The turn of the screw: argument for psychological ambiguity

Turn of the Screw: An Argument for the Reality of the Ghosts

On its surface, Henry James' novel The Turn of the Screw has a fairly simple plot. An innocent, young governess becomes convinced that the souls of the two innocent children whom she is charged with overseeing have become possessed with the ghosts of two deceased, evil servants named Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. But there is a profound divide in the critical interpretations of the James novel. Some contend that the governess is mad, and even within the reality of the story, the tale is merely her hallucination. "What the governess sees on her first encounter with the famous 'ghosts'...is thus not the ghost of a dead man she has never seen but the projection of her own sexual hysteria....the story's spectral figures...symbolize the adult sexuality beginning to 'possess' Miles and Flora (Renner 271).

However, the idea that the governess is an unreliable narrator is undercut by the fact that she is initially presented as a worthy and esteemed person in the 'frame tale' of the novel, which would be unlikely if her actions had brought about the death of one of her charges. "Oh yes; don't grin: I liked her extremely and am glad to this day to think she liked me, too. If she hadn't she wouldn't have told me," says Douglas to the unnamed narrator of the governess (Chapter 1). Rather than repression, Douglas' presentation of the woman is coy and almost suggestive. There are also clear indications at the beginning of her own, first-person tale that the governess wishes to marry her employer, given that he is unmarried and her charges are his nieces and nephews, not his natural children.

It is not sexuality that the governess seems to fear, but specific types of sexuality, as hinted at in her conversation with Mrs. Grose, regarding Miles' relationship with Peter Quint, when the master's valet was still alive: "It was neither more nor less than the circumstance that for a period of several months Quint and the boy had been perpetually together. It was in fact the very appropriate truth that she [Mrs. Grose] had ventured to criticize the propriety, to hint at the incongruity, of so close an alliance, and even to go so far on the subject as a frank overture to Miss Jessel" (Chapter 8). The unnatural nature of Quint's relationship and its poisonous quality is further underlined by the fact that Miles' behavior in school is affected, and he is dismissed for being a bad influence towards others, even though Mrs. Grose insists he had been a perfect angel before. This sudden shift in Miles' behavior is clearly not a hallucination of the governess, given that it takes place before she meets him and substantiated by outside authorities, as is the unusual nature of Miles' relationship with Quint.

Further underlining the reality of Quint is the fact that the governess spies him even before she knows who he is: "the man who looked at me over the battlements was as definite as a picture in a frame" (Chapter 3). When the governess is able to see Quint face-to-face at the window, she still does not know who he is, until Mrs. Grose confirms it independently. The governess is very detailed in her recollection: "he has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair" (Chapter 5). Mrs. Grose even notes the fact that he is wearing the master's clothing "there were waistcoats missed" based upon the governess' description (Chapter 5). The immediate confirmation of the idiosyncratic details of Quint's appearance gives his apparition a reality, despite the nervous state of the governess.