The Turn of the Screw
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| The Turn of the Screw | |
 Title page of the original (1898) edition of The Two Magics, in which The Turn of the Screw was first published |
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| Author | Henry James |
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| Country | United Kingdom, United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novella, Gothic fiction |
| Publisher | William Heinemann, London The Macmillan Company, New York City |
| Publication date | 13 October 1898 (USA) & (UK) |
| Media type | print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 310 pp (US first edition) 393 pp (UK first edition) Both editions also included the story Covering End |
| ISBN | 978-0-393-95904-8 |
The Turn of the Screw is a short novel or a novella written by American writer Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adaptation. Due to its ambiguous content and narrative skill, The Turn of the Screw became a favorite text of New Criticism.
The account has lent itself to dozens of different interpretations, often mutually exclusive, including those of a Freudian nature. Many critics have tried to determine what exactly is the nature of evil within the story.
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[edit] Plot summary
An unnamed narrator listens to a male friend reading a manuscript written by a former governess whom the latter claims to have known and who is now dead. The manuscript tells the story of how the young governess is hired by a man who has found himself responsible for his niece and nephew after the death of their parents. He lives in London and has no interest in raising the children. The boy, Miles, is attending a boarding school whilst his sister, Flora, is living at the country home in Essex. She is currently being cared for by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. The governess's new employer gives her full charge of the children and explicitly states that she is not to bother him with communications of any sort. The governess travels to her new employer's country house and begins her duties.
Miles soon returns from school for the summer just after a letter from the headmaster stating that he has been expelled. Miles never speaks of the matter, and the governess is hesitant to raise the issue. She fears that there is some horrid secret behind the expulsion, but is too charmed by the adorable young boy to want to press the issue. Shortly thereafter, the governess begins to see around the grounds of the estate the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognize. These figures come and go at will without ever being seen or challenged by other members of the household, and they seem to the governess to be supernatural. She learns from Mrs. Grose that her predecessor, Miss Jessel, and Miss Jessel's illicit lover Peter Quint both died under curious circumstances. Prior to their death, they spent most of their time with Flora and Miles, and this fact takes on grim significance for the governess when she becomes convinced that the two children are secretly aware of the presence of the ghosts.
[edit] Major themes
Throughout his career James was attracted to the ghost story genre. However, he was not fond of literature's stereotypical ghosts, the old-fashioned 'screamers' and 'slashers'. Rather, he preferred to create ghosts that were eerie extensions of everyday reality—"the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy," as he put it in the New York Edition preface to his final ghost story, The Jolly Corner.
The Turn of the Screw is no exception to this formula. In fact, some critics have wondered if he didn't intend the "strange and sinister" to be embroidered only on the governess's mind and not on objective reality. The result has been a long-standing critical dispute over the reality of the ghosts and the sanity of the governess.
Beyond the dispute, critics have closely examined James's narrative technique in the story. The framing introduction and subsequent first-person narrative by the governess have been studied by theorists of fiction interested in the power of fictional narratives to convince or even manipulate readers.
The imagery of The Turn of the Screw is reminiscent of the gothic genre. The emphasis on old and mysterious buildings throughout the novella reinforces this motif. James also relates the amount of light present in various scenes to the strength of the supernatural or ghostly forces apparently at work. The governess refers directly to The Mysteries of Udolpho and indirectly to Jane Eyre, evoking a comparison of the governess not only to Jane Eyre's protagonist, but to Bertha, the madwoman confined in Thornfield.
[edit] Literary significance and criticism
The dispute over the reality of the ghosts has had a real effect on some critics, most notably Edmund Wilson, who was one of the first proponents of the insane governess theory. However, he was eventually forced to recant this view under fire from opposing critics who pointed to the governess's point-by-point description of Quint. Then John Silver ("A Note on the Freudian Reading of 'The Turn of the Screw'" American Literature, 1957) pointed out hints in the story that the governess might have gained previous knowledge of Quint's appearance in non-supernatural ways. This induced Wilson to recant his recantation and return to his original view that the governess was unbalanced and that the ghosts existed only in her imagination.
William Veeder sees Miles's eventual death as induced by the governess, but he traces the governess's motive back through two larger strands: English imperialism (based on the oblique reference in the introduction to India, where the parents of Miles and Flora died) and the way patriarchy raises its daughters. Through a complex psychoanalytic reading, Veeder concludes that the governess takes out her repressed rage toward her father and toward the master of Bly on Miles.
Other critics, however, have defended the governess strongly. They point out that James' letters, his New York Edition preface, and his Notebooks contain no definite evidence that The Turn of the Screw was intended as anything other than a straightforward ghost story. James's Notebooks entry indicates that he was originally inspired by a tale he heard from Edward White Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury. This unconventional source, like almost everything else about the story, has generated critical commentary.
Besides the productions in early 2008. "Turn" will be released in May 2008.
- The Quentin storyline and the Gerard storyline from the American soap opera Dark Shadows (1966) borrowed some elements from James' fiction.
- An episode of CSI, first broadcast May 6, 2004, was titled "Turn of the Screws" and contained several references to James's work.
- The third episode of the second season of Lost refers to a film reel hidden on a shelf behind the book titled "Turn of the Screw".
- Other versions include an early live television play The Turn of the Screw (1959) directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Ingrid Bergman; Perhaps the highest regarded adaptation is The Innocents (1961) which is directed by Jack Clayton and stars Deborah Kerr; Dan Curtis's well-regarded TV movie The Turn of the Screw (1974) with Lynn Redgrave; a 1974 adaptation for French TV; The Turn of the Screw (1982), which is actually a German-made operatic adaptation; a 1989 adaptation for Shelley Duvall's Nightmare Classics starring Amy Irving; Rusty Lemorande's The Turn of the Screw (1994) with Patsy Kensit and Julian Sands, which updated the story to the 1960s; the TV movie The Haunting of Helen Walker/The Turn of the Screw (1995) starring Valerie Bertinelli; a theatrical adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher in which one woman plays the governess and a man fills the rest of the roles; Presence of Mind (1999), an acclaimed Spanish-made adaptation with Sophie Ward and Harvey Keitel; and a British TV adaptation The Turn of the Screw (1999) with Jodhi May and Colin Firth; a 2006 film, In a Dark Place is ostensibly based upon the novel.
[edit] Opera and ballet
- An opera, The Turn of the Screw, was written by Benjamin Britten in 1954. The story has also been converted into a ballet by William Tuckett.
[edit] Literature
- Leon Edel identifies structural and tonal similarities between Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and "Turn of the Screw."[1]
- Joyce Carol Oates' story "The Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly" (featured in the collection Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque) is a retelling of the novel from the point of view of the ghosts.
- In Muriel Spark's The Public Image (1968), the protagonist's husband writes a play to which the protagonist comments, "It resembles 'The Turn of the Screw'."
- There is also a modern adaptation of the novel in Toby Litt's "Ghost Story", published in 2004.
[edit] References
- The Turn of the Screw: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism edited by Deborah Esch and Jonathan Warren (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 1999) ISBN 0-393-95904-X
- The Tales of Henry James by Edward Wagenknecht (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. 1984) ISBN 0-8044-2957-X
[edit] External links
- Project Gutenberg text of The Turn of the Screw (1898 book version)
- The Turn of the Screw reproduced online
- Author's preface to the New York Edition text of The Turn of the Screw (1908)
- Note on the various texts of The Turn of the Screw at the Library of America web site
- Henry James Readers' Group (on Facebook)
- The Turn of the Screw (1959) at the Internet Movie Database
- The Innocents (1961) at the Internet Movie Database
- The Innocents (1961) at the TCM Movie Database
- The Turn of the Screw (1999) at the Internet Movie Database
- Presence of Mind (1999) at the Internet Movie Database
- The Others (2001) at the Internet Movie Database
