"The Turn of the Screw"- the perfect ghost story .....

 

"The Turn of the Screw" (1898) By Henry James (1843 - 1916)

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The main story is embedded in another story, i.e. the one about a man who owns the diary of a woman who once lived and worked as a governess on the estate of Bly. This man, Douglas, knew her as his sister's governess when he himself was a young man and after the events of the diary. We, the readers, learn about it when he reads it to a group of friends. 

It is a very intricate story of a highstrung young woman who presumably falls in love with her employer at their first meeting when he hires her as the governess of his young niece and nephew, Flora and Miles. After the death of their parents they have been his responsibility, but he does not exhibit any concern or real interest in them and the governess is not to bother him with news of their lives at his country estate, Bly. When she arrives only eight-year-old Flora is at home as Miles as ten-year-old Miles is away at school. However, two days later he too comes to Bly as he has been expelled for corrupting the other pupils. Both he and his sister looks like angels so the governess cannot imagine that he has done anything wrong. 

When she learns a little of the former governess, Miss Jessel, who is dead, she gets very interested in her and her life. One afternoon, strolling in the park, she sees a stranger in the tower. She decides not to tell anyone in the household about him, but then she also sees him outside the window and has to inform the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, about this incident. To her amazement this down-to-Earth woman declares that the stranger is the dead valet of their employer, Peter Quint, and that he is most probably seeking Miles and Flora who befriended him when he was alive. What she does not say speaks volumes of depravity which is clear from the beginning. Soon after this episode the governess also sees what appears to be the dead lover of Peter Quint, i.e. Miss Jessel who is staring at her and Flora. The child seems to have seen her too, but it shocks the governess that she pretends not to have noticed anything unusual.

From now on everything the children do or say she sees as attempts not to tell about or even acknowledge that they have seen these two "ghosts". What was charming childishness now is seen by her as trickery and lies. She perceives the children as two depraved souls whom she as their governess must save. Her passionate manners frighten the children and they always deny seeing or hearing the "ghosts". So does Mrs. Grose who used to be her support, but slowly turns away from her. This makes her more desperate to find witnesses of what she sees so she leans even more on the children which makes them resent and fear her. One day, after Mrs Grose has heard little Flora, feverish in her bed, speak an awful language she asks her to take her away to her uncle. When she is alone with Miles she grows more and more hysterical in her ways because she is set on "saving" him. All this is fatal for the boy who dies in her arms shouting: "Peter Quint - you devil!" The governess sees this as the proof that he saw the apparition of the valet and that she has saved him. Actually, the remark may also be seen as an indication that he did not see what she expected and that he finds her to be an evil-minded pestilence.

This story has its own logic and it is very catchy, so to speak. Because of the literary technique which he mastered, the so-called "point-of-view" where the ongoing is filtered through the consciousness of a few characters, it becomes a most entertaining short story as this assures the logic of the story. Everything that the governess presumably sees is realistic, only she gives it a metaphysical reading. Is it really two depraved ghosts that she sees? Nobody else seems to see them, except maybe the children.

The psychology of it is the frustrations the very young governess feels at being forced to live in the countryside and her immense youth. After all, she is not much more than 20 years old, and she is infatuated with her employer who lives the life she may long for. If, on the other hand, we are to accept the idea of her meeting with depraved ghosts out to snatch the souls of those children whom they already have ruined, i.e. made conscious of sex and sexuality. In that respect it is an interesting story of a form of pedophilia.