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The Turn Of The Screw By Henry James: A Literary Analysis

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Having barely any previous knowledge about the role of a governess to a family, I assumed the only duty of a governess was to educate children. In other words, they were hired to homeschool children. I also believed that they had a set schedule on when to arrive and when to go home. It wasn’t until reading The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, that I became aware of the role governesses take on with children. In comparison, a governess in the late nineteenth century is similar to a nanny in our time; a caretaker who spends quality time with children. Taking this into consideration, after having read the section “The Victorian Governess in Fact” in the book, I was able to reevaluate the governess’s character in the story. It is stated, that …show more content…

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). Learning about the popularity of ghost tales in the late nineteenth century, I believe James had the intentions to convince his readers that the story is in fact about spooky ghosts and not a governess who is

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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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By looking at the novel through a psychoanalysis lens, the reader can see that the ghosts were just hallucinations and the reader finds Governess reasons for these hallucinations. The novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James first starts off with a group of people telling ghost stories. The unknown narrator describes the conversation that he has with a guy named Douglas who claims to have a scary ghost story that doesn’t just haunt one child but two. Douglas then says it’s his sister’s Governess’ manuscript and that it is suppose to be a real account.

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The protagonist from “The Turn of the Screw”, is perceived to be despearate as she tries to achieve her dream but her personal pride leads her to an unstable condition. The author depicts the Governess believing that to attain her goal of gaining attentionby her employer, she must be a hero. Therefore, she invents lies about seeing her predessors haunting her pupils. Nonetheless, the more times James makes the Governess mention the ghosts the more she believes they are real and they, “want to get them (the children)” (82). The Governess is blinded by making it appear she sees the ghosts that she looses herself in her own lies leading her to an unstable condition of not knowing what is real or not.

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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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The Turn of the Screw beings at a party where ghost stories are told and this young man, Douglas, tells the real life about the Governess who is hired to look out for this handsome/odd man's nephew and niece. When the Governess arrives to Bly she receives a note from the headmaster of Miles school saying he is expelled but the Governess doesn’t understand because they are very sweet. One evening, the Governess goes in the garden and see’s a man in the tower but he vanishes quickly. Later that evening she sees the man again looking through the dining room, when she tells Mrs. Grose, she says that the man she said was Peter Quint and he is looking for Miles but he is dead.

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One reason the man may have been a ghost is when he said, “We’ve all been dead” (Oates). The man had said this when the mom apologized for asking about his mother who had passed. Nobody just says that they have been dead, which hints to the fact that he may be a ghost. When the man walked up the stairs, this is how the family described it, “It was as if a force of nature, benign at the outset, now controllable, had swept its way into their house!” (Oates).

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The narrative point of view in The turn of the Screw is 1st Person, but there are 2 first person narratives, one is in the prologue(who is unknown) and the other takes over the rest of the novel(The Governess).This affects the novel because the first narrator describes the scene in an old house where some houseguests are telling ghost stories. He then introduces a guest, Douglas, who tells the others about the governess, so the first narrative gives us all the context and background information to clearly understand the novel. The rest of the tale is Douglas's reading of the governess's story. The governess perspective affects the novel because now the information we are given is very limited, for example, if the novel was narrated in 3rd

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“The turn of a screw” Is a short story where a group of visitors are gathered discussing a possible rumor of a ghost appearing to a young, innocent child. A man named Douglas knows of a story about something along the line. Everyone wants to hear his story, but Douglas explains that he has to send for a manuscript. The story he wants to tell was once said by a governess who has been dead for about twenty years. She was once his sister's governess.

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The most common answer to the question has always been that the ghost is the spirit of the dead king Hamlet, returning to comfort his grieving young son left inconsolable by his loss and to provide answers for

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