Summary Of The Turn Of The Screw And The Handmaid's Tale

The article on the fantasy within the novella reveals the debate of the governess’s mental state during her time with the children. The debacle that can be depicted within the work can be surrounded through the idea that her fantasies represent the point in which she is at her most anxious. When her anxiety reaches a certain peak, the ghost then appears. This can especially be seen just before the first sighting, when she says, “I was giving pleasure-if he ever thought of it! - to the person to whose pressure I had yielded” (38). The pressure she is experiencing allows her mental state to bring out the fantasy aspect of the apparition. Using Zacharias’s article, the audience can see the fantasy is a mechanism that is used by the governess and

The Handmaid's Tale, a film based on Margaret Atwood’s book depicts a dystopia, where pollution and radiation have rendered innumerable women sterile, and the birthrates of North America have plummeted to dangerously low levels. To make matters worse, the nation’s plummeting birth rates are blamed on its women. The United States, now renamed the Republic of Gilead, retains power the use of piousness, purges, and violence. A Puritan theocracy, the Republic of Gilead, with its religious trappings and rigid class, gender, and racial castes is built around the singular desire to control reproduction. Despite this, the republic is inhabited by characters who would not seem out of place in today's society. They plant flowers in the yard, live in suburban houses, drink whiskey in the den and follow a far off a war on the television. The film leaves the conditions of the war and the society vague, but this is not a political tale, like Fahrenheit 451, but rather a feminist one. As such, the film, isolates, exaggerates and dramatizes the systems in which women are the 'handmaidens' of today's society in general and men in particular.

Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is one of the more disputed texts in all of literature, as it is famously known as an ambiguous text. The primary uncertain element of is whether there are ghosts scaring the governess and the children, or whether the governess is actually going insane. Even though a certain portion of the text is ambiguous, there are other portions of the text that are much more black and white. For example, the relationships in this novella are nothing close to normal. There are three key relationships in The Turn of the Screw: the Governess and Mrs. Grose, the Governess and Miles, and the governess and Flora. All of these relationships show how the governess’s maternal instinct influences her interactions and

In the governess's insane pseudo-reality and through her chilling behavior, she managed to bring downfall to Flora and Miles, the children of Bly. With compulsively obsessive actions, irrational assumptions, and demented hallucinations, the governess perceived ghosts bearing evil intentions were attempting to corrupt and destroy the children she had taken the role of care for. In reality, the governess herself brought tragedy to the children through her own selfishness and insanity.

Miles represents a socially and sexually corrupt figure by the ghost of Peter Quint who violated status on two occasions. His being “too free” with Miles leads to controversy as well as his love affair with the previous governess. The governess’s knowledge on the history behind Quint and Miles changes drastically as she learns more information to discover truth. Her rejection of the idea that Miles could be “bad” transforms into an obsession noting his every action in hopes to reveal that the children are being possessed by ghosts. Despite the connotation of Quint’s clash of class boundaries, the text also suggests the potential homosexual nature of his association with Miles. Therefore, the ghost of Quint stands for everything the Governess is afraid of, and his sense of menace dictates Miles living through his identity.

No doubt, the issue of equal rights for women (or lack thereof) has been a pervasive problem in our own society, a fact which now tends to be overlooked by virtue of the current improved status of women both socially and economically. Similar to our society, the Handmaid’s Tale portrays women’s rights as an ongoing serious problem that even predates the inception of Gilead. The struggle for equality can be observed by the actions of a few women before Gilead, including Offred’s Mother, who was a stout feminist activist, and Moira, who was often enraged by the inequality of the sexes. Notwithstanding the actions of a few women, however, and while the majority of women in the Handmaid’s Tale, like Offred, acknowledged that the status of women was still inferior, the majority remained fiercely content and violently apathetic, in large measure because of the relative improved condition of some like the Handmaid Offred. Offered is perhaps the most striking. Not only was Offred provided ample opportunity to support feminism and equality, but was also surrounded by feminists such as her mother and Moira, and despite all (or perhaps because of) she remained apathetic. To be sure, some actions perpetrated by Moira and Offred’s mother could be considered misguided at best and counterproductive at worst. For example, Moira’s unreasonable stance on men are illustrative: “If Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave

The fear of Peter Quint had caused his heart to stop. He was dead, and the ghosts had gotten to him. The governess’ worst fear had com to life, no matter what she did she could not prevent what had occurred.She tried her best, but didn’t come through for Miles. She let the poor boy down, and it cost him, his life. The governess’ greatest mission was now a major failure. She promised herself that she would protect both of the children at all cost, but she could not keep keep her promise, as Miles fell to the hands of the apparition of Peter Quint.

After her encounters with the ghosts, the myth enters phase three, “the sunset, autumn, and death phase” (Frye,483). Her rosy perception is lost. She begins to have fears. This point occurs around the time the governess sees a female ghost appear across the lake, and she is certain that Flora could see the ghost, but chose to say nothing. The governess questions her “summer” like reality, and wonders if Miles also has been consorting with the ghosts. She realizes, “I don’t save or shield them!…They’re lost!”(James,57) She now begins to probe Mile’s character and his expulsion from school. Eventually she realizes that Miles may be working against her and says, “The trick’s played…they’ve successfully worked their plan.”(James,94) Miles and his sister would fit into Frye’s category of a phase three subordinate character, that of a traitor.

First, the governess is the only one in the story who admits to seeing the ghosts. Second, the governess seemed to become very suspicious

The governess can be perceived as morally upstanding hero. Her love for the children motivates her need to protect them.. It is logical to perceive the governess as overly concerned mother figure of two children who unfortunately finds herself in a losing battle between evil ghost and deceptive children. After the governess realizes that Flora can see the ghost, she becomes concerned as to what the ghost are saying to them.

Using that threat for her benefit, she granted herself the mission of salvation, “convinced of her own power to preserve them untainted”, even if her mission was only a pretense to hamper them from growing up. Therefore, her sanity is again questioned. Moreover, “her omission of the fact that the demons have appeared inside the house” reveals that she only cares about Miles and Flora and not about Mrs Grose nor Luke.

The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of a future dystopia where individuals use power from their position in society to manipulate others. The Commander, a high-up in Gilead’s hierarchy, initiates a forbidden, though at first non-sexual, affair with his Handmaid and uses his power to direct the relationship to sex. While Handmaid Offred expresses her surprise at the affair’s seeming lack of sexuality, author Margaret Atwood uses nuanced figurative language to reveal the underlying sexual and manipulative nature of the Commander’s desires. Atwood compares positional and coercive power to warfare and animal confrontations and emphasizes reward power with sexualized language. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood uses figurative language to argue that in a society without sex, individuals will manipulate power they have to obtain it.

Published in 1985, Margaret Atwood’s satirical novel The Handmaid’s Tale explores the dystopian world of Gilead through the eyes of Offred, a handmaid. As Offred acclimates to her role as handmaid, she discusses the political developments that led to her current circumstances, and the path that she was forced through as a result. Formerly known as the United States of America, Gilead was established after a massacre of the president and Congress, when a Christian fundamentalist group seized power. Gilead, transformed into a theocracy built on ideals of patriarchy, totalitarianism, and censorship, and the fundamentalist regime stripped rights from women by forbidding them to read and forcing them into traditional roles. Additionally, due

The critics from psychanalytic perspective claim that the existence of ghosts is the governess’s hysterical delusion. The ghost is the projection of governess's own sexual hysteria, which resulted from the conflict between native romantic impulses and idealistic innocence required by Victorian society (Renner). The inexperienced governess encounters the "handsome," "bold," young gentleman with "charming ways with women" (James, 4) and she

The very setting of the fireside at which Griffin's guests swap stories establishes an atmosphere with which many of us are familiar. We can all relate to sitting around a fire exchanging ghost stories. By employing this particular narrative frame James encourages the reader to abandon their scepticism and give themselves over to a belief in the ghosts. The reader shares in the eagerness of the guests to be frightened; to be delighted by horror. Upon seeing Douglas' distress at the thought of the tale he must tell, and its "dreadful - dreadfulness", one of the female guests actually cries, "Oh how delicious!"5