness, the prologue may be specifically designed to assure us that the governess is to be believed.

After all, Douglas tells us that the governess worked as a governess for his family years after her spectral experiences and seems to indicate that other families also hired her. Families would be unlikely to trust their young to a woman who was obviously deranged or bizarre.

Another factor pointed to by the ghost story advocates is the governess’s detailed description of the first apparition she sees. She tells Mrs. Groxe, “He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker, they look particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, strange – awfully; but I only know they’re rather small and very fixed. His mouth’s wide, and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he’s quite clean-shaven.” Those who believe she has, in the novel’s terms, really seen a ghost believe she had no other way of knowing what Quint looked like or even that he had existed.

Accepting The Turn of the Screw as a genuine ghost story may also explain two major mysteries about the tale. The uncle’s odd injunction against being consulted about anything that might occur at Bly could indicate that he knows, or at least suspects, that the place is haunted and wants to keep clear of the supernatural.

It could also explain why Miles was dismissed from school. Toward the novel’s conclusion, the governess presses Miles to tell her why he was expelled. “I said things,” he cryptically replies. Perhaps the things he said were about his experiences with ghosts and the authorities at the school did not want him to return to frighten his schoolmates or did not want him there because they, being skeptical of ghost stories, thought the boy a chronic liar.

Those who see The Turn of the Screw as about the governess’s mental disintegration have no trouble mustering evidence for their side. They think Douglas’s praise of her cannot be trusted since he indicates that he had a crush on her. What’s more, his description of the governess is mixed and includes personality traits consistent with a susceptibility to delusions. Douglas calls her, “Young, untried, nervous.” The entire set-up of her employment could also be seen as psychologically perilous as it puts her on a large country estate with only two children and a handful of servants for company. The isolation of Bly might tend to call forth fantasies. The governess indicates that she is a reader of gothic works when she wonders: “Was there a ‘secret’ at Bly – a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement”? The insane relative reference shows that she has read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

The governess often seems to have an air of grandiosity, believing that she can and must “save” the children from ghost-predators. She is convinced that the children have seen the ghosts and are secretly communicating with them but they never admit to viewing them and some readers believe Flora and Miles. Although Mrs. Grose appears to believe the governess, the housekeeper does not see the apparitions either. No one sees them except for the governess.

One stumbling block for the advocates of the story as one about mental illness is the governess’s detailed description of Peter Quint. That description is of an unusual looking man whom Mrs. Grose says is the deceased valet. How could the governess have provided such an accurate description unless she had seen him?

Peter G. Beidler, in an essay called “A Critical History,” discusses several explanations for this if the governess is deluded. One critic has suggested that the governess may have heard a description of Quint when she made inquiries in the nearest town about her new place of employment. Other readings suggest that Mrs. Grose is not the simple and good woman she appears to be. Envious of her questioner’s youth and beauty and sensing her vulnerability, Mrs. Grose deliberately identifies a possible prowler as a ghost to unhinge the governess and would have identified him as such regardless of the description given.

A close look at this crucial identification scene opens up many puzzles. The governess first sees the man in the tower of Bly during the afternoon and from a considerable distance. Later, she sees him on an evening on which it has been raining hard for hours. The man looks at her through a window. It is dark and the heavy rain would have fogged and streaked the window. Yet the governess sees the man in crisp detail. When she describes him to Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper is instantly certain that the governess has seen Peter Quint. One might expect that Mrs. Grose would assume that the dead rest in peace and tell the governess that she saw someone who “looks like” Peter Quint. Instead she tells the governess that she has seen a ghost.

An essay by Stanley Renner entitled, “’Red hair, very red, close-curling’: Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical Bogeymen, and the ‘Ghosts’ in The Turn of the Screw,” suggests that the appearance of Peter Quint is composed of traits associated with villains, particularly sexually promiscuous villains. Renmer points out that there has been a long-standing prejudice associating red hair with evil. The pseudoscience of physiognomy, popular in the Victorian period, tended to link striking eyes with unbridled sexuality, very arched eyebrows with pride and impudence, and a small mouth with cruelty.

I would add that it is not difficult to find Freudian meaning in a man’s “very erect” posture or to see “close-curling hair” as similar to the hair that is found elsewhere on the body.

In an essay entitled “Hanging Fire”: The Primal Scene of Turn of the Screw,” Ned Lukacher appears to take it for granted that the governess is hallucinating. He writes about “the uncanny ghostliness of the governess’s visions and the hysterical mechanisms that inform them” and states that, “critics can never demystify the governess’s mystification.” Lukacher argues that the question posed by this classic novel is: “What is the relation of the phantasy to reality?” He believes that the governess is trying to discover the true stories of Quint and Jesse but that her quest is warped by “too much self-righteousness or prurience.”

Lukacher hypothesizes that many readers are misled because “they assume that simply because the governess is phantasizing, her visions have no relation to reality.” He believes the ultimate challenge for the reader of The Turn of the Screw is to discern the truths for which the governess searches both through her interrogations of Mrs. Grose and of the children as well as through her hallucinations.

Beidler in “A Critical History” writes about critics who believe it is unnecessary to see James’s masterpiece as either a ghost story or a story of madness but believe it is simultaneously both. One of these critics is Juliet McMaster. In her essay “The Full Image of a Repetition in The Turn of the Screw,” McMaster contends that, “there isn’t a right way and a wrong way to interpret the tale, but rather two ways” and that the reader may choose to “hear a ghost story” or “a psychological novel.”

I would add that it might also be possible to avoid an either/or dichotomy by postulating that the ghosts are real and that the governess is disturbed. Her psychological derangement may have somehow called forth the ghosts. The governess’s emotional lead her to inadvertently do Quint and Jessel’s bidding, harming the children she believes that she is helping. Another possible reading is that the ghosts are actually benevolent ghosts (á la the cartoon Caspar the Friendly Ghost). Close to Miles and Flora during life, Quint and Jessel return to watch over them because they know that the twisted perversity of the governess has put the children in danger. Both of these interpretations are also consistent with the governess seeing the ghosts while no one else does.

James wrote several stories dealing with the supernatural prior to penning The Turn of the Screw. In these tales, he undoubtedly developed the skill that would eventually culminate in his unforgettable classic about the governess at Bly. One of his earliest stories in the genre is “The Last of the Valerii,” originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1874. In an introduction to a collection of James stories, writer Michael Swan calls this tale “ultimately nothing more than an exquisite ghost story.” Swan is wrong. “The Last of the Valerii” is not a ghost story at all although it certainly is an eerie tale.

The narrator of “The Last of the Valerii” is an unnamed American expatriate artist (painter) living in Rome, Italy. His goddaughter married Count Valerio, scion of an old aristocratic family. The Count’s estate boasts many statues. Early in the story, our narrator muses on how easy it is for people to endow these inanimate but human-looking objects with qualities of feeling. “The statues used to stand in the perpetual twilight like conscious things, brooding on their long observations,” he writes. “I used to linger near them, half expecting they would speak and tell me their stony secrets.”

The Count has been having excavators dig up areas on his estate, partly at the suggestion of his wife who is curious about what archeological treasures lie buried on the grounds. An statue of an especially dignified looking female is unearthed. She is not completely intact as a hand is separated from the rest of her. An archeological expert pronounces her a statue of the goddess Juno.

Informed of the discovery, the Count tells those assembled that he had just been napping and had dreamt that the excavators would dig up “a wonderful Juno.”

This representation of the ancient goddess fascinates the Count. Soon he seems to actually worship it, reverting to the paganism of his distant ancestors.

Swan makes a big mistake in calling “Valerii” a “ghost story” as it is a goddess rather than a ghost at the center of the story.

Are we meant to believe that the goddess is “there” by the terms of the story? That the Count would have such a prescient dream appears to tease the reader with this tantalizing possibility. However, the overall effect of the story is to suggest that the Count is the victim of his own fantasies. It would seem to lend support to those who see the governess-narrator of The Turn of the Screw as similarly afflicted.

The Turn of the Screw has inspired one of our best-known contemporary serious authors, the brilliant and amazingly prolific Joyce Carol Oates, to pen at least two fascinating short stories. In Oates’ powerfully macabre collection of short stories, Marriages & Infidelities, she published several tales that were directly inspired by classic works and even given their titles: “The Dead,” “Extraordinary Popular Delusions,” “Metamorphoses,” “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” and – yes – “The Turn of the Screw.”

(“The Dead” is a short story by James Joyce; Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds is a non-fiction book by Charles Mackey; “Metamorphoses” is a short story by Franz Kafka; and “The Lady with the Pet Dog” is a short story by Anton Chekhov.)

The Oates version of “The Turn of the Screw” has an unusual structure. The story appears on the page in two different columns, conveying the sense of a screw turning. The two columns give the viewpoints of two characters in a story set in London during Victoria’s Jubilee.

The character who tells his story on the left column, which is probably meant to be read first, is a young American man staying in a London hotel with his sick uncle. He soon finds himself skirting disaster as he is tempted to sexually molest a girl of about thirteen although he does not actually do it. An older Englishman spots the younger man’s near miss with the girl and takes a strong interest in the visitor’s welfare. The pair never meet or interact but become acutely aware of each other. The young American parallels Peter Quint in having red hair as well as a name, Patrick Quarles II, that is similar. The older man seems reminiscent of the governess in his fascination with Quarles, a fascination that the Englishman believes is motivated by benevolence. Each character may remind the reader of the governess, and of the reader himself or herself of the original The Turn of the Screw, when pondering supernatural implications. After receiving a letter from the Englishman, Quarles wonders if “a future Self – a future Patrick Quarles – [is] gazing back upon me, seeing me, from the future.” The older man comes to believe, “He is my living Self: I see that now. Living as I have never lived. . . . I am alive in him and dead, dead in myself.”

The Turn of the Screw again inspired Oates in writing her short story “Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly.” This story appears in her collection, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque. “Accursed Inhabitants” is based on the premise that the ghosts are “real” and tells the story from the viewpoints of Jessel and Quint who have “crossed over.” The couple yearns for contact with Flora and Miles, whom they still adore. In a flashback to the time when Quint and Jessel lived, Oates imagines a possible reason for Miles’s mysterious expulsion from school. The boy’s uncle is talking to Quint and making the point that Miles is most definitely “a boy” rather than “not a boy.” The uncle speaks sourly of how “these boys’ schools” are “notorious” for “Antics. Best not spoken aloud.”

“Accursed Inhabitants” also relates the special frustrations of ghosts trying to make love: “the molecules that constitute their ‘bodies’ shift in density, and become porous. But not inevitably at the same time: so that Jessel, reaching out to touch Quint with a ‘real’ hand, might recoil in horror as her ‘real’ hand passes through his insubstantial body.”

In an afterword to Haunted, Oates comments on the erotic appeal of Peter Quint, writing that he “is the hinge, red-haired, wearing no hat, ‘very erect,’ upon which James’s The Turn of the Screw turns – unless he is the screw itself.”

The Turn of the Screw has frequently inspired filmmakers. Perhaps the best-known and most respected cinematic version of the story is the 1961 motion picture, The Innocents. It was directed by Jack Clayton and has a screenplay by William Archibald and the famous Truman Capote, author of the classic “non-fiction novel,” In Cold Blood. The very title of the movie is richly suggestive, carrying the possibility of innocence lost or corrupted. It also seems to pose the question: Who are the “innocents” in this story?

The Innocents stars Deborah Kerr as the governess, here named “Miss Giddens.” Filmed in black and white, The Innocents embroiders on James’s novel in ways appropriate to the medium of film. The fresh sense of exploration characteristic of childhood is evoked by the use of animals in the movie as when Flora plays with a pet turtle and gazes with wonder at a butterfly. Pet pigeons are often around and lend an air of wholesome warmth. The Innocents can also skillfully suggest a disconcerting darkness and rot underneath as when Miss Giddens finds a decayed statue of a cherub and sees a black bug suddenly crawl out of its mouth.

When Miss Giddens questions housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins) about the deceased Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. Mrs. Grose tells a sordid story of a violent Quint and a lovesick and groveling Miss Jessel. The idea of a passion so strong it survives the grave is planted both in Miss Giddens’s mind and that of the audience.

Young Miles (Martin Stephens) is charming but somewhat mischievous. He also appears oddly seductive and to have a crush on his attractive governess. Even more disconcertingly, the governess seems to, albeit reluctantly and unconsciously, return his ardor. The film suggests the possibility of pedophiliac feelings and that the need to silence them may contribute to the cacophony of seemingly inexplicable and terrifying voices tormenting this respectable Victorian woman.

A made-for-TV film called The Turn of the Screw was first shown on the small screen in 1974. It was directed by Dan Curtis who is probably best known as the executive producer of the famous television gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. The film stars Lynn Redgrave as the governess “Miss Jane Cubberly.” Megs Jenkins is back as Mrs. Gross. Miles (Jasper Jacob) is 14 years old in this film. He also has red hair while Peter Quint (James Laurenson) is dark-haired and bears a passing resemblance to vampire Barnabus Collins (Jonathan Frid), the central character of Dark Shadows.

Miles sometimes seems to be a bad boy indeed for he is depicted as cruel to animals. He also seems to have a yen for the governess although there is less suggestion in this version that her feelings for him may be sexual. While this production sometimes seems to straddle the fence regarding a supernatural or psychological interpretation of the visions, it finally seems to come down on the side of a straight ghost story.

The esteemed British television series Masterpiece Theatre did an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw with the same title that was first broadcast in 1999. Seated in a comfortable, old-fashioned living room, Russell Baker introduces the film. A fire in a fireplace crackles in the background which will undoubtedly remind those viewers who have read the novel of the gathering of people “round the fire” listening to spooky tales. The room in which Baker sits also includes items suggestive of children such as a doll with a lace cap and a blackboard with simple arithmetic problems written on it in chalk. During the course of his introduction, Baker tells of the seed that flowered so magnificently into The Turn of the Screw. Henry James once took tea with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The latter told the writer a story he had heard in which the ghosts of two deceased servants supposedly visited a pair of children.

Directed by Ben Bolt, this Masterpiece Theatre film moves at a slow pace but one that seems stately rather than plodding because of its fine crafting. Filmed primarily in subdued colors, the movie straddles interpretations but leans toward the one of a governess possessed by a kind of hysteria. Always called “Miss,” Jodhi May plays an earnest and pleasant young woman made anxious by her feeling of attraction to her employer (Colin Firth). Firth as The Master is only on for a brief beginning segment but the governess’s feeling for him is underlined when we watch her in his estate touching his clothing with a kind of awe mingled with desire. When she first sees Peter Quint (Jason Salkey), he appears far too solid for a figment of the imagination. However, as the movie progresses, May’s governess seems increasingly disturbed. She quickly assumes a possessive attitude toward the children, calling them “my babies,” and displaying a missionary like zeal in her determination to “save” them from Quint and Jessel. That zeal leads her to a sense of paranoia, thinking the children are in league with the ghosts and thinking the youngsters are subtly persecuting her.

So is The Turn of the Screw a ghost story? Or is it a story about delusions and the horrors that the human mind can create? Is it both at the same time?

Readers of The Hatchet and Borden buffs in general know how fascinating a mystery can be. Wondering is wonderfully profitable to both the intellect and the imagination. The brilliant Henry James must have known this too.

Works cited

Beidler, Peter G., editor, Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, New York, 1992.

Bloom, Harold, Modern Critical Interpretations: Henry James’s Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw, and Other Tales, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, Philadelphia, 1987.

Bloom, Harold, Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, New Haven, Philadelphia, 1987.

James, Henry, Selected Short Stories, Penguin Books, Middlesex, Great Britain, 1978.

James, Henry, The Turn Of The Screw, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1991.

Oates, Joyce Carol, Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, Dutton, New York, NY, 1994.

Oates, Joyce Carol, Marriages and Infidelities, The Vanguard Press, New York, New York, 1972.

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