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THE TURN OF THE SCREW. Chapters 16 - 20. What Happens?. After church incident, Mrs. Grose and the governess talk about Miss Jessel and writing to the children’s uncle. The governess begins to compose the letter, but then goes to Miles’s room.
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THE TURN OF THE SCREW Chapters 16 - 20
What Happens? After church incident, Mrs. Grose and the governess talk about Miss Jessel and writing to the children’s uncle. The governess begins to compose the letter, but then goes to Miles’s room. The next day, the children appear to be acting civilly, yet the governess suspects some evil motive. Flora goes missing while Miles plays the piano for the governess, and Mrs. Grose and her go searching for Flora.
What Happens? They find Flora on the other side of the pond, and the governess confronts her about Miss Jessel. Flora and the governess say that they cannot see Miss Jessel when the governess points her out; they quickly leave, and the governess blacks out. She returns to the house where she is joined by Miles in silence.
Characters The governess: Is she insane? Do we believe what she is telling us? Mrs. Grose: Does she believe the governess? Or is she just agreeing to pacify her? Miles: Is he in love with the governess? Flora: Is she being possessed by Miss Jessel? Is she evil, or is an interpretation being forced upon us because of it is in the governess’s point of view?
Ch 16 – Key Passages Talking about interaction with Miss Jessel: “She suffers the torments…of the lost. Of the damned. And that’s why, to share them…she wants Flora.” Can reveal something about either Miss Jessel or the governess.
Ch 16 – Key Passages Reason why Miles is expelled: “For wickedness” Mrs. Grose defends Miles (and the children in general), but the governess can see no other way that he would be expelled. “You needn’t tell him anything. I’ll tell him.” Taking responsibility, protecting children, protecting governess?
Ch 16: Key Passages Decision to write to uncle: The governess obviously considers the situation so horrible that she has to break the one rule that her employer set. Alternately, she could just be making an excuse to talk to the uncle again, because of the implications in the text that suggest the governess is in love with him.
Ch 17: Key Passages “What, under my endless obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at rest” “My dear”: Miles is constantly calling the governess this, which seems strange; it could be a show of superiority, or Miles has some sort of feelings for the governess.
Ch 17: Key Passages “I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held his hand and our eyes continued to meet, that my silence had all the air of admitting his charge and that nothing in the whole world of reality was perhaps at that moment so fabulous as our actual relation.”
Ch 17: Key Passages “He called for guidance. “Haven’t I?” It wasn’t for me to help him – it was for the thing I had met.” “Something in his tone and the expression of his face, as I got this from him, set my heart aching with such a pang as it had never yet known; so unutterably touching was it to see his little brain puzzled and his little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, a part of innocence and consistency.”
Ch 17: Key Passages “It was extraordinary how my absolute conviction of his secret precocity (or whatever I might call the poison of an incluence that I dared but half to phrase) made him, in spite of the faint breath of his inward trouble, appear as accessible as an older person –imposed him almost as an intellectual equal.”
Ch 17: Key Passages “Oh you know what a boy wants!” Generally, the governess seems obsessed with Miles, and to some extent, he reciprocates it. Also, at the end of the chapter, it is unclear as to whether a ghost blows out the candle or Miles does.
Ch 18: Key Passages “She’s with her. We must find them…Oh, [Miles] is with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.” – what indication does she have of this? “The trick’s played. They’ve successfully worked their plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she went off.”
Ch 19: Key Passages “She’s not alone, and at such times she’s not a child: she’s an old, old woman.” “Flora, a short way off, stood before us on the grass and smiled as if her performance was now complete.” “the flicker” in Flora’s eyes: possession? Is this all a scheme? Or childish curiosity?
Ch 19: Key Passages The governess brings up Miss Jessel to Flora, whose reaction we await in Ch 20.
Ch 20: Key Passages Miss Jessel “appears” “To see her [Flora], without a convulsion of her small pink face, not even feign to glance in the direction of the prodigy I announced, but only, turn at me an expression of hard, still gravity, an expression absolutely new and unprecedented that appeared to read and accuse and judge me – this was the stroke that somehow converted the little girl herself into the very presence that could make me quail.”
Ch 20: Key Passages “Where on earth do you see anything?” “She isn’t there little lady, and nobody’s there and you never see nothing, my sweet! How can poor Miss Jessel – when poor Miss Jessel’s dead and buried? We know, don’t we, love? It’s all a mere mistake and a worry and a joke – and we’ll go home as fast as we can!” Flora wants to get away from the governess.
Ch 20: Key Passages “The wretched child had spoken exactly as if she had got from some outside source each of her stabbing little words, and I could therefore, in the full despair of all I had to accept, but sadly shake my head at her.” Mrs. Grose and Flora leave; the governess seems to have some sort of fit/blackout… She returns to the house where she is joined in silence by Miles – is he seeking out her company?
