The Turn of the Screw, originally published in 1898, is a ghost story novella written by Henry James.
Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive. Many critics have tried to determine the exact nature of the evil hinted at by the story. However, others have argued that the true brilliance of the novella comes with its ability to create an intimate confusion and suspense for the reader.
An unnamed narrator listens to a male friend reading a manuscript written by a former governess whom the friend 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 become responsible for his young nephew and niece after the death of their parents. He lives mainly in London and is not interested in raising the children himself.
The boy, Miles, is attending a boarding school, while his younger sister, Flora, is living at a country estate in Essex. She is currently being cared for by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. The governess's new employer, the uncle of Miles and Flora, 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 arrives 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. Soon 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 another employee, Peter Quint, had a sexual relationship. It is also implied that Quint sexually molested Miles and the other members of the household. Prior to their deaths, they spent much of their time with Flora and Miles, and this fact has grim significance for the governess when she becomes convinced that the two children are secretly aware of the presence of the ghosts.
Later, Flora leaves the house while Miles plays music for the governess. They notice Flora's absence and go to look for her. The governess and Mrs. Grose find her in a clearing in the wood, and the governess is convinced that she has been talking to Miss Jessel. When she finally confronts Flora, Flora denies seeing Miss Jessel, and demands never to see the governess again. Mrs. Grose takes Flora away to her uncle, leaving the governess with Miles. That night, they are finally talking of Miles' expulsion when the ghost of Quint appears to the governess at the window. The governess shields Miles, who attempts to see the ghost. The governess tells him that he is no longer controlled by the ghost, and then finds that Miles has died in her arms.
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 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 about the reality of the ghosts and the sanity of the governess.
Beyond the dispute, critics have closely examined James's narrative technique for 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.
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 major proponents of the insane governess theory. However, he eventually recanted this opinion after consideration of the governess's point-by-point description of Quint. Then John Silver indicated 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 opinion that the governess was abnormal and that the ghosts existed only in her imagination.
William Veeder sees Miles's eventual death as induced by the governess. By a complex psychoanalytic reading, Veeder concludes that the governess expressed her repressed rage toward her father and toward the master of Bly on Miles.
Other critics, however, have defended the governess strongly. They indicate that James's 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, and James certainly wrote ghost stories that did not depend on the imagination of the narrator. For example, “Owen Wingrave″ includes a ghost which causes the sudden death of its title character although no one actually sees it. James's Notebooks entry indicates that he was inspired originally by a tale he heard from Edward White Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury. There are indications that the story James was told was about an incident in Hinton Ampner, where a woman named Mary Ricketts in 1771 moved from her home after the apparitions of a man and a woman had appeared day and night, staring through the windows and bending over the beds, making her feel her children were in danger.
James revised the novella substantially over the years. In The Collier's Weekly Version of The Turn of the Screw, Peter G. Beidler presents the tale in its original serial form and presents a detailed analysis of the changes James made over the years. Among many other changes, James changed the ages of the children.
Poet and literary critic Craig Raine in his essay on Sex in nineteenth-century literature states quite categorically his belief that Victorian readers would have identified the two ghosts as child-molesters.
Adaptations
An opera, The Turn of the Screw, composed by Benjamin Britten in 1954
The Turn of the Screw (1959) an early live television play directed by John Frankenheimer and featuring Ingrid Bergman
Perhaps the best-regarded adaptation is The Innocents (1961) directed by Jack Clayton and featuring Deborah Kerr
The Nightcomers, a prequel to the actual novel, directed by Michael Winner and featuring Marlon Brando as Quint
Dan Curtis's well-regarded TV movie The Turn of the Screw (1974) with Lynn Redgrave
A 1974 adaptation for French television, Le Tour d'écrou, by Raymond Rouleau with Suzanne Flon
The Turn of the Screw (1982), which is actually a German-made operatic adaptation
An Italian graphic novel, Giro di vite (1989), published originally by Olympia Press, adapted by Guido Crepax
A 1989 television adaptation for Shelley Duvall's Nightmare Classics featuring Amy Irving
Rusty Lemorande's film The Turn of the Screw (1994) with Patsy Kensit and Julian Sands, which updated the story to the 1960s
The television movie The Haunting of Helen Walker/The Turn of the Screw (1995) featuring 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 film adaptation with Sadie Frost and Harvey Keitel
A British television adaptation The Turn of the Screw (1999) with Jodhi May and Colin Firth
A 2001 film, The Others starring Nicole Kidman, is cited as being inspired partly by The Turn of the Screw
BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation in 2004 (later re-broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 14 November 2011) by Neville Teller, directed by Peter Leslie Wilde and starring Cathy Sara as the Governess and Joseph Tremain as Miles.
2004 Hindi film, Hum Kaun Hai, was an unauthorized remake of The Others
A 2006 film, In a Dark Place is based upon the novel
BBC Radio 4 (and later BBC Radio 7 broadcast in 2010 an adaptation by John Tideyman, directed by Glyn Dearman and starring Charlotte Attenborough as the Governess, Rosemary Leach as Mrs. Grose, Sam Crane as Miles and Jonathan Adams as the Storyteller.
The story has also been converted into a ballet by William Tuckett.
A 2009 BBC television drama starring Michelle Dockery and Sue Johnston, set during the 1920s: The Turn of the Screw
A very important storyline of the soap opera Dark Shadows was based on this story. The Dark Shadows character Quentin Collins was originally based on the character Peter Quint.
The Italian filmmaker Marcello Avallone will direct a 3-D adaptation of the novel. It will be the first Italian-produced and screened 3-D film.
A Photographic Book, 2011: 'A Very Victorian Haunting - Images Inspired by The Turn of the Screw.' Text and Photography by Jonathan Pearlman
A stage play, The Turn of the Screw, adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and presented in a co-production with Hammer at the Almeida Theatre, London, in January 2013.
In Popular Culture
The song "The Infant Kiss" from the album Never for Ever by British artist Kate Bush is a song about a haunted, unstable woman's almost paedophilic infatuation with a young boy in her care, which was inspired by The Turn of the Screw.
