Henry James and British Colonialism in

The Turn of the Screw (1898)*
Kazuhiro KITAOKA
ABSTRACTIn this essay, I consider Henry James’s Turn of the Screw as a class allegory, andargue that the readers can reach to the center of the story’s reflections on social
hierarchy.

By considering James’s reference to India, I argue that by reading

Turn of the Screw in the light of materialist and historical critique, we can findechoes of the British Empire resonating in the text, and insist that it is possible toread aspects of the novel as alluding to the existence of a British colonialist
system.

In Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw,

can find echoes of the British Empire

almost all the relationships between theresonating in the text, and insist that it isgoverness and the Master in London, andpossible to read aspects of the novel as

between the governess and Mrs. Grose, or

alluding to the existence of a British

even between the governess and the twocolonialist system.

children, incorporate the ‘unequal’ social
class hierarchy prevalent in the nineteenth

The aspects of the colonization of India

century. Bruce Robbins is right to say thatcan be represented in the story by the“The hierarchical microcosm that Jamesdescription of the house and its conditions atdisplays in the The Turn of the Screw isBly. The house, in which two children, thetherefore full of socially produced gaps,governess, and other servants live together, islapses, ambiguities” (Robbins 337).

the master’s country home, an old family

In thisessay, therefore, I will suggest that, byplace in Essex, called Bly (27).

There arereading James’s Turn of the Screw in themany servants in the house, namely, aslight of materialist and historical critique, weJames puts it, “a cook, a housemaid, adairywoman, an old pony, and old groom and香川高等専門学校高松キャンパス一般教育科

old33

gardener,alllikewisethoroughly香川高等専門学校研究紀要 1(2010)

respectable” (28).

Beidler 15).

As we can see from theorder of humans and animals, “none of these

The position of the governess, however, wasservants”, as Robbins comments, “countsambiguous, since, although there was amore than an animal. Servants, like ghosts,

certainare something less than human beings”

governesses, she was somehow “at the helm”(Robbins 336). As is well known, this was aof the old house, Bly, and she was in supremecommon attitude in the Victorian era.

Inauthorityi）. The master, on the other hand,

Practical Education, originally published atdoes nothing but pay money to her, as well as,

the end of the eighteenth century, a timepossibly, to the other servants through hiswhen governesses generally had not beensolicitor, and asks her to take the whole thing

considered as servants, the negative effects ofover and let him alone (28). At this point,

the language and sexual vices of servants

the location in which the master lives andwere made clear.

from which he exercises his dominant

For instance, Mariadegreeprejudice

over

those

towardEdgeworth, who was a well known novelist in

economic

this century, writes “Children’s rooms should

including the governess – the conditions of all

not be passage rooms for servants; they

servants are the same; if he or she does

should … be so situated, that servants cannot

trouble the master, they have to say, in Mrs.

easily have access to them, and cannot on any

Grose’s words, “I would leave, on the spot,

pretense of business get in the habit ofboth him and you” (78) – is of significancefrequenting them” (Edgeworth 125).

here.

This

powerofservants,

The servant/master relationship can

image of servants had not disappeared in thebe understood as a metaphor for thenineteenth century; rather, James makes use

colonization of India, which was ruled fromofBritain.

thisconventional

prejudiceservants, creating ‘Ghosts’.
notebook,which

wastoward

interrelationship between the two countries.

In James’swrittenin

Furthermore, it expresses theAs one critic says:

1895

according to his friend’s ghost story – thiswas the original memo on which the story of…it is not just that the personnel whoThe Turn of the Screw was mostly based –hegoverned Indian were British, but thewrites, “The servants, wicked and depraved,

projects of state building in both

corrupt and deprave the children”(qtd. incountries

34–

documentation,

Kazuhiro KITAOKA：Henry James and British Colonialism in The Turn of the Screw (1898)*

legitimation,

classification,that tells them precious information: it is aandbounding …often reflected theories,thing.

experiences, and practices worked out

with James’s depiction of the servants.

originally in India and then applied in

They are all ‘ponies’ as regards knowledge.

Great Britain, as well as vice versa”

This is why the governess “laid it (a letter) on(Cohn 3-4).

the great hall-table” (98), a letter which canThis perspective correlates clearlybe read only by the governess and theAround this era, the ultimate control ofchildren, who have access to knowledge.

India was exercised from London by aJames depicts the servants, as do other

Secretary of State for India. Note also thatnovelists in this era, in such a way that therelocal knowledge of India was provided by theiscouncil of India, which was also located inupper-class, though the position of theLondon (Parry 11). In Bly too, knowledge isgoverness is arguable, and the servants. It

significant,claims,is not for nothing that the governess speaks“Throughout James’s tale, knowledge isof “several of the members of the household,power” (Martin 401-7). For instance, in theof the half-dozen maids and men who werescene in which the governess passes thestill of our small colony” (51, my emphasis).

letter she received from the master to Mrs.

Thus, the role of the governess in Bly seems

Grose, the governess narrates;

to correspond to the role of the British

asRobert

Martinanunmistakablegap

betweenthegovernment officials who went India and...then I judged best simply to hand

worked there, and, though she might be

her my document – which …had theconsidered as ‘lower-class’, she has to beeffect of making her…simply put her

faithful to the master whom she secretly

hand behind her.

yearns for, and try to “mark the high state

She shook herhead sadly. “Such things are not forI[she] cultivated” to other servants (111).

me, Miss”.

Furthermore, though some critics view her

My counsellor could n’t(sic) read!(33-34)

position and meaning differently, I perceive
Mrs. Grose to be a symbolization of theFor illiterate servants in Bly, the letter iscolonized Indian people.ii） As I pointed out

not something to read, much less somethingearlier, the social distinction between the35

香川高等専門学校研究紀要 1(2010)

governess and Mrs. Grose is often made insexual relationship, which was strongly

the text; the governess never fails to show theprohibited by society because it led to thestatus of her position to the readers. Onecorruption of social hierarchy.

example is that she considers Mrs. Grose tobecause they corrupted the social class order,

be “a magnificent monument of the blessing

and by their deaths the social hierarchy inof a want of imagination” (72), and a person

Bly is reestablished. In fact, in British India,

who “could see in our little charges nothingsexual contacts between British men andbut their beauty and amiability” (72), and,Indian women had been frequent in the“had I wished to mix a witch’s broth andeighteenth century, which was considered toproposed it with assurance, she would havebe condoning an indigenous immorality.

held out a large clean saucepan” (73). Mrs.

The Resident in Delhi, for instance, had a

Grose, too, recognizes the governess’s

harem of thirteen concubines (L. James 222).

superiority. We should note here that Mrs.

For the British men who came to India to

Grose is the only servant in whom readers

serve

can find the general role of a ‘servant’ in thecommanders, frequent sexual intercourse

text because other servants, to use Miles’s

could be seen as a form of ‘corruption’. Thewords, “don’t much count” (113), and she is

reduction of sexual contacts between the two

the symbol of the typical, obedient servant in

was one of the ways to maintain the status

the nineteenth century, which can be likened

quo in British India, although, as Lawrence

to the obedient colonized natives in India.

James comments, despite there being “plentyThis is exactly the way in which the Britishof busybodies who did what they could toEmpire wanted the people of India to behave,stamp out such indulgences…old habits

because during the British Raj, the Indianproved resilient” (L. James 222).

Mutiny in 1857, the peasant riots in theaspect of British India seems to correspondDeccan in 1876 and other revolts had beenwith James’s story of the ‘corruption’ of two

occurring intermittently.

ghosts.

asdetached

They diedadministrators

andThisBy restraining and concealing

human sexual desire and signs of corruption,
According to the story, Quint and Jessel diedthe social order in Bly and in India isfor mysterious reasons, but it can be claimed

retained.

that they died as a result of their forbidden

construed as metaphors for the corruption of36

Two ghosts, therefore, can be

Kazuhiro KITAOKA：Henry James and British Colonialism in The Turn of the Screw (1898)*

the status quo in both Bly and British India.

Work cited
Beidler, Peter, G. ed., The Turn of the Screw.

Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw

Case

can be variously interpreted, and so there canStudiesinContemporary

Criticism. 2nd ed. NY: Bedford/ St.

be many possible interpretations. As I haveMartin’s, 2004.

argued, in considering Henry James’s text as

Cain,a class allegory in the light of materialist andP.J,andA.G.

Hopkins.

BritishImperialism 1688-2000. 2nd ed. Harlow:

historical critique, it can be insisted that theLongman, 2002.

readers can reach to the center of the story’s

Cohn, Bernard S. Colonialism and its Forms

reflections on social hierarchy and on theof Knowledge: the British in India.

British Empire.

Princeton. N.J. Princeton UP, 1996.
Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology: ANotesStudy in Marxist Literary Theory.

*This is a revised version of the paper presented at
the conference entitled “Bodies and Things: Victorian
Literature and the Matter of Culture” held at theUniversity of Oxford, England, on the 27th ofSeptember, 2008.
i With respect to the arguments considering theposition of the governess, Bill Millicent underlines
the ambiguity of her status. He notes that thegoverness “was a ‘lady’ in the nineteenth century
sense of the term, yet anomalously earning her own
living…She had to be a lady to carry out her role but
was surely not ladylike in working for her living andno social equal of leisured ladies.”(Bell, Millicent.
“Class, Sex, and the Victorian’s governess: James’s
The Turn of the Screw’”; in Pollak, Vivian R, ed. New
Essays on Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw.
Cambridge.Cambridge UP. 1993. p.91,p.94)
ii Eric Solomon, for instance, says in her well-known
essay, that “The least obvious suspect, and thecriminal, is the housekeeper, Mrs.Grose”(Solomon,Eric.”The Return of the Screw”, in The Turn of theLondon. Verso, 1990.
Edel, Leon, ed., Henry James Letters.vol.3.

1883-1895. London. Macmillan, 1981.
Edgeworth, Maria. “It is the worst thing intheworldtoleavechildrenwithservants.” The Turn of the Screw. Case

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Screw: An authoritative text backgrounds andsources essays in criticism, ed. Robert Kimbrough.

Companion to Henry James. Cambridge:

New York, London: W.W.Norton,1966.p.238), as othercritics ,on the other hand, consider Mrs.Grose as the“solid, kindly, housekeeper”(see Killoran, Helen. ‘TheGoverness, Mrs. Grose and ‘the Poison of an
Influence’ in The Turn of the Screw.”).

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