Jordan McGuire
Mrs. Cline
AP English
March 5th, 2015
The Turn of the Screw Insanity at its Finest
The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, is a ghost story set in victorian England at the estate of Bly. The main character is the governess who accepts a job from a wealthy bachelor to be oversee his niece and nephew at the estate. The governess wandering in the courtyard one night while fantasizing about meeting someone sees a man atop a tower. She later describes this man to Mrs. Grose and she identifies the description as Mr. Quint, the deceased valet at the estate of Bly. The governess later sees a woman across the lake that she suspects to be Miss Jessel, the former governess. The governess discovers that both have died and believes
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They are only figments of her imagination that she hallucinates as she is sexual repressed. There is evidence to believe the ghosts are real, but they are easily rebutted if the text is carefully examined. The governess only wanted to be a heroine so she could have her chance with her employer and surpass Victorian standards. However, all she did was lie to an old lady, drove a small child insane, and murdered another in her quest to win the employer’s love.
Works Cited
Fagin, Nathan Bryllion. “Another Reading of The Turn of the Screw.” Modern Language Notes, LVI (1941): 154-159.Print.
Goddard, Harold C. “A Pre-Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw.” The Turn of the Screw, A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren. New York: Norton, 2010. 161-168.Print.
Guerin, Wilfred L., [et al]. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 3rd ed. New York:Oxford University Press, 1992 142-145.Print.
James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw & Daisy Miller. New York:The Macmillian Company, 1973. Print.
Lustig, T. J. “Henry James and the Ghostly” The Turn of the Screw, A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren. New York: Norton, 2010. 253-260.Print.
Silver, Jon. “A Note on the Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw.” American Literature, XXIX (May 1957)
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