The turn of the screw by henry James

1. The turn of the screw by henry James By Jenna Warren Submitted to Mr. Young ENG 3U

2. The turn of the screw • The author of The Turn of the Screw is Henry James. • It was published in 1898. • He was born on April 15, 1843 and died February 28, 1916. • James wrote other major novels such as: The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of a Dove, Daisy Miller, What Maisie Knew, and many others. • He was also one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature.

3. summary • The novel starts off with a prologue about a group of teenagers in an abandoned house in the middle of no where telling ghost stories. One of the teenagers, Douglas, tells everyone that he has a story that is scarier than the ones told earlier. The story is about his sisters governess and her experiences in the past. He starts telling her story and that’s where The Turn of the Screw begins. • The governess is a young women who gets a job taking care of two young orphans, Miles and Flora, because their uncle doesn’t have time for them. They live in an old country home in Bly along with many servants and a housekeeper named Mrs. Grose. The governess soon finds out that the children are being haunted by their uncles former valet Peter Quint, and their former governess Miss Jessel who both died mysteriously a long time ago. After many occurrences of Peter and Miss Jessel terrorizing the governess and trying to possess the children, Flora suddenly becomes ill and the governess orders Mrs. Grose to take Flora away to her uncle. The governess and Miles are now alone in the house until Peter appears and the governess, holding onto Miles for dear life, orders Peter to leave them. She then looks down to find Miles dead in her arms.

4. Setting • The Turn of the Screw takes place in an old isolated country mansion called Bly in Essex, England. The mansion is very old and eerie, and has a haunted feeling to it.

5. When the governess first settles into the house after meeting Mrs. Gorse and Flora, Flora gives the governess a tour of the mansion and the governess asks herself if she is in a fairytale or a storybook that she had fallen into and tells herself “No; it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half replaced and half utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!” (pg. 302). The governess sees herself as the one in charge at Bly with a great deal of responsibilities. She describes the mansion she is living in and reminds herself that it isn’t some sort of fairytale castle.

6. Plot • Exposition: The governess arrives at Bly for her new job at taking care of two young orphans, Miles and Flora. • The exposition is displayed is in Chapter one. • Rising Action: The governess starts seeing the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and tries to protect Miles and Flora from being possessed by them. • The rising action is displayed in chapters three to nineteen • Climax: Miss Jessel shows up when the governess is with Mrs. Grose and Flora and the governess tries to show them she’s there but they don’t see her. Flora then becomes ill in fear of the governesses mental state. The governess orders Mrs. Grose to take Flora to her uncle. • The climax is displayed in chapter nineteen up to twenty one

7. Falling Action: Miles and the governess are now alone at Bly until they encounter Peter Quint. The governess orders him to leave Miles alone. She finds Miles dead in her arms. • The falling action is displayed in chapters twenty one to twenty four • Resolution: There is no resolution to The Turn of the Screw. Henry James ends the novel at Miles’ death and there is no real explanation of how he died. He leaves the ending blank and it’s up to the reader to choose the ending • There is no part in the novel where the resolution is displayed because it does not exist.

8. Characters • Protagonist • The protagonist in The Turn of the Screw is the governess. She is a hardworking, dedicated, women who is in charge of taking care of Miles and Flora. • The governess is 20 years old, she grew up in a poor country family, and she seems to fall in love easily because she fell in love with Miles and Flora’s uncle after only meeting him twice for the interviews (but that is the only part in the novel in which she discusses her feelings for him). She acts out in the good of the children and is a strong-willed, noble, intelligent women and is the heroine of this novel.

9. The governess cares a lot for Miles and Flora and will do anything to keep them safe from Peter and Miss Jessel. The governess is talking to Miles about his feelings and how he wants to be by himself more often, until the governess asks what happened to him before she came to Bly. Miles wouldn’t give her the answer she was looking for and then she broke down saying “Dear little Miles, dear little Miles, if you knew how I want to help you! It's only that, it's nothing but that, and I'd rather die than give you a pain or do you a wrong—I'd rather die than hurt a hair of you. Dear little Miles"—oh, I brought it out now even if I should go too far—"I just want you to help me to save you!” (pg. 373). All the governess wants to go is keep Miles and Flora safe from the horrors of Bly but she wanted to know if Miles knew anything before she would tell him what was going on. The governesses only priority is to keep them safe and that is why she is the protagonist.

10. Antagonists • The most obvious antagonists in The Turn of the Screw are Peter Quint and Miss Jessel because they terrorize the governess and try to possess the children. • Peter Quint is a red haired, attractive, clever young man who used to be the children’s uncle’s valet until he mysteriously died. He now haunts Bly in search of possessing Miles. • Miss Jessel is a young beautiful women who was the children’s former governess who also mysteriously died and had an inappropriate relationship with Peter Quint. She then became pregnant because of the affair. Miss Jessel roams Bly to try to possess or “corrupt” Flora.

11. Throughout the novel the governess seems to think that Peter Quint is after Miles. On another occurrence of seeing Peter the governess notices “…that it was not for me he had come there. He had come for someone else.” (pg. 316). The governess realizes that Peter Quint is wandering the grounds of Bly in search of little Miles because he wants to corrupt him. • The governess comes in contact with Miss Jessel at a point in the novel and notices that she was “Dark as midnight in her black dress, her haggard beauty and her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers. While these instants lasted, indeed, I had the extraordinary chill of feeling that it was I who was the intruder. It was as a wild protest against it that, actually addressing her—"You terrible, miserable woman!"—I heard myself break into a sound that, by the open door, rang through the long passage and the empty house. She looked at me as if she heard me, but I had recovered myself and cleared the air.” (pg. 365-366). This is another example of how Miss Jessel keeps showing up in Bly, terrorizing the governess and another attempt to get at Flora.

12. However, if you look at The Turn of the Screw in a different perspective, you could see that the governess is also the antagonist. • She could be completely insane! She claims to see the ghosts of Peter and Miss Jesselbut no one else has ever seen them. Her hidden desires for the children’s uncle could have made her and she could be the one who actually Miles by suffocating him when holding him for dear life when she “sees” Peter in the window. These allegations against her are not proven but it is a theory.

13. A few days after the governess had moved in, she walked along the grounds of Bly thinking what it would be like to meet someone and then “…[she] stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations and coming into view of the house. What arrested [her] on the spot—and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed for—was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand there!”(pg. 310) This is when the governess first sees Peter Quint standing on top of one of the towers. She could have been imagining him because she was thinking how nice it would be to meet someone, this is a example of how the governess could be completely insane.

14. Conflict • The main types of conflict in The turn of the Screw are mainly man vs. supernatural, man vs. man, and man vs. self, depending on how you look at the novel. • Man vs. supernatural has to do with the fact that there are ghosts haunting Bly trying to corrupt Miles and Flora and the governess is the one trying to save them from being possessed. The governess faces many occurrences of Peter and Miss Jessel around Bly and eventually they get the best of her. • Man vs. man is the struggle between the governess and Mrs. Grose and the children. The governess tries very hard to prove that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are really there and trying to get the children but they never actually see them which makes the governesses struggle to save them that more difficult.

15. Man vs. self is the other perspective in The Turn of the Screw because one can argue that the governess is insane and is imagining Peter and Miss Jessel. She stresses herself out with the idea that there are “horrors” at Bly and how she tries to save the children from something that might not even be there. There are theories that she went insane because of her desires for Miles and Flora’s uncle, but they haven’t been proven. She is in a constant battle with herself in “seeing” the ghosts and trying to grip onto reality.

16. Themes • The Supernatural • The supernatural refers to the fact that there are two ghosts in this story and is the base of the novel. It has an affect on the characters minds and actions and what the ghosts physically do to the governess and possibly even the children. The supernatural could be just in the governesses mind, or it could be shockingly real. • After Mrs. Grose and Flora left, the governess was alone with Miles and Bly. Until Peter Quint showed up and the governess orders him to leave them. Henry James writes “But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day. With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall.

17. I caught him, yes, I held him – it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.” (pg. 403) Peter Quint seemed to have somehow killed Miles by either dispossessing him or leaving and taking his life with him. This is just one example of how the supernatural is a big part of The Turn of the Screw.

18. Innocence • The theme of innocence can refer to the children’s child-like innocence that is fading away because they are being corrupted from Peter and Miss Jessel, or even innocence in imagination, Mrs. Grose and the children not being able to see the ghosts because of their lack of imagination. Innocence can also refer to ignorance, how the children and Mrs. Grose don’t realize the reality of what’s happening around them. • One night the governess wakes up to see Flora out of her bed looking out the window at the field. The governess quietly got up and went to another window to see what she was looking at. She didn’t see anything at first but “Then [she] saw something more. The moon made the night extraordinarily penetrable and showed [her] on the lawn a person, diminished by distance, who stood there motionless and as if fascinated, looking up to where [she] had appeared – looking, that is, not so much straight at [her] as at something that was apparently above [her].

19. There was clearly another person above [her] – there was a person on the tower; but the presence on the lawn was not in the least what [she] had conceived and had confidently hurried to meet. The presence on the lawn – [she] felt sick as [she] made it out – was poor little Miles himself.” (pg. 347) Miles was out on the lawn to prove to the governess that he can be bad because she sees him as an innocent angel. Even though he was being bad, she saw it as “poor little Miles” and didn’t punish him. His child-like innocence is tricking the governess.

20. Good Vs. Evil • The governess is in a constant battle in keeping the “evil” away from the children. The governess is essentially the good in this and the ghosts are obviously the evil. She is trying to defend innocent children from the corruption of evil spirits. However, the roles of good and evil can vary depending on if you see the governess as insane or sane. • One day when the governess took Flora over to the lake to play, the governess notices a women standing across the lake looking at Flora. The governess thought to herself “Another person – this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful – with such an air also, and such a face! – on the other side of the lake.

21. I was there with the child – quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came.” (pg. 329) This was the part where the governess first saw Miss Jessel. The ‘evil’ was on the other side of the lake and the ‘good’ was on the opposite. The governess was keeping Flora safe as long as the ‘evil’ stayed away.

22. Point of view • The point of view in The Turn of the Screw is from the first person. Throughout the novel the governess is the one telling the reader what’s happening from her perspective. Even in the prologue there is an unknown first person who listens to Douglas talk about how his story is scarier than the ones told earlier. • In the very beginning of chapter one, the governess explains how she remembers her time at Bly and how it all started. The governess says “I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong.” (pg. 298). The governess explains, from her point of view, that her experience at Bly had its ups and downs. This is an example of how The Turn of the Screw is wrote from the first persons point of view because the governess starts off by saying “I” indicating that she will be telling the story from her point of view.

23. Gothic elements • The Turn of the Screw can be placed in several categories such as murder mystery, an allegory of good vs. evil, or even a romance but it is mainly a Gothic horror. Here are some key examples of why The Turn of the Screw is a gothic horror: • The suspenseful atmosphere • On the first night at Bly, the governess is in a restless mood and she hears footsteps outside her door and a child crying. When she is walking along the field she encounters Peter Quint for the first time and the atmosphere changes from pleasant to dangerous. She then encounters Miss Jessel at the bottom of the stairs with her head in her hands in the middle of the night. The prologue and its contents also adds to the suspense where one of the teenagers finished telling a story about one possessed child and a boy named Douglas brings up his story and says “If the child gives the effect of another turn of the screw, what would you say to two children?” (pg. 292). Which foreshadows the events coming up and creates suspense.

24. Gothic (gloomy) setting • The Turn of the Screw takes place at an isolated country home in Bly where all of the horrific events happen. It’s where Peter Quint and Miss Jessel appear several times to terrorize the governess and attempt to corrupt the children, its where Miss Jessel and Peter had their inappropriate affair, leading in Miss Jessel’s pregnancy, where Peter Quint could have molested Miles. Bly is the place where little Miles died. • When the governess first arrives at Bly she sees the mansion as beautiful but then realizes that “it was a big, ugly, antique, but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half replaced and half utilized” (pg. 302). The governess sees the house as it really is after taking a closer look. The mansion is actually old, ugly, eerie, and isolated where horrors roam.

25. Supernatural events • Throughout the novel the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel appear, seeming to want to corrupt Miles and Flora. They show up several times, in windows, at the bottom of the staircase, sitting at the governesses desk, across the lake, in one of the towers, and even possibly in the children. • When the governess first encounters Peter Quint she goes straight to Mrs. Grose and tells her what happened. When the governess describes the man she saw, Mrs. Grose realizes that it is Peter Quint and tells the governess that he died. Terrified, the governess asks Mrs. Grose if she is being serious and she says “Yes. Mr. Quint is dead.” (pg. 321). This is the first distinction that there are supernatural beings at Bly and sets up the rest of the novel with the ghosts presence.

26. Insanity • It’s unclear whether or not the governess actually saw Peter and Miss Jessel or that she was just insane. She was the only one to ever see the ghosts and she was basically loosing her mind over the fact that she can’t expose the horrors of Bly to anyone else. • It’s debatable if she was insane or not but when the governess and Mrs. Grose go out to find Flora when she went missing, they find her by the lake with Miss Jessel a few feet away from her. The governess tries to expose her but when she does Flora reacts by saying: • “I don't know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think you're cruel. I don't like you! … Take me away, take me away—oh, take me away from her!” (pg. 382-383). Flora claims to see nothing and become frightened of the governess because she thinks she’s insane, which could possibly be the case.

27. Other elements • Romance • Even though The Turn of the Screw is mainly a gothic novel, it does have some elements of romance. When the governess first meets the children’s uncle during the interview, she immediately falls in love with him. As well in the prologue Douglas admits that he had feelings for the governess. This has features of a gothic novel because it is partly a murder, and it is heavily scripted with the supernatural. • Victorian • The novel was published near the end of the Victorian era (1898) and The Turn of the Screw is based in a Victorian society. The novel includes an omniscient narrator (the governess) who shows her bias opinion of what actually happened at Bly, along with an unexplained death in the end.

28. Works cited • n.p. “The Turn of the Screw, The Turn of the Screw Setting”. Shmoop. n.p. Electronic source. May 23rd 2014. http://www.shmoop.com/turn-of-the-screw/setting.html • n.p. “The Turn of the Screw, The governess”. Shmoop. 2014. n.p. Electronic soucre. May 26th 2014. http://www.shmoop.com/turn-of-the-screw/governess.html • n.p. “The Turn of the Screw, Character List”. Sparknotes. n.p. Electronic source. May 26th 2014. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/screw/characters.html • n.p. “The Turn of the Screw, The Turn of the Screw Themes”. Shmoop. n.p. Electronic source. May 26th 2014. http://www.shmoop.com/turn-of-the-screw/themes.html • Lawanda Sheilds. “Literary Analysis Gothic Elements in Turn of the Screw by Henry James”. Humanities. 2002-2014. May 25 2012. Electronic source. May 27 2014. http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/literary-analysis-gothic-elements-in-turn-of-the-screw-by-henry-james-7243/