SparkNotes: The Turn of the Screw: Context The Turn of the Screw Henry James Table of Contents Plot Overview Henry James (1843–1916), whose mastery of the psychological novel markedly influenced twentieth-century literature, was born in New York City. His father, Henry James, Sr., was an unconventional thinker who had inherited considerable wealth. James, Sr., became a follower of Swedenborgian mysticism, a belief system devoted to the study of philosophy, theology, and spiritualism, and socialized with such eminent writers as Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, and William Makepeace Thackeray. James’s older brother, William James, profoundly influenced the emerging science of psychology through his Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). He also distinguished himself as an exponent of a brand of philosophical pragmatism he named “radical empiricism,” the idea that beliefs do not work because they are true but are true because they work. The James children were educated in a variety of schools and with private tutors, in what James later called “small vague spasms” of schooling augmented by his father’s extensive library.

In 1855 the James family began a three-year tour of Geneva, London, and Paris, an experience that probably influenced James’s later preference for Europe over his native land. After a year at Harvard Law School, he began writing short stories and book reviews. He continued to travel widely from a base in England, where he chose to settle. He became a British subject in 1915, a year before his death at the age of seventy-three. By the time James died, he had written more than a hundred short stories and novellas, as well as literary and dramatic criticism, plays, travel essays, book reviews, and twenty novels, including The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). Although James had many friends and acquaintances, he maintained a certain reserve toward most people. An “obscure hurt,” as James later described a mysterious early injury he suffered in connection with a stable fire, haunted him throughout his life.

He never married, and the absence of any known romantic attachments has led some critics to speculate that he was a repressed or closeted homosexual. Others attribute the reason for James’s lifelong celibacy to the early death of his beloved cousin Mary “Minny” Temple, the model for several of his heroines. James wrote The Turn of the Screw in 1897, at a low point in his life. In 1895 he had suffered a tremendous personal and professional blow when his play Guy Domville was booed off the London stage. Deeply wounded, James retreated from London and took refuge in Sussex, eventually taking a long-term lease on a rambling mansion called Lamb House. Shortly thereafter, he began writing The Turn of the Screw, one of several works from this period that revolve around large, rambling houses. Like many writers and intellectuals of the time, James was fascinated by “spiritual phenomena,” a field that was taken very seriously and was the subject of much “scientific” inquiry. The field remained popular even after the unmasking of the Fox sisters, whose claims of being able to communicate with the spirit world had started the craze for spiritualism in the 1840s.

Henry James, Sr., and William James were both members of the Society for Psychical Research, and William served as its president from 1894 to 1896. James had written ghost stories before The Turn of the Screw. It was a popular form, especially in England, where, as the prologue to The Turn of the Screw suggests, gathering for the purpose of telling ghost stories was something of a Christmastide tradition. According to James’s notebooks and his preface to the 1908 edition of The Turn of the Screw, the germ of the story had been a half-remembered anecdote told to him by Edward White Benson, the archbishop of Canterbury: a story of small children haunted by the ghosts of a pair of servants who wish them ill. In Benson’s story, the evil spirits repeatedly tried to lure the children to their deaths. The spin James put on the story was to make everything—the presence of the ghosts, their moral depravity, their designs on the children—purely a function of hearsay. As careful readers have noted, the ghosts are visible only to one person in the tale—the governess who serves as both narrator and protagonist.

The Turn of the Screw first appeared in Collier’s Weekly in twelve installments between January and April 1898. 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 critic Edmund Wilson, a revised view of the story began to gain currency. Wilson’s 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. 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. More Help SparkNotes: The Turn of the Screw: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes, Motifs, and Symbols The Turn of the Screw Henry James Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Corruption of the Innocent The governess only rarely indicates that she is afraid the ghosts will physically harm or kill the children. In fact, Miles’s death comes as a shock to us as readers, because we are unprepared to think of the ghosts as a physical threat. Until she sends Flora away, the governess never seems to consider removing the children from the ghosts or trying to expel the ghosts from the house. Instead, the governess’s fears focus almost entirely on the potential “corruption” of the children—whether they were corrupted by Quint and Jessel when the latter were alive and whether they contiue to be similarly corrupted by the ghosts. Before she even knows about Quint, the governess guesses that Miles has been accused of corrupting other children.

Although the word corruption is a euphemism that permits the governess to remain vague about what she means, the clear implication is that corruption means exposure to knowledge of sex. For the governess, the children’s exposure to knowledge of sex is a far more terrifying prospect than confronting the living dead or being killed. Consequently, her attempt to save the children takes the form of a relentless quest to find out what they know, to make them confess rather than to predict what might happen to them in the future. Her fear of innocence being corrupted seems to be a big part of the reason she approaches the problem so indirectly—it’s not just that the ghosts are unmentionable but that what the ghosts have said to them or introduced them to is unspeakable. Because the corruption of the children is a matter of fearful speculation rather than an acknowledged fact, the story doesn’t make any clear and definitive statement about corruption. Certainly, the governess’s fears are destructive and do not result in her saving the children. Notably, while the governess is the character most fearful of and vigilant for corruption, she is also the least experienced and most curious character regarding sex. Mrs.

Grose is married, and the uncle, though a bachelor, seems to be a ladies’ man. The governess is singularly horrified by Miss Jessel’s sexual infraction and apparently fascinated by it as well. We might conclude that the governess’s fear of the children’s corruption represents her projection of her own fears and desires regarding sex onto her charges. The Destructiveness of Heroism The governess’s youth and inexperience suggest that the responsibility of caring for the two children and being in charge of the entire estate is more than she could possibly bear, yet she does not look for help. Her isolation is largely her employer’s fault, because he chooses to remain absent and specifically tells her to deal with all problems by herself. However, the governess responds to her experiences at Bly by taking on even more responsibility—to bury the headmaster’s letter and keep Miles at home; to be the one who sees the ghosts rather than the children and who attempts to screen them from any exposure to the ghosts; and to save the children from the ghosts’ corrupting influence. These decisions are all self-conscious—she is not forced to make them because she can’t think of another way to respond.

Instead, she deliberately chooses to view these challenges as “magnificent” opportunities to please the master and deludes herself into thinking that the master recognizes her sacrifices. Clearly, she is misguided on both counts. The master never comes down or sends any letter, and her crusade to save the children is an even worse disaster. Flora leaves the estate sick and in hysterics, vowing never to speak to the governess again, and Miles dies. Whether or not the governess was correct in thinking that the children were being haunted, she was definitely wrong in thinking she could be the hero who saves them. The fact that the governess was misguided in adopting a heroic stance suggests several interpretations. One possibility is that the forces of corruption are too powerful for one person to oppose. Perhaps the governess could have succeeded only with the concerted efforts of the school and the uncle, and perhaps the children could not have been saved. Another possible reason why her heroism might have been inappropriate is that childhood and innocence may be too fragile to be protected in such an aggressive fashion. The governess’s attempt to police and guard the children may have proven to be more damaging than the knowledge from which she wanted to protect them.

Forbidden Subjects One of the most challenging features of The Turn of the Screw is how frequently characters make indirect hints or use vague language rather than communicate directly and clearly. The headmaster expels Miles from school and refuses to specify why. The governess has several guesses about what he might have done, but she just says he might be “corrupting” the others, which is almost as uninformative as the original letter. The governess fears that the children understand the nature of Quint and Jessel’s relationship, but the nature of that relationship is never stated explicitly. The governess suspects that the ghosts are influencing the children in ways having to do with their relationship in the past, but she isn’t explicit about how exactly they are being influenced. This excessive reticence on the part of the characters could reflect James’s own reticence (which was marked), or it could be interpreted as a satiric reflection on Victorian reticence about sex. More straightforwardly, it could be a technique for engaging the imagination to produce a more terrifying effect. Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Vision Throughout The Turn of the Screw, references to eyes and vision emphasize the idea that sight is unreliable. Vision and the language used to describe it are particularly important in each of the governess’s encounters with Quint and Miss Jessel. She deems her first meeting with Quint a “bewilderment of vision,” an ambiguous phrase that suggests she imagined what she saw. Characters lock eyes with each other several times in the novella. The governess shares intense gazes with both Quint and Miss Jessel and believes she can determine the ghosts’ intentions by looking into their eyes. Although she and Miss Jessel do not actually talk, the governess claims Miss Jessel’s gaze appears “to say” she has a right to be there. At times, the governess regards the clarity of the children’s eyes as proof that the children are innocent. In these cases, she determines whether the children are capable of deception by looking at their eyes, when it may be her own eyes that deceive her. A Ship Lost at Sea Early on in the novella, the governess imagines herself at the helm of a “great drifting ship,” and the metaphor of Bly as a ship lost at sea soon proves to be appropriate.

When the governess goes out to look for the vanished Quint, she describes Bly as “empty with a great emptiness,” as though it is a vast, unlimited sea. After her first ghostly encounters, she decides she will save the children but later cries that they are hopelessly “lost.” Her navigation skills have failed her, and she envisions the children drowning. However, she perseveres, and when she speaks with Miles near the end of the novel, she feels she is “just nearly reaching port.” The ship imagery extends further when, soon thereafter, she imagines Miles “at the bottom of the sea,” a disturbing image that foreshadows Miles’s fate. Ultimately, the governess is the character who is most lost. She cannot find a direction or destination for her theories and suspicions, and her perceptions are constantly changing. Silence Sound acts as a signal of life and nature in The Turn of the Screw, and its absence is a predictor of the governess’s supernatural visions. Prior to the governess’s ghostly encounters, she experiences a hush in the world around her. When she first sees Quint in the tower, the sound of birds stops and the rustling of leaves quiets.

The governess takes the scene to be “stricken with death.” Nothing else changes, however, and the visual aspects of the world around her are unaffected. The governess’s sense of a hush is more marked when she meets Quint on the staircase. She interprets the “dead silence” of the incident as proof that the encounter is unnatural. In fact, she remarks that the silence is the specific thing that marks the event as unnatural and that otherwise she would have assumed Quint to be a living being. Quint’s subsequent disappearance into silence suggests that the dead dwell in a realm without sound, making silence a mark of the unnatural and unliving. Symbols The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Search eText, Read Online, Study, Discuss. Just started with good prospects I have to read The Turn of the Screw for English 102 and reading literature for class always is a bit of a drag, but I am actually rather excited to get into this book. My Professor introduced it as a ghost story, and it really sparked some curiosity to me. I've been thinking about attempting to write a horror story, but really had no clue where to start, and I think this may give me the direction and push that I need.

I've only read the prologue and I really like the writing style employed. When I started the first paragraph I found it very difficult to read, but when I actually sat down and payed attention to the story I found an easier time reading it. On a whim I decided to read it allowed to myself and found that I was reading in a more dramatic voice than my usual reading allowed tone. Once I got into it the stream of conscious style was surprisingly easy to read. It captured emotion well and felt like a casual rendition, it felt very much like someone speaking the story allowed vs. the simple 'telling' style employed in most books. So far I am rather intrigued by the book and can't wait to get into it. Posted By Jalhan at Sat 7 Feb 2015, 10:39 PM in The Turn of the Screw || 3 Replies Turn of the Screw reviews As some of you might already know... for every e-text book on LitNet there's the option to submit your own introduction to it for possible inclusion on that book's introduction page.

For example I recently received a bunch of summaries for James's novel, might have been a class assignment or something, but, as they can't all fit on one page I'm going to post them here. If one of these is yours? you can join the site and discuss further if you wish :) Posted By Logos at Mon 30 May 2011, 8:24 AM in The Turn of the Screw || 3 Replies essay question help Hey everyone, just needing a jump start with this essay question, could you help? Discuss the relationships between the narrators of The Turn of the Screw. What purpose is served by the complicated way in which the story is told? i know that the governess is the primary narrator and the 2nd is an implied author (unkown author) but how do they have a relationship?:shocked: Posted By scbunzy at Tue 11 May 2010, 2:45 AM in The Turn of the Screw || 1 Reply a frame without a picture ?? hi everyone, i desperately need some help i've got an essay to do for yesterday ,and the question goes like that to what extent is the turn of the screw a frame without a picture?

can anyone help me with it?? or just tell me what it means?? and what am i supposed to wrtite ?? thank you in advance:yawnb: sarah Posted By britt001 at Wed 18 Mar 2009, 7:15 PM in The Turn of the Screw || 2 Replies help anyone? research paper I was just wondering if anyone had any good ideas or books to get sources from dealing with the turn of the screw story and freudian ideas. i already checked freuds interpetation of dreams and it didnt help much. Any suggesstions?? thanks Posted By tina88 at Fri 14 Nov 2008, 4:27 AM in The Turn of the Screw || 2 Replies The turn of the Screw essay. What do u think of this Who or what is haunting in the ï¿½Turn of the Screwï¿½ The ï¿½Turn of the Screwï¿½ is a ï¿½Ghost storyï¿½ written by Henry James, since it has been published it went through various interpretations and critics, this because of his ambiguity and difference.

It is a text that can be interpreted in many ways, It could be seen as a simple ghost story in which there are ghosts hunting a house leading, then, to the death of a child. It could be the story of a hunted woman with hallucinations, seeing things that do not exist people that are not there, she is scared by these demons and she is scared they might hurt the children, with which she had a strong bond, and her fear is reflected to them scaring and confusing them. This story could also be a very fine thought about the psychology of a frustrated person, giving the story a three dimensionality that is identifiable in the person herself. All of these statements could be true none of them are false because it depends in which way would you interpret a certain behaviour, certain person would understand that ghost lead to death others frustration others would understand love. The text of Henry James ï¿½The Turn of the Screwï¿½ has been judged the ï¿½ finest he has ever Done ï¿½ (pg155) and it was seen as a ï¿½...

a deliberated, powerful, and horribly successful study of the magic of evil ï¿½ by the New York times in 1898. Many criticisms talk about ï¿½problem of evilï¿½ and ï¿½evil ghostsï¿½ so it seems as if they would be haunting, these pre-Freudian thoughts are: the fears of the people seen as the evil that creeps into our life and we have to protect us and others from it. Here is were another opinion starts in which she is, since the beginning, in love with this great man, the Master: she as a girl from a poor family where her father is thought a person with a ï¿½psychically unbalanced natureï¿½ (pg 161) and ï¿½might even have been insaneï¿½.

She feels this unnatural bond towards the children and she sees herself as a protector from evil, an evil that is imaginary, the evil is not real and obvious for others, it is an hallucination she creates to protect the children: ï¿½Her whole being tingles with the craving to perform some act of inexplicable courage.ï¿½ These hallucinations may come because ï¿½she instantly becomes a victim of insomniaï¿½ (pg162). The Freudian explanation is more complicated and vast because it allow us to see into a matter that comprehends more than just one reality (knowledge) or two realities (the physical and the metaphysical word). Freud introduced a third dimension of reality that is the psychological reality made of memories, dreams, emotions, rooted in the human psyche. In fact Before Freudï¿½s ï¿½Traumdeutungï¿½ there were only two gnoseologic (the ways of understanding) theories: the dualistic and monistic explanation of reality were confronting each other. The dualistic philosopher saw two parallel realities coexisting, the physical reality and the conceptual reality.

According to them (Hegel) the reality is made of the stone as a tangible object and the idea of it (Hegel). The monistic conception of the world was introduced by Aristotle and was dominant until the enlightenment and it recognized just one reality: the metaphysical (nomen est omen). After Freudï¿½s discoveries evil loose itï¿½s moral meaning as punishment for some guilt. And ghosts are not anymore demonic creatures (Quint, Miss Jassel). Ghosts may just bee dreams, the dream of a mind that needed to protect the children, an illusion created by fears, frustrated hopes, hope and despair intertwine with each other and are projected from one person to another, with feedbacks and reflections, in a way that makes impossible to separate dreams from hard facts: ï¿½Her whole being tingles with the craving to perform an act of unexampled courageï¿½. The governess is also under the influence of an intense love towards the master, she is dazzled and confused by this different world she finds herself in (coming from a poor, cold and strange family) a world of beauty and perfection.

Inside her fantasy she is beaten off by the realization of the impossibility of her love, infact she understands that she will never meet this majestic and secret figure she can only imagine and dream. ï¿½The young woman falls instantly and passionately in love with the man who has inserted the advertisement. She scarcely admits it even to he heart she knows that her love is hopeless.ï¿½ These thought lead to self delusion and to a imaginary world that follows her rules, this world is not a cloud-cuckoo-land but a land of fear and the border between events, ideas and memories/dreams is irremediably blurred and disguised. ï¿½She cannot see her own insanity she can see only it reflection, as it were, in the faces, trace its effect on the acts, of othersï¿½. (pg.167) Evil, is the presence of Ghosts, the fact that we are in the end unsure, if they are feared and evocated by the Governess, or effectively seen by the children and this creates an insecurity inside us, we are not sure what to believe, at the beginning we think something and then the complete opposite.

But we are definitely sure that it is not an external evil, a curse, a punishment for some distant unknown guilt (the pre-Freudian interpretation) it is the reflection of a darkened mind, a mind darkened by insecurity, love and despair. Points Despair In the end James does not tell us what haunts the children and/or Governess. It is something more subtle. There are the fears of the children, originated by the premature loss of their parents, and their pain of growing. But there is also the Governess loneliness and lack of warmth and protection from her family. Her frustrated desire for a (protected and solid) family, for which she is prepared to all sacrifice. And there is something bad that actually happened at Bly. So, fears, frustrated hopes, hope and despair intertwine with each other, are projected from one person to another, with feedbacks and reflections, in a way that makes impossible to separate dreams from hard facts. The border between events, ideas and memories/dreams is irremediably blurred. The evil, is, the impossibility to keep the distinction between the facts, ideas and emotions. Evil is life seen through the mirror of a darkened mind.

Pre Freudian Evil creeps, Freudian recognizable Freudian wrote about the existence of different realities, because everybody has realities defined by theire youth. Posted By nikymimanchi at Sun 26 Oct 2008, 11:47 AM in The Turn of the Screw || 1 Reply essay , need help!!! hi,i need some help for an essay i have to do...Good and Evil in "The turn of the screw"..and i have no idea ...actually i was suppose to read the book , but i didn't...so please, if someone has any idea on that question..i'll appreciate.thx! Posted By guigui at Mon 24 Mar 2008, 12:40 AM in The Turn of the Screw || 0 Replies Help Desperately Needed! Please! I start school in two days and at the end of my school year last year, I was given a reading assignment to complete. It's on The Turn of the Screw. I have lost my book, yet I still have the assignment that needs to be completed with me.

KEEP IN MIND, that this has to be a typed, in 12 point font, and it has to be 2 pages long. I know it seems like a lot but I would HIGHLY appreciate it if you could help. I really need these points (50 points) to start my school year off. I am not intelligent in the field of reading, so I was wondering if someone could help. Help is GREATLY appreciated. I'm desperate. Ok, there are 4 options that I can pick from, and I will state each option below. You choose which one to do, but just state before your answer which number you will be doing. PLEASE NOTE: The chapters stated below are from the complete text book found at (1) In chapter 21, the governess delivers a surprisingly nasty accusation toward Flora: "She resents, for all the world like some high little personage, the imputation, on her truthfulness and, as it were, her respectability.... Ah, she's 'respectable,' the chit!" This sudden revelation of class resentment on the governess's part seems at odds with her other attitudes throughout the text. How does class function in this story?

How does it reveal or conceal motives? Think of how different the book would be without it. (2) In chapter 22, the governess and Miles are described as being like a couple on their "wedding journey." How are we to understand this intrusion of a romantic setting into the relationship of a governess to her 10-yr-old charge? Are there other scenes where a similar suggestion might be found? How does romance work throughout the book, from Douglas onward, to direct or misdirect our view? Why is this ghost story so infected by ghostly loves? (3) Don't write on this one unless you agree that the children are not actually "evil." They are, in fact to all appearances sweet, kind, intelligent, courteous, generous kids. Let's just say they are real kids. And yet we find the governess repeatedly referring to them as evil, as horrors, although she at first thought them to be perfectly innocent. How do these terms function in the book? That is, what is served by seeing the children as innocent or evil? Be sure to choose several specific scenes and look carefully at the way the governess's use of these categories shapes her perceptions, understandings, motivations, and place in the world.

What, by the way, makes the governess "unfit" for church? (4) In chapter 6, the governess says, "I know, I know, I know! My exaltation grew." The governess seems obsessed with knowing, and yet what she knows remains very obscure. How does this desire to "know" work in the story? Does this desire to know help her to know more, or less? How do questions of what others know - the Master, Miles, Flora, Mrs. Gross play into the governess's interest in knowing? Note: My teacher is not interested in your trying to tell him what anyone knows or doesn't, but only how "knowledge" functions as a sort of coin of character in the book. Once again I will say that if you help me, I will GREATLY appreciate it. I am in desperate need. 50 points for my school is a lot of points and especially to start the year off with. I really am desperate. Thanks for your time! Posted By Doesitall at Sat 1 Sep 2007, 5:13 PM in The Turn of the Screw || 2 Replies Essay - help please!!

My essay topic; 'THe Reader who wishes to support the Freudian interpretations of TTOTS&see the governess as a sex-starved and hysterical spinster with a peverted imagination must ignore many important signals in the text.' Discuss, indicating whether you agree, partly agree or disagree. I want to agree, can any one help me with ideas or info? THanks heaps Posted By groovygrandmas at Fri 18 May 2007, 5:17 AM in The Turn of the Screw || 0 Replies How Does Governess Fit Gothic Female how does the governess fit the gothic female please help Posted By baaini at Fri 2 Mar 2007, 3:03 PM in The Turn of the Screw || 0 Replies The Turn of the Screw Study Guide | GradeSaver The Turn of the Screw Study Guide Buy Study Guide The Turn of the Screw was originally published as a serialized novel in Collier's Weekly. Robert J. Collier, whose father had founded the magazine, had just become editor. At the time, James was already a well-known author, having already published The Europeans, Daisy Miller , Washington Square , and The Bostonians.

Collier was hoping to increase his magazine's circulation and revenue and to improve its reputation by publishing the works of a serious, well-known author like James. James himself had just signed a long-term lease on a house in Sussex and needed the extra income to facilitate moving from his residence in London. Thus, James agreed to Collier's proposal that he write a twelve-part ghost story in 1897. James finished The Turn of the Screw in November 1897, and the story was published in Collier's between January and April of 1898. The text of the story consisted of a prologue and twelve chapters in both the serialized publication and later book versions. In Collier's, the story was further divided into five "parts" and published in twelve installments. James's agreement to publish his story in Collier's was done with the understanding that he would publish a book version as well. Heinemann in England and Macmillan in New York both published book versions of The Turn of the Screw, the text identical except that they lacked the five "parts" markings, in the fall of 1898.

In 1908, James published his complete works in what is now known as "The New York Edition." The Turn of the Screw appeared in Volume 16, along with another novella, The Aspern Papers , and two short stories, "The Liar" and "The Two Faces." The Turn of the Screw is a novella, which means that it is long story, shorter than a traditional novel but focusing on actions of greater scope than the short story. In James's 1908 publication of The Turn of the Screw, he made a very few emendations to his text - most of which are minor semantic and punctuation changes. One noteworthy thing that James changed in this edition is Flora 's age. In the 1898 publication, Flora is six-years-old; in 1908, she becomes eight. This may simply have resulted from James's realization, after the first publication, that Flora speaks and acts as if she is older than six. James wrote The Turn of the Screw at a time during which belief in ghosts and spirituality was very prevalent in England and America.

The spirituality craze had begun in 1848 when the two young Fox sisters in New York heard unexplained rappings in their bedroom. They were able to ask questions and receive answers in raps from what they - and the many people who became aware of their case - believed was a dead person. That same year, a book about the "science" of ghosts, The Night Side of Nature; or, Ghosts and Ghost Seers, by Catherine Crowe was published and became very popular. The Society for Psychical Research, of which James's brother and father were members, was founded in 1882. It was an offshoot of the Cambridge Ghost Club, founded in 1851 at Trinity College at Cambridge University - where the prologue's Douglas was a student. Reading The Turn of the Screw, it is important to remember that despite twentieth-century skepticism towards ghosts and the paranormal, many educated nineteenth-century readers did believe in ghosts and spirituality. On significant reason for the rise in spirituality's popularity in nineteenth-century is widespread disillusionment with traditional religion. Unable to believe in the all-powerful and benevolent Deity preached by the Christian church, many intellectuals of the day turned away from Christianity.

James himself was acquainted with the Concord school of transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Because of the loss of Christian faith, traditionally a comfort to those who had lost loved ones or who faced death themselves, many people searched for a new way of understanding and accepting death. Spirituality was not limited to the scholarly studies of William James; many of its adherents sought solace in the possibility of communicating with dead family members and loved ones at seances - in reassuring themselves that there was an Other Side. James, however, emphasizes in the Preface to his 1908 edition that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not ghosts as that term had come to be understood by the turn of the century. These ghosts, he says, now the subjects of laboratory study, cannot stir "the dear old sacred terror" as old-time ghost stories could. Modern ghosts make "poor subjects," and his ghosts, therefore, would be agents of evil - "goblins, elves, imps, demons as loosely constructed as those of the old trials for witchcraft." The content of James book comes from "real-life" ghostly encounters about which he had heard.

In the preface, James speaks of being one of a group on a winter afternoon in an old country house - very much like the narrator of his prologue - when his host recalled the fragment of a tale told to him as a young man by a lady. She did not have the whole story but could only tell him that it dealt with "a couple of small children in an out-of-the-way place, to whom the spirits of certain bad' servants, dead in the employ of the house, were believed to have appeared with the design of getting hold' of them." James said he remembered the story as a worthwhile subject to be built upon when the proposal from Collier's came. In addition to the ghost stories of which James himself wrote and spoke of being aware, a number of critics have proposed additional literary and real-life influences on the subject matter in The Turn of the Screw. These include works of nineteenth-century English fiction, including Dickens's Oliver Twist , Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre , and Mrs.

Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story," as well as other literature, including Henry Fielding's Amelia and Goethe's "Erlkönig." Other influences include a nineteenth-century medical text which discusses governesses, suggested by critic William J. Scheick, Freud's patient "Miss Lucy R.," suggested by Oscar Cargill, and a medical book about temporal lobe epilepsy, suggested by J. Purdon Martin. In his 1908 preface, James also speaks of complaints that his governess is not "sufficiently characterised.'" He argues that no good writing comes of tackling all difficulties but that good writing instead results from focusing on a limited number of elements - in his case, the ghosts and the implication of evil. It seems surprising, then, that so much of the criticism and discussion surrounding the book since its publication centered around the governess and her consciousness. Before James's time, most fiction was written from the author's point-of-view. S/he described the characters' actions and told the reader their significance and meaning. The fiction of Dickens and of the Brontës, for example, follows this model. James's contribution to fiction included his work on point-of-view.

Many of James's works are characterized by a central intelligence - that is, a character through whose eyes the reader sees the story. The reader, therefore, responds not as an objective viewer but as a participant in the story. Reading The Turn of the Screw from the point-of-view of the governess, the reader has a limited knowledge and perception of the events occurring at Bly and must trust - perhaps to his or her peril - the judgment of the governess. Another significant aspect of James's novel is his use of the confidant character. The use of the confidant precedes far back into literature. In a novel in which we have limited access to the main character's mind - as we will until the establishment of stream-of-consciousness technique in the twentieth-century - the confidant character gives us an extra chance to see what the main character is thinking. Thus, we learn about the governess's thoughts and assumptions through her conversations with her confidant, Mrs. Grose . Here, as with point-of-view, James challenges the reader. We cannot be certain that the governess tells the truth to her confidant, nor can we be sure that Mrs.

Grose does not have her own agenda in listening to the governess's thoughts. In the decades following the publication of The Turn of the Screw, it was generally accepted that the governess was a benevolent character, fighting against evil ghosts to protect Flora and Miles . In 1919, Henry Beers mentioned that he had always thought the governess to be mad but little thought was given to the comment. Swarthmore English professor Harold Goddard wrote an essay arguing the same point around 1920, but it was not published until his daughter found it after his death in 1957. The true originator of the theory, therefore, is Edna Kenton, who published an essay in 1924, suggesting the story is more about the governess's troubled mind than about the ghosts and children. However, Edmund Wilson's 1934 essay "The Ambiguity of Henry James " has been the most influential of all. Drawing heavily on Freudian theory, Wilson argues that the governess's sexual repression leads her to neurotically imagine and interpret the ghosts.

In nearly all writing since Wilson's landmark essay, critics have been forced to decide whether the governess is mad or if there are ghosts. Those arguing for the ghosts emphasize that James, in his 1908 preface, called the book a "fairy-tale pure and simple" and that none of his other ghost stories are considered hallucinations. Feminist critics have recently picked up this thread, suggesting that the assumption the governess is a sexual hysteric, imagining the ghosts, would not have been made were the narrator a man. Such readings see the framing of the story by what is presumably - though not explicitly - a male narrator, and by the definitely male Douglas, who undercut the governess's authority but emphasizing his inexperience and youth as expressing distrust in the female narrator. More recently, postmodernism has led critics toward a less combatant approach toward The Turn of the Screw. Many critics have taken to accepting the ambiguity in James's writing and acknowledging that nearly every incident can be interpreted to prove the governess is mad and to prove that there are ghosts. In making this statement, critics draw attention away from this irresolvable controversy and towards the language James uses to create this much-read and much-interpreted text.

Henry James - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. Henry James Biography of Henry James Henry James (1843-1916), noted American-born English essayist, critic, and author of the realism movement wrote The Ambassadors (1903), The Turn of the Screw (1898), and The Portrait of a Lady (1881); "I always understood," he continued, "though it was so strange--so pitiful. You wanted to look at life for yourself--but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!"--Ch. 54 James's works, many of which were first serialised in the magazine The Atlantic Monthly include narrative romances with highly developed characters set amongst illuminating social commentary on politics, class, and status, as well as explorations of the themes of personal freedom, feminism, and morality. In his short stories and novels he employs techniques of interior monologue and point of view to expand the readers' enjoyment of character perception and insight.

Often comparing the Old World with the New, and influenced by Honore de Balzac , Henrik Ibsen , Charles Dickens , and Nathaniel Hawthorne of whose work he wrote "too original and exquisite to pass away" James would become widely respected in North America and Europe, earning honorary degrees from Harvard and Oxford Universities, in 1911 and 1912 respectively. He was acquainted with many notable literary figures of the day including Robert Browning , Ivan S. Turgenev , Emile Zola , Lord Alfred Tennyson , and Gustave Flaubert . American-born and never married, James would live the majority of his life in Europe, becoming a British citizen in 1915 after the outbreak of World War I. Many of his works have inspired other author's works and adaptations to the stage and screen. Henry James was born on 15 April 1843 in New York City, New York State, United States, the second of five children born to theologian Henry James Sr. (1811-1882) and Mary Robertson nee Walsh. Henry James Sr.

was one of the most wealthy intellectuals of the time, connected with noted philosophers and transcendentalists as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau , as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne , Thomas Carlyle , and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; fellow friends and influential thinkers of the time who would have a profound effect on his son's life. Education was of the utmost importance to Henry Sr. and the family spent many years in Europe and the major cities of England, Italy, Switzerland, France, and Germany, his children being tutored in languages and literature. After several attempts at attending schools to study science and law, by 1864 James decided he would become a writer. He was always a voracious reader and he now immersed himself in French, Russian, English, and American classic literature. He ventured out on his own travels to Europe, wrote book reviews, and submitted stories to magazines such as the North American Review, Nation, North American Tribune, Macmillan's, and The Atlantic Monthly which also serialised his first novel Watch and Ward (1871). James left America and lived for a time in Paris, France before moving to London, England in 1876.

He continued his prodigious output of short stories and novels including Roderick Hudson (1875), The American (1877), The Europeans (1878), Confidence (1879), Washington Square (1880), The Pension Beaurepas (1881), and his extended critical critical essay Hawthorne (1879). He also wrote the novella Daisy Miller (1879) which he later based a play on; one of many that proved unsuccessful. A Little Tour In France (1884) was followed by The Bostonians (1886), The Aspern Papers (1888), The Reverberator (1888), The Tragic Muse (1890), The Pupil (1891), Sir Dominick Ferrand (1892), The Death of the Lion (1894), The Coxon Fund (1894), and The Altar of the Dead (1895).

In 1897 James retired from the hectic city of London to the quieter town of Rye in East Sussex, where James bought "Lamb House" and continued to write What Maisie Knew (1897), In The Cage (1898), The Awkward Age (1899), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Beast in the Jungle (1903), The Golden Bowl (1904), Italian Hours (1909), and The Outcry (1911). Autobiographies include A Small Boy And Others (1913), Notes Of A Son And Brother (1914), and The Middle Years (1917). In 1904 James travelled to America where he embarked on a cross-country lecture tour, which inspired his series of essays first published in North American Review, Harper's, The Fortnightly Review then in 1907 as The American Scene. When World War I broke out, being an American ex-patriate, James was not happy with America's reluctance to join the war and became a British Citizen in 1915.

In 1916 he was awarded the Order of Merit by King George V. After several years of decline and a stroke a few months earlier, Henry James died of pneumonia on 28 February 1916. His ashes were interred at the Cambridge Cemetery in Massachusetts, United States, his stone inscribed "Novelist, Citizen of Two Countries, Interpreter of His Generation On Both Sides Of The Sea". A memorial stone was placed for him in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, London, England in 1976. "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?--from the Preface of The Ambassadors Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2008. All Rights Reserved. The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission. Forum Discussions on Henry James Recent Forum Posts on Henry James I've since seen there's a different place for discussion of this novel and I've copied my post there....

Posted By Jackson Richardson in James, Henry || 0 Replies The Princess Casamassima The novel tells of a clever young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, whose young mother had long ago murdered his father, Lord Frederick. Young Hyacinth begins to dabble in revolutionary politics and finally commits himself to an assassination attempt in London. Ultimately he kills himself instead, fearing among other things that his lethal mission will recall the shameful felony and incarceration of his long dead mother. But the novel is titled The Princess Casamassima! The role of the princess in the ending is fascinating. Both her and Hyacinth are manipulated like puppets by the urbane and supremely intelligent Paul Muniment. Hyacinth has been charged to assassinate her e... Posted By Gladys in James, Henry || 0 Replies Henry James major phase: what do you think? So I'm writing on James' relationship to tradition, focusing on The Ambassadors and Wings of the Dove. Basically, I'd be very interested to find out where you think James' late novels are in relation to modernism, impressionism, realism etc. Any feedback on these two novels or Henry James in general would be appreciated!

My argument is that the late novels are not increasingly anti-mimetic but rather undermine the dichotomy of impressions/actuality. I'm using Lacan's work on the Real as a framework, so it would be fantastic if you have any thoughts on that too. :) Thanks in advance!!... Posted By tasnim in James, Henry || 4 Replies Why I love reading Henry James: an analysis In these days of fast paced entertainment reading a book can be the equivalent of a walk in a spring forest. The story is handed out at a measured tempo and you can digest it at your leisure. Having read a particularly difficult part you can stare outside for a moment and mull over the words you just read. The story will be waiting there for you to commence reading whenever you are ready. This way of enjoying a book does also allow for appreciating the language used by the author. This is especially important when reading Henry James, I feel. His writing is often intricate and ingenious. It takes time to read a Henry James novel as story, that which makes you turn pages, is of lesser impo...

Posted By tdaonp in James, Henry || 5 Replies "The Other House" - a thriller Have others read Henry James' 1896 suspense thriller, "The Other House"? With blatant and imponderable ambiguity on every page, the novel is so different from his understated earlier novel, "Washington Square" (1880). I intend to read "The Awkward Age" (1899) next. While I found "The Other House" enticing reading, I had immense difficulty in seeing malignity in Rose Armiger until she was exposed as the murderer. On re-reading the first chapter, I see her family background was noxious, she hates children, harmless Mrs Beever dislikes her, and Rose speaks with cryptic irony. Still, murdering Effie on the day she returns from a four year absence seems a bit much. Did she kill to win... Posted By Gladys in James, Henry || 1 Reply The New York Edition Hi all, This is a more materialistic (not literary of cerebral) post. Does anyone now a good website to find rare and collectible books besides Amazon?

I was at a library sale two days ago and came across the original Charles Scribners Sons New York Edition of Novels & Tales of Henry James for $12. However, the collection is missing volumes IV & XVIII. So, as you can probably imagine, I am on a quest for the two missing volumes. The set that I have is an old college library set and is in rough condition. I am collecting for myself and not as a financial investment; however, I would like to get originals and not reprints. I've checked Amazon and right now they don't have the vo... Posted By epi_lon in James, Henry || 0 Replies Help - Henry James christening present My son, Henry James, is to be christened (baptised) and his great-grandmother wants to get him something to remember her by. I thought she could give a H.J book (namesake) and inscribe a few words to him in the front cover. Which title would you recommend? Many thanks : yawnb::thumbs_up... Posted By Hazel from UK in James, Henry || 2 Replies please !!! help me In this year we study The Portrait Of A Lady for Henry James...

I have a question and I want you to answer me please this question is " The international situation plays an important in nearly all James's novels.....Discuss " we're asked to discuss the above sentence.... please give me your opinions about the international situation in The Portrait Of A Lady as fast as you can ... I am very thankful for you ,who answer me... Posted By Saudi in James, Henry || 0 Replies James and the voice of American innocence Bitterfly had earlier asked me some nicely framed questions about James and American innocence, and I think the issue is worth continued discussion under James as a specific author. Here is how we started the discussion, and as an avid Jamesian, there are many aspects to it: Originally Posted by Bitterfly Speaking about James, I was interested in what you said about the American voice being characterised by its innocence, Jozanny. If you read my post, would you care to explain? Do you mean there are many innocent narrators, or that there's a general wistfulness for a lost age of innocence? I would have said that innocence, its loss and its quest were themes rather than ...

Posted By Jozanny in James, Henry || 7 Replies Edels Complete Tales - why are volumes 9-12 so hard to find? I have volumes 1-8 of the Edels Complete Tales and despite years of searching, I've found hardly any of available second hand copies of volumes 9-12 whereas volumes 1-8 are plentiful. Just look on abebooks - many of 1-8 but no volumes 9-12. It's been that way for years. I was wondering why this was - any ideas? I know it's possible to buy compete 1-12 sets but I already have 1-8 and I am now intrigued as to why there is such a disparity in availability?... Posted By philkime in James, Henry || 0 Replies Was James better understood by his intended audience? Reading the Ambassadors now, this is just something I began to contemplate over. Do you suppose that James' intended audieence, that is the people who were reading his work at the time he was writing it would have acutally understood his work better than future readers who are reading his work today?

Or do you think his work would have been equally difficult and confussing to understand for those reading at the time, as it is for many people reading it now?... Posted By Dark Muse in James, Henry || 10 Replies The Jolly Corner What is this story about? I have recently finnished reading The Jolly Corner, and I found it completely confusing, and only have some very vauge notion as to the meaning and purpose of this story. But I also found it dreadfully difficult to get through the thing. If anyone could offer any insight on the story it would be apperciated.... Posted By Dark Muse in James, Henry || 2 Replies The Governess in The Turn of the Screw NEXT Character Analysis The Governess is the only character we can really sink our teeth into in this story, and boy, is it worth it. She's a truly fascinating character; we're never quite sure how trustworthy she is as a narrator, but at least she never fails to keep us on our toes. As for the facts, they are relatively few and far between: we know that she's only twenty years old, and that she's the daughter of a poor country parson.

She's clearly something of a romantic, at least at the beginning, and this inclination contributes to her acceptance of the job at Bly. Though she only meets her employer twice, she's sufficiently swept off her feet, and spends the rest of the story secretly in love (or something approximating it) with him. Now that we've got the easy stuff out of the way, it's time to tackle the more complicated elements of the Governess's personality. There are traditionally two ways of viewing her character – as either a sane heroine or a insane anti-heroine. Both sides have passionate adherents; if you ever want to pick a nasty fight in a room full of English majors, bring up The Turn of the Screw. Let's take a look at both of these cases – we leave the final verdict up to all of you. How could you doubt her? The Governess is totally sane. The classic reading of this story is that we assume that our heroine to be in full possession of her mental faculties (that is, she's not crazy), and that all of these supernatural things actually take place in the real world.

This view of the Governess places her in the role of the traditional heroine, and assumes that she is really acting for the good of the children; it also assumes that the children are in fact in cahoots with the ghostly visitors, and that both Flora and Miles are little deceivers. If we are to look at things this way, then we see the Governess as a strong-willed, intelligent, and noble young woman, who ultimately ends up a victim of Quint and Jessel, as do the two children. Don't trust her! The Governess is a madwoman. The most popular alternate reading of the character is that the Governess is 100% certifiably insane, and that the supernatural activity is all a manifestation of her tormented, repressed mental state. This psychoanalytic perspective was first proposed by the influential literary critic Edmund Wilson, in a 1938 essay entitled "The Ambiguity of Henry James." In the essay, Wilson carefully lays out several instances in which he sees signs of Freudian symbolism in the story; the Governess stands out as a neurotic, sexually repressed woman, whose hidden desires drive her mad.

Wilson's essay generated a whole lot of conversation around the story, which has always been one of James's most oft-discussed works.

Question: Who wrote the novel The Turn of the Screw?
Answer: Henry James