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The Subconscious Desires And Illusions In Henry James Turn Of The Screw

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The Subconscious Desires and Illusions In the novella, Turn of the Screw, Henry James style of rendering the story through the Governess’s perspective insinuates the events at Bly mansion to be ambiguous. In the beginning, the female protagonist becomes a governess to acquire money although, during her stay she encounters two ghosts. The Governess believes these ghosts are of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel after her conservation with Mrs. Grose about the past of Bly mansion. She insists they are real conversely, only the Governess perceives these “ghosts”. James incorporates female gothic” conventions by his abstract explanation of the supernatural occurrences throughout the storyline. Punter and Byron definition of a female gothic plot is, “the
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According to Mrs. Grose, one of the maids who worked at Bly, the Governess described the ghosts as being Miss Jessel and Peter Quint. Miss Jessel was the former Governess and Peter Quint was a part of the help at Bly. Mrs. Grose also saw the Governess slip quickly away into insanity caused by the ghosts, and Mrs. Grose and the children wanted to escape from the Governess by leaving Bly household. There are several indicators that the children and Mrs. Grose wanted to escape from the Governess as a result of her mental instability and possibly even the ghosts. Miles says “Then when am I going back(to school)?”

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In The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, the governess worked at Bly and was in charge of caring for two children, Miles and Flora. While at Bly, she had multiple encounters with two ghosts, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. After seeing Quint and Miss Jessel multiple times and discussing them with Mrs. Grose, the governess was set on the idea that they are haunting Bly in order to take over the souls of the children. She felt that it was her job as their governess to protect them at all costs. This caused her to have to face the ghosts, instead of being able to ignore them and pretend they are not there.

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The novel, Turn of the Screw, by Henry James takes place in England and is told from the point of view of the Governess, whose sanity is questionable. The Governess is insane because throughout the novel, she is the only one who sees the ghosts, she is in love with the master, and she allows her desire to protect the children to drive her to insanity. First, the Governess is insane because she is the only character in the novel to ever have seen the ghosts. Early in the novel, the Governess claims she sees the ghost of Peter Quint, and immediately tells Mrs. Grose.

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1165 Words | 5 Pages

The governess is insane because she is the only person at Bly to witness the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. During her employment, the Governess claims to experience several ghostly interactions, however no one else could relate to her sightings. For example, after claiming to see two ghosts, the Governess confides in Mrs. Grose and later says “she herself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house but the governess was in the governess’s plight,” (James 24). Mrs. Grose is eliminated as a witness and cannot argue if the paranormal activity at Bly was real. Since no one can support the governess’s claims, then presumably, they were hallucinated by

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The term gothic novel refers to stories that combine romanticism and horror. Common elements include supernatural events, mysterious places, and strange happenings. The Veldt also touched on overdependence of technology. Some famous novels include Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula.

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The book Rebecca by Daphne du Marier is the epitome of the Gothic literary genre because it involves a witch-like character, a Gothic hero, and it is set

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The governess progressively believes in things around her that are pseudo and assumed. Nobody else at Bly can see the ghosts that she claims even when the children tried to believe her, they just could not see the ghosts she could see. Things slowly but surely fell apart at Bly, and it seemed to start right when the governess made assumptions about the ghosts she had met. The governess had done many things at Bly, but proving her insanity is something she could not

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Gothic Literature is a genre that was popular between 18th to 19th centuries in North Germany. It is always being associated with Dark Romanticism which the emphasize was more on nature, terror and death, horror and many more. It involves dark and gloomy setting and also unexplainable things that are beyond human senses and reason such as ghosts and monsters. The main characters, on the other hand, are always ineffectual which they do not give much effect on the story plot. This can be seen through Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which can be considered as American gothic work in terms of its description of setting, the involvement of supernatural element in the story and also the characteristics of the main character.

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In conclusion, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James gives the reader the sense of knowing about different questionable characters such as the governess. Though, both the novella and the film adaption The Innocents leaves the reader with a lot of missing details. The reader might have multiple interpretations while reading it, but the film adaption The Innocents 1961 helps the audience see thinks more clearly living the spot for interpretation. The reader was able to know that she was given the job to take care of Miles and Flora, and don’t really know many backgrounds about her.

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Many times, the gothic genre will present characters

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As a result many gothic subtitles appear, and it is true to regard Rebecca as ‘detective mystery’ since it includes a murder case. 25 4.3.2 The Setting and Weather The most eminent gothic elements revolve around the setting, Manderley. The setting in this story has a major contribution to the tone and mood of gothic. Rebecca is a classical- modern gothic literature.

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Ambiguity is the characteristic of a word, phrase, or book that can be understood in multiple ways. Henry James, during the middle part of his career, incorporated this type of vagueness into his writing. One of James's most debatable use of ambiguity was a ghost story. In the novella The Turn of the Screw, Henry James uses conflict, perspective, and ambiguity to create a mystery, with his own twist, for the reader to solve and leave them guessing. James, through conflicts involving the children and possible ghosts, limited point of view, and the overall ambiguity, forces the reader to solve mysteries throughout the book without giving the answers at the end.

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A classic element of gothic fiction typically involves a threatening atmosphere and it is very important that this is not just part of the background, but forms a crucial part

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To my surprise, people living in the time when the book first was published, were fascinated by ghost stories (Beidler 184). With many ghost cases recorded during that time, I believe that James merely produced The Turn of the Screw as another fictitious testimony of the trending topic of ghost phenomena that was roaming around town. In the edited version of the book, James biographical background is discussed which states that he struggled financially because “his books were not selling well” (Beidler 13). For this reason, I made a possible connection concerning one of the reasons James decided to write about ghosts; needless to say, his desire to make a successful book that engaged his audience. The seriousness about the belief in ghost influenced my understanding of the story because those that believed that there “is no such thing as ghosts” were looked as irrational (Beidler 195).

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The theme in this narrative is supported by various gothic elements, such as the dim and derry setting and the supernatural aspect of this piece of literature. The gothic allusions’ a dark and gloomy setting and supernatural

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