Sexual Repression in Turn of the Screw Essay

Henry James's Turn of the Screw was written in a time when open sexuality was looked down upon. On the surface, the story is simply about a governess taking care of two children who are haunted by two ghosts. However, the subtext of the story is about the governess focusing on the children's innocence, and the governess trying to find her own sexual identity. Priscilla L. Walton wrote a gender criticism themed essay about the Turn of the Screw, which retells certain parts of the story and touches on the significance they provide for the sexually explicit theme. Walton's essay is accurate because James purposely put an undertone of sexuality and identity confusion in the Turn of the Screw.

Readers might wonder with whom she was in love. Then the Master told the Governess about the previous governess and her death (James 296). The readers probably want to know the reason of the previous governess' death. When the Master talked about the duties of the Governess, he required her not to contact him in any way (James 297). We do not know why he made that requirement. As the story continues, the readers have many more unsolved questions such as why Miles was dismissed from school, why the Governess could describe Peter Quint exactly though she never meet him, and why the Governess thought that ghosts wanted to catch the two children. Ned Lukacher thinks that "[the way James] has said something also becomes a way of not having said something else" (132). For instance, James revealed some hints regarding the reason Miles was dismissed. We know that "[Miles]'s an injury to the others" (304) and Mrs. Grose thought Miles was "no boy for [her]" (305). However, these hints do not help the readers to completely understand why Miles was sent away from his school. Instead, more questions are posed, such as how such a ten-year-old boy could injure other students and why Mrs. Grose thought about Miles that way. The readers can not easily find the specific and reasonable answers in the story, so they have to guess the answers based on their own

Grose. They discover that Flora has disappeared while Miles plays the piano. They finally spot Flora on the far side of the Sea of Azof. When they begin their journey back to the house with Flora, the governess sees the ghost of Miss Jessel. She points the ghost out to Mrs. Grose, but she sees nothing. Mrs. Grose says,”She isn’t there, little lady, and nobody’s there—and you never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel—-when poor Miss Jessel’s dead and buried?” (James 71). The governess is the only one that sees Miss Jessel for a second time. Mrs. Grose now knows that the no ghosts actually exist, and the governess is truly insane. The governess imagines all of the crazy things going on at Bly.

As her employer, the uncle will be unsatisfied with the children’s care and the governess will be left without a job. Flora leaves Bly with Mrs. Grose because she finds the governess to be “cruel”. Flora begs for Mrs. Grose to “take [her] away from [the governess]” (James 169). The governess believes that Flora had been influenced by Jessel, but whether the children were possessed is unclear. Before “his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped,” Miles says to the governess, “Peter Quint – you devil” (James 207). Miles slips away from the governess and she is left in isolation. Miles could be speaking to the governess as though she is the “devil” or he could be referencing to Peter Quint; James never, openly, tells the reader. Only the governess saw the ghosts, so this lead to the other characters to believe the governess is paranoid. When the governess is speaking of the ghosts to Mrs. Grose, Mrs.Grose does not show that she believes the governess’s conspiracy theories in chapter twenty-one. The governess’s perception of the children is negative which leads to her treating them negatively, and the children and Mrs. Grose leave to escape the governess’s torment. This allows the governess to be left in

For as long as media has been around, women have been sexualized in order to sell products. It’s a known fact by brands and consumers alike: sex sells. No one can deny this fact, it’s everywhere. Turn on your radio, you’ll hear songs describing women as nothing more than pieces of meat, objects to look at. Turn on your televison and you’ll see advertisements for inherentlyunsexual products like beer or a burger, but it will accompanied by a half naked woman. Walk into any convenience store, and you will find half a dozen magazine with airbrushed models in bikinis, some of these models so young that they cannot even drive. At what age does it become okay to start sexualizing women, or is it never okay? Some would say the age of legality, which is eighteen, but young Hollywood starlets such as Kylie Jenner and Ariel Winter were victims of the media’s obsession with sexualization before they even turned sixteen. It is an understatement to say that the media has gone too far in many instances. It’s as if as soon as girls reach the age of puberty, they fair game to the media as objects of scrutiny and sexualization. It has gone from bad to worse. The way the media sexualizes women, especially famous teenage girls, is wrong and has

No sleep could pass the governess's eyes without continually casting thought to the mere beauty of the child she had met only days earlier. The meeting with the young master Miles only stringed the governess's infatuation with the physical features of the young children. After receiving by letter that Miles was expelled from school, the governess herself found malcontent for the boy, but her first glance at the boy on meeting him cast away all previous distaste.

Miles and the Governess also resemble extremely ambiguous behavior. The scene of the governess’s questioning due to Mile’s appearance outside in the middle of the night seems elliptical. His kiss that the

The change in society’s views on sexuality during the 1960s created a moral shift in which people and cultural values shifted away from many traditional biblical ethics. With inspiration from African American and their movements in civil rights, many young women sought to achieve gender equality with males despite the society’s cookie-cutter view of women as housewives in the 1950s. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique as an outlash against the view of the traditional American housewife. Friedan took inspiration from Holocaust survivor Bruno Bettelheim’s analysis of the psychological abuse imposed by the Germans on their prisoners and compared the average suburban home to “comfortable concentration camps” (Wolfe). Alan

In The Turn of the Screw, Henry James employs class divisions through clothing, representing how the characters are inclined to act through their degree of conformity to societal expectations. First published in 1898, by Collier’s Weekly, a magazine company that had a reputation of reporting on integral societal events and topics people considered important to their lives, the magazine commissioned the help of famous writers to write on pressing historical events of the time (Elduff). It grew to be one of the most widely read magazines in the United States by 1892, which allowed James to write a novella that hit on concerns regarding social mobility on a larger scale platform. Since the Victorian era was marked by prosperity and innovations in technology, incomes rose leading to the growing of the middle class. This had a drastic impact on the culture and the elites who feared the middle class movement for “they had many reasons for resenting their practical stigmatization as second class citizens” (Best 238). James highlights this concern through pointing out clothing which denotes which class a characters associated with and coupling this with immoral actions of the times.

It is also clear she has an infatuation for someone she can’t have. She herself describes her as “rather easily carried away (17)” and her mention of “a mystery of Udolpho (28)” shows she has a history of reading gothic novels, not unlike Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey who tries to fuel every situation she is in with a gothic plot- this could be a stem of her potential creation of these ghosts. All of these things take away from the image we should have of the narrator as someone whose side we are on, who’s account we have no reason to question. The overwhelming situation the governess is in makes it easy for us to imagine that these ghosts are something of a damaged subconscious and that what is said by her, shouldn’t be taken for what is actually the

Every time the governess is conflicted, her mind turns and is unstable. Even before Miles arrives at Bly, the governess questions his demeanor and is paranoid about his reason for dismissal from school. She assumes that he has done something evil and "that he 's an injury to others." (page 10). Mrs. Grose tries to persuade her that he wouldn 't be that way. However, she is yet unsure of Miles ' character and further discusses him with Mrs. Grose. The governess is still concerned about Miles ' wrongful ways, but when questioned if she 's afraid of him, she "gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule." (page 12). It is her paranoia that opens the door for negative thoughts and images to enter her mind.

As ‘The Turn of the Screw’ was written in the 19th century when most of his family were famous and praised for their study of the mind and investigations into spirit phenomena, this could have inspired Henry to write the story. The fact that his older brother was famous and successful man when it came to psychology and physiology may have contributed to sibling rivalry. Henry had written novels that hadn’t sold well and had written plays that were far too intellectual for many of the general public to even watch. Writing a psychological ghost story in a spirit-obsessed era when his family were renowned for their knowledge seems to be best explanation as to why the novella was written.

Throughout history, definitions of sexuality within a culture are created and then changed time after time. During these changes, we have seen the impact and power one individual or group can have over others. In the Late Nineteenth Century into the Early Twentieth Century, we see multiple groups of people and or authorities taking control over the idea of sex and how they believe society is being impacted by sex. At this point in time, society had groups of people who believed they had the power to control how society as whole viewed and acted upon sex. Those particular groups and ideas changed many lives and the overall definition of sexuality within that culture.

Tearoom Trade: the use of a public restroom as a place where men of all varieties go to engage in homosexual activity. By engaging in such activity they must accept costs and risks of this behaviour, however will receive a significant reward. As explained in Humphreys book, men involved in the tearoom game, use these facilities because of the social process that is structured to allow him to have a sexual encounter without any outside personal involvement with other participants. With the many rules in Tearooms, men find them much more attractive as it provides a certain protection against his social image, as this type of behaviour can be seen as very inappropriate and rather illegal. The Tearoom Trade as a sexual deviant activity.

The Victorian Age's morality also condemned any kind of sexual reference in literature. Victorian critics demanded from "serious" literature a didactic content and respect to the Victorian conventions which established that sex