The Turn of the Screw

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The Turn of the Screw

• By Henry James

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• Henry James, O.M. (April 15, 1843) February 28,
  1916), son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother
  of the philosopher and psychologist William James
  and diarist Alice James, was an American-born
  British author. He is one of the founders and
  leaders of a school of realism in fiction the
  fine art of his writing has led many academics to
  consider him the greatest master of the novel and
  novella form. He spent much of his life in
  England and became a British subject shortly
  before his death. He is primarily known for a
  series of major novels in which he portrayed the
  encounter of America with Europe. His plots
  centered on personal relationships, the proper
  exercise of power in such relationships, and
  other moral questions. His method of writing from
  the point of view of a character within a tale
  allowed him to explore the phenomena of
  consciousness and perception, and his style in
  later works has been compared to impressionist
  painting.
• James insisted that writers in Great Britain and
  America should be allowed the greatest freedom
  possible in presenting their view of the world,
  as French authors were. His imaginative use of
  point of view, interior monologue and unreliable
  narrators in his own novels and tales brought a
  new depth and interest to realistic fiction, and
  foreshadowed the modernist work of the twentieth
  century. An extraordinarily productive writer, in
  addition to his voluminous works of fiction he
  published articles and books of travel writing,
  biography, autobiography, and criticism, and
  wrote plays, some of which were performed during
  his lifetime with moderate success. His
  theatrical work is thought to have profoundly
  influenced his later novels and tales.

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What is parenthetical frame?
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Point of View

• What is point of view?
• How important is it in telling a story? In
  determining its validity?
• Is the narrator reliable?
• Is the governess insane or
• trustworthy?

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Tone

• The governess narrates with an attitude of
  intimate confidentiality that is biased and
  possibly unreliable.
• What are the consequences or advantages to using
  this tone? First person? Past Tense?

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Ambiguity

• The end, in true modernist fashion, is
  deliberately vague.
• What is going on?
• Which elements
• contribute to the
• confusion?

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Gothic

• Of or relating to a style of fiction that
  emphasizes the grotesque, mysterious, and
  desolate.

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Novella

• A short prose tale often characterized by moral
  teaching or satire a short novel.
• The Turn of the Screw first appeared in Colliers
  Weekly in twelve installments between January and
  April 1898.

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• Not until after World War I did anyone question
  the reliability of the governess as a narrator.
  With the publication of a 1934 essay by the
  influential Edmund Wilson, a revised view of the
  story began to gain currency.
• Wilsons Freudian interpretation, that the
  governess is a sexually repressed hysteric and
  the ghosts mere figments of her overly excitable
  imagination, echoed what other critics like Henry
  Beers, Harold Goddard, and Edna Kenton had
  previously suggested in the 1920s.
• Throughout the course of his life, Wilson
  continued to revise and rethink his
  interpretation of The Turn of the Screw, but all
  criticism since has had to confront the central
  ambiguity in the narrative.

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• Is the governess a hopeless neurotic who
  hallucinates the figures of Peter Quint and Miss
  Jessel, or is she a plucky young woman battling
  to save her charges from damnation?
• Adherents of both views abound, though the former
  take on the story is rarer.
• Other critics maintain that the beauty and terror
  of the tale reside in its utter ambiguity,
  arguing that both interpretations are possible
  and indeed necessary to make The Turn of the
  Screw the tour de force that it is.

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• What is the purpose of ambiguity?
• What is the meaning of the work as a whole?
• What role does punctuation play?