Even though the edits seem stylistic on the surface, critics have still used them to try to prove certain theories about the story. Perhaps the most highly contested one involves the reliability of the governess.
Others, meanwhile, think The Turn of the Screw is a good, old-fashioned ghost story with good, old-fashioned ghosts. Rife with sinister uncertainty and culminating in a horrific cliffhanger, The Turn of the Screw is widely regarded as one of the best scary stories in American literature.
So scary, in fact, that even James was spooked by it. James was ill while writing the story, so he decided to dictate it to MacAlpine. More than years after its initial publication, The Turn of the Screw continues to inspire adaptations of every kind and caliber.
But the ghostly opera was not cursed after all — it was well received and today is the second-most performed opera in English worldwide. In , it also became the first ever full-length opera to be broadcast on British independent television. The ghosts, which in the novella are silent and possibly imaginary had, by theatrical necessity, to be physically present, so needed lines writing for them. The Turn of the Screw is sung in English and lasts approximately 2 hours 15 minutes including one interval.
Join in on social media with ONTurnScrew. Book now. I would like to receive emails about Opera North and Howard Assembly Room news, events, services and offers. Registered in England No. Opera North uses cookies to enhance your experience of the website. Find out more about our cookies policy. One evening, as the governess strolls around the grounds, she sees a strange man in a tower of the house and exchanges an intense stare with him.
She says nothing to Mrs. Later, she catches the same man glaring into the dining-room window, and she rushes outside to investigate. The man is gone, and the governess looks into the window from outside. Her image in the window frightens Mrs. Grose, who has just walked into the room.
The governess discusses her two experiences with Mrs. Grose, who identifies the strange man as Peter Quint, a former valet who is now dead. Convinced that the ghost seeks Miles, the governess becomes rigid in her supervision of the children.
One day, when the governess is at the lake with Flora, she sees a woman dressed in black and senses that the woman is Miss Jessel, her dead predecessor. The governess again questions Mrs.
The governess is on her guard, but the days pass without incident, and Miles and Flora express increased affection for the governess. The lull is broken one evening when something startles the governess from her reading. She rises to investigate, moving to the landing above the staircase. There, a gust of wind extinguishes her candle, and she sees Quint halfway up the stairs. She refuses to back down, exchanging another intense stare with Quint until he vanishes. Noticing movement under the window blind, the governess watches as Flora emerges from behind it.
This novella was reminiscent of such a dream; made me feel like I was reading about such a dream. Some people read this as a ghost story, some as a horror story, and some as a psychological thriller or study.
The more I go over it the more I see in it, and the more I see in it the more I fear. I don't know what I don't see, that I don't fear!
There are Marxist interpretations of this story, Jungian interpretations, Freudian ones, Reader-response analyses, Post-modern, Modern, New Criticism, New Historicism views of the story, you name it.
Oh, and of course, there are those among some of the abovementioned, who take a gay view as well. There is no real evidence for or against the direction s James's orientation leaned, though I have read some excerpts of his letters to young men that would incline me to agree that there's a strong possibility that he was gay.
Among the 'gay' proponents, are those who say that the governess is a subconscious projection by James of himself and his repressed urges. Whatever other conclusions one might come to, you have to admit that the governess is one tight little ball of repressed urges. I see her as being under a lot of pressure from various origins. One of the pressures she has, is an urge to gain more power. If you think about it, the governess is actually a nobody. One of the younger children of an obscure country preacher, and a female to boot She is "at the helm" all on her ownsome.
Quite a situation for an inexperienced young country girl to find herself in. Wayne C. Booth, a well-known lit crit has said: In English alone I have counted, before I got too bored to go on, more than five hundred titles of books and articles about [The Turn of the Screw], and since it has been translated and discussed in dozens of other languages the total must yield more than a lifetime's possible reading. James has been very subtle and clever. Even in his preface, and in his responses to readers of the story, he did not give the game away.
Indeed, he says in his preface, that the reader's "own imagination, his own sympathy and horror will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. In this version, the ghosts are real ghosts, and everything the governess says is reliable and true. According to the most cynical versions, the governess is cruel and egocentric; she either made the whole thing up to get attention, or used a fiction of seeing ghosts to try and gain the status of a heroine and to make the master of Bly whom she is in love with take notice of her.
Other readings are cynical of actual ghosts, but sympathetic towards the governess in interpreting the ghosts as illusions seen by the governess. Some feel that these illusions are the product of a diseased mind, or of a madwoman, some feel that they are the products of her hysteria, brought on by her sexual longing for the master of Bly.
Some of the ironic readings are mixed. Some people say that the whole thing was a prank by the children, or the servants, or even an attempt by Mrs.
Grose to drive the governess mad, so that Mrs. Grose could have her position back as head of the Bly household. In any case, this was my first take on the story, before I had read all the hundreds of interpretations out there: My impression of the children's uncle, the governesses' charming, extravagant, seductive employer was; - what a douchebag.
The typical tycoon who extricates himself from his interpersonal responsibilities with cash. Set the poor little orphans up in a nice comfortable mansion with a string of servants, and he doesn't have to know that they exist. I quite enjoyed the Marxist critique of the story, and of course, no Marxist would have any charitable feelings towards our dashing rich aristocrat who so blithely consigns people to nothingness, banishing them from his sphere of consciousness, like ants.
At first I was entirely sympathetic towards the governess. With her first sighting of Quint, although I thought the whole set-up of how she spotted him was eerie and strange, I initially suspected that Quint might be a ghost, though one isn't entirely sure - this is how subtle James is. I thought he might possibly be a person lurking around the place in a sinister way. The thing that caught me there, was that she was walking around thinking and daydreaming about her employer and wishing he would appear - and lo!
A man did appear. However, like the governess says - not quite the man she had wanted to appear. Those who argue in favor of actual ghosts, say that the fact that Mrs Grose could identify him, proves that he was really the ghost of Quint.
However, she has only the governess' word to go on, and recall the governess's initial vagueness about how he looked. When first asked to describe him, she says that he looks like "nobody". That rather shook me in a weird way. It was my first indication that all might not be quite right with the governess's mind. The second sighting at the dining room really impressed me. One of the best and weirdest pieces of fiction I had read in a long, long time. There's so much in that little scene.
First, the way she sees him suddenly through the window, looking in. Even if he were a 'real' person, coming suddenly upon a stranger looking in on your privacy like that must give anybody quite a turn.
Note, that she then realizes that he is not looking for her. She sounds almost a bit disappointed about that How does she 'know' who he is looking for? Then the next part is so well done. I read governess's problem as being one of ego and narcissism. But the children had adored Quint and Jessel, as we have heard by now. So what does she do? Just like a jealous stepmother, she goes out and puts herself in her predecessor's place. She literally replaces her predecessor's image and position with her own, by going around to where he had stood, and she literally says in the story: " It was confusedly present to me that I ought to place myself where he had stood.
I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall. This dreamscape-like scenario lends itself to some very interesting Freudian and Jungian interpretations indeed. In the Freudian view, ok, there are a few, actually Quint and Jessel's relationship forms an inversion of the governess and her employer's relationship.
Jessel and this is also part of the Marxist interpretation had taken a step down when she fell in love with a mere servant, whereas the governess's ambition goes upward, towards her employer. This 'replacement' theme features very strongly in the story; note the schoolroom scene where Jessel 'replaces' the governess by sitting in her chair at her desk.
I quote: ".. While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the intruder. To me the scary part is the implication that both Quint and Jessel are projections by the governess of repressed aspects of her own psyche. But the scariest interpretation is reading the governess as a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic. There are some people who feel that the governess murdered Miles on purpose, but my personal reading was more sympathetic towards her.
I thought that she had perhaps only smothered Miles in her zealous embrace. She was squeeezing the poor tyke. I had more of a feeling that she was a person whose mind was slowly coming apart. I felt her worst fault was a histrionic narcissistic type of problem. She seems terrified of him leaving Bly, of him escaping from her grasp, because surely then her status, part of her whole reason for being, would be diminished. I also found that the governess kept seeming to read Mrs Grose's reaction incorrectly.
Did Mrs Grose really want to kiss her? After all, the governess was put in charge of the household, and therefore she might have the power to fire Mrs Grose, or at least have her fired. It's only at the end , after Flora couldn't take the governess' excesses anymore, that Mrs Grose managed to scrape together enough guts to stand up to the governess in trying to protect poor Flora. There are those who see a lot of pederasty in the story; between Quint and Miles, and some people even between Jessel and Flora.
I must admit that I originally also thought that there was at least more than friendship between Quint and Miles, because that would fit in nicely with the reason why Miles was expelled.
It would then make sense that he probably said to "those that he liked" either that he likes them or loves them, or even that he would like to, to put in Victorian language, 'try out a bit of buggery' with them. James had put Miles's reaction so beautifully: "He looked in vague pain all round the top of the room and drew his breath, two or three times over, as if with difficulty.
He might have been standing at the bottom of the sea and raising his eyes to some faint green twilight.
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